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

by RICK BASS Yaak Valley Forest Council
| February 18, 2025 7:00 AM

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.” 

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