Protecting the Cabinet Mountains: Say No to Mining in Our Wilderness

Consider the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness, designated in 1964 as one of only 10 flagship wilderness areas in the newly-created National Wilderness Preservation System. 

The Cabinets are beloved by all who've recreated in it, and particularly the fortunate residents of Libby and Troy, upon whom extractive industries have historically bestowed considerably less fortune over the same time period, a litany of which need not be relitigated.

What does apparently need relitigating is the continued attempts by international mining companies to blast and drill and claw not just along the flanks of the wilderness, and in critical habitat for grizzly bears and bull trout, but within the wilderness that Congress (that increasingly archaic institution) decreed should be “untrammeled by man.” 

The blasting and resultant water contamination by nitrates would also simultaneously pollute and significantly de-water Libby Creek, already part of a ground water contamination Superfund site. 

Also at risk of completely disappearing are the alpine lakes that are the jewels of the Cabinets’ high basins and cirques. The long and narrow rock-and-ice spine of the Cabinet Mountains—diminutive, so far as wilderness areas go, at just fewer than 100,000 acres, and with its narrowest point barely a quarter-mile wide—is narrow due to the desires of long-ago Lincoln County Commissioners to drive as close to the lakes as possible to go fishing. 

Write to the U.S. Forest Service, urging them to not permit the drilling and blasting, and to this generation of county commissioners, asking them to protect the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness.

This intergenerational attempt by HECLA—who seeks now to evade the Montana legislature’s “Bad Actor” law—would flood both towns as well as Forest Service roads with heavy machinery traffic and dust and, perhaps most concerning, algae-creating nitrates. That they seek to do so with possession of a 1989 baseline water permit is dismaying if unsurprising. 

Frequent droughts over the intervening 36 years has reduced stream flow substantially, and now Hecla proposes reducing whatever it is now by another 15%.

The Yaak Valley Forest Council supports the long-time watchdog efforts of Cabinet Resources Group and other regional organizations that have been monitoring the health of our vanishing and diminished water supplies for decades.

Whether the name is Noranda, Montanore, Asarco, Hecla, or Peabody Coal doesn’t really matter. For a sneak preview of what would await Libby Creek, feel free to examine the wreckage of Stanley Creek. 

As longtime activist Cesar Hernandez notes, there’s far more copper, gold and silver in the dumps of America than could be had by hollowing out the entire guts, body and soul of the ore body beneath the Cabinet Mountains. We can’t afford a mine beneath the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness. Not now and not ever.

Please submit written comments to Chad Benson, Forest Supervisor, by one of the following methods by Feb. 19: 

• Electronically at https://www.fs.usda.gov/project/?project=62833

On the right-hand side, click "get Connected", then "Comment on Project." The subject line must contain "Libby Exploration Project."

• Hand deliver or mail hard-copy comments to the Kootenai National Forest, Attn: Chad Benson, 31374 US Highway 2, Libby, MT 59923-3022.

• Fax comments to 406-283-7709.

Rick Bass, Executive Director, Yaak Valley Forest Council