This week, the House Committee on Natural Resources announced that it would take a closer look at the role that three national environmental groups played in opposing Minnesota mining projects. Questions are long overdue about the Biden administration’s decision to yank decades-old mineral leases in the Superior National Forest and establish a moratorium on new mining.
The two mineral leases, owned by Twin Metals LLC, have existed for decades, but have turned into political ping-pong in recent years. The Obama administration had denied the company’s lease renewal application in 2016, which the first Trump administration renewed in 2017 for a period of 10 years. However, in January 2022, the Biden administration cancelled the two leases and a month later set a 20-year moratorium on mining in 225,504 acres of land in the Superior National Forest.
Representatives Bruce Westerman (R., AR), Paul Gosar (R., AZ), and Pete Stauber (R., MN) sent letters to the Center for Biological Diversity, Earthjustice, and the Wilderness Society. The letters state that the committee is “particularly concerned with, at the very least, a serious appearance of impropriety— if not ethical violations—stemming from collusion” between these organizations and the Biden administration.
This isn’t the first time the committee has asked for answers, too. The committee had asked the U.S. Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Land Management multiple times in 2023 and 2024 to explain why the Twin Metals leases were canceled.
They may not have much luck, though. The Biden administration’s director of the Bureau of Land Management, Tracy Stone-Manning, is now in charge of the Wilderness Society. The letter states that, “This dark ethical cloud is even more ominous given your new role as President of TWS after serving as the Biden administration’s BLM Director.”
If Ms. Stone-Manning didn’t satisfy the committee’s request while a government official, it’s hard to imagine that she’ll be keen to respond now that she’s fled through the revolving door.
The Duluth Complex, in northern Minnesota, contains significant deposits of copper, nickel, and cobalt, as American Experiment detailed in its October 2024 report, Mission Impossible. Minnesota contains the vast majority of U.S. cobalt deposits, with just three of several ore bodies in the Duluth Complex holding 47 percent of U.S. cobalt resources. Cobalt is a critical mineral used extensively in lithium-ion batteries, magnets in motors, superalloys in jet engines, and other national security applications.
Communities that are sacrificing jobs, a tax base, and economic stability deserve to know if distant organizations with no stake in the outcome are shaping major economic and land-use decisions. Rep. Pete Stauber should continue to dig to find out if these environmental groups have committed ethical violations, along with the Biden administration, in opposing mining in Minnesota.
