Reader's View: We can’t let mining companies be like muskrats

Go ahead. Be like the muskrat. Find a pond. Pick a spot in the shoreline to dig, then expand your tunnels. Expand and increase them until the day you discover the entry to your home no longer has underwater access, that the water you rely on is shallower and the plants you survive on are dwindling.

I don't imagine the muskrat realizes its tunneling has destroyed the very dam that held back the water that created the pond it called home. It moves on to a new location (if it can find one) to start the process again, leaving behind an altered environment and disrupting the life patterns of waterfowl, damselflies, deer, turtles, turkeys, and more.

We can ramrod new mining through (as the incoming federal administration is proposing and U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber supports) and forever change the landscape of the pristine ecosystem of Northeastern Minnesota (and elsewhere, including Pebble Bay in Alaska, where a similar mining push continues). We can allow the companies to mine and then move on, leaving the cleanup and consequences to our children's children.

Or we can use our intellect and foresight to create jobs that provide income while still protecting our home planet. Despite what Stauber inferred in his commentary in the Jan. 4 News Tribune (“ Trump's reelection 'a big moment' for the Northland ”), I'm not "anti-jobs." I'm pro-earth and for alternatives that leave no trace. This is the only home we have. We cannot leave our mess and move on like the muskrat.

Lynn Vongroven

Sturgeon Lake