Wildfires aren’t on the minds of most who visit the Boundary Waters during the winter months. However, the U.S. Forest Service is asking for comments on a proposal seeking to restore some ecological balance to an area near Ely.

Known as the Fernberg Project, the plan could reduce the threat of fires to human lives and private property, according to the Forest Service. Furthermore, the Fernberg Project could see tens of thousands of acres inside the Boundary Waters burned intentionally, logging on federal lands outside the wilderness, and numerous other activities across a broad swath of forest in the heart of canoe country.

The plan is not without its critics.

Organizations across the country, including the Sierra Club and Wilderness Watch, voiced skepticism about the project in comments that were made public this week. Among the concerns raised are potential violations of the Wilderness Act, destruction of critical lynx habitat, and burning old-growth forests.

“The Forest Service’s approval of 84,000 acres of activity to reengineer the natural landscape into reflecting the wildfire fuel conditions most desired by managers also undermines the goals of the Wilderness Act,” the group Wilderness Watch shared in its submitted comment.

The Fernberg Road extends about 15 miles east from Ely, surrounded on three sides by the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. The road corridor, which ranges from roughly 2½ miles to 4½ miles wide, is full of homes, cabins, resorts, and recreation sites.

“The existing conditions we’re seeing on the ground is this build-up of what we would term hazardous fuels,” says Aaron Kania, Superior National Forest Kawishiwi district ranger.

Draft Environmental Assessment (EA) documents for Superior National Forest’s Fernberg Project are available for public review and comment until Feb. 15. Comments can be submitted at the project page. 

“The Fernberg Project is focused on creating resilient forests while protecting lives, private property, and firefighter safety,” Kania said this week. “The project was developed in collaboration with the residents of Ely, our partners and the Tribal Bands, but it’s important that everyone be allowed to provide their voice and submit a comment.”

Indeed, the project brings together several recent issues, like the historic role of fire in what’s now the wilderness, lessons about managing wildfires and protecting people, human intervention in what is supposed to be untouched territory, and the future of fire and the southern boreal forest in a changing climate.

And while wildfires are viewed by some simply as destructive forces of nature, they played a significant role in shaping what today are considered the most stunning landscapes across the Boundary Waters. The reality is this is a place where wildfire is common—even necessary.

Historically, some of the most important fires the Boundary Waters landscape experienced were those started intentionally by the Indigenous people who have lived here for centuries and who used these fires as a tool of sorts. Other times the fires started naturally, from a lightning strike, for example. Across the 1854 Ceded Territory, a vast area of land in northeastern Minnesota that includes all of Superior National Forest and the BWCA Wilderness, Indigenous people have for generations engaged in the practice of intentionally lighting smaller, controlled fires with specific outcomes in mind, including acquiring food and materials for clothing, making canoes, and following other means of living with the land known as “cultural burning.”

Indeed, the project brings together several recent issues, like the historic role of fire in what’s now the wilderness, lessons about managing wildfires and protecting people, human intervention in what is supposed to be untouched territory, and the future of fire and the southern boreal forest in a changing climate.

The wilderness area presents special challenges not only to fighting wildfires, but also to conducting planned fires. Without roads to use for access or firebreaks, and without the use of any logging equipment to prepare sites, setting a fire and putting it out takes extra effort.

Prescribed burning in the wilderness also challenges ideas inherent to how wilderness is managed in the United States. One person who has long been involved in protecting wilderness says such human intervention is inappropriate under long-standing policy.

Kevin Proescholdt, wilderness advocate and director of conservation for national nonprofit Wilderness Watch, believes the proposal could run afoul of Congress. The Boundary Waters is a federally designated wilderness area protected by the 1964 Wilderness Act and 1978 BWCA Act.

“It’s not that I’m opposed to having any fires in the Boundary Waters,” he says. “It’s that, when we set aside wilderness areas, we are allowing nature to call the shots, and not manipulating them like forests outside the wilderness.”

The two acts of Congress say humans are supposed to basically leave wilderness alone. Proescholdt was involved in efforts to pass the 1978 Act, and has spent much of his career seeking its enforcement.

“They shouldn’t be doing this kind of manipulation in wilderness,” he says. “It goes directly against the mandate to keep these areas untrammeled and unmanaged.”

Forest Service officials say it’s a matter of thinking on a different time scale. By conducting prescribed burns now, the agency might not have to intensively intervene in some future natural fires. Forest Service officials told Paddle and Portage last winter that there are several ways the agency is supposed to protect wilderness, including managing for a natural ecosystem.

The tactics include allowing short-term management, like prescribed burns, to allow for fewer interventions, like fighting natural fires, in the long term. The Forest Service also says the proposed fires are authorized by policy that allows for wilderness management activities to protect life and property.

“Our Forest Service policy that was interpreted from the 1964 Act doesn’t allow for ecological burning,” the Forest Service said. “But it does allow for burning for public safety and basically preventing risk to life and property.”

The Fernberg Project would not be the first prescribed burning in the Boundary Waters. Burning was conducted on about 50,000 acres inside the wilderness after the 1999 blowdown, and 1,300 acres of burning were authorized again in 2022 for the HiLo Project, primarily around Burntside and Slim lakes.

In the case of the Fernberg corridor, the health of the ecosystem seems inextricably linked to public safety. The overgrown forest is not just poor habitat for everything from moose to Jack pine, it’s a threat to humans.

Rather than intentionally setting fires in the Boundary Waters, Proescholdt advocates for allowing natural fires ignited by lightning to burn. In recent years, few if any natural ignitions have been left to burn, but have rather been suppressed and extinguished as quickly as possible.

The Forest Service is often restricted by the timing of natural fires, climate and forest conditions, budget constraints, and concerns about fires getting out of control. Prescribed fires are usually conducted in the spring or fall, when cooler, wetter conditions make fire more manageable. But wildfires often hit the area during summer, when hot and dry conditions make it much more dangerous to allow fires to burn.

Proescholdt puts the Fernberg Project among a trend he has observed across the country, with federal land managers attempting significant interventions in wilderness, which advocates say are prohibited by the Wilderness Act.

“For decades, the Forest Service has been saying we’re going to allow natural fires to play their role in the ecosystem, but I don’t see that happening,” he says.

Wilderness Watch sued the National Park Service in September 2023 over a plan to conduct burning, mechanical harvest, and tree planting in designated wilderness in California’s Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks. The project would include using chainsaws and helicopters in remote wilderness areas, as the agency seeks to protect sequoias from wildfires. The case is pending in the courts.

“We are seeing all across the country, the federal agencies that administer wilderness are ramping up the efforts to manipulate wilderness, often under the guise of responding to climate change,” he says.

There are significant differences between the California conflict and the Fernberg Project, but Proescholdt believes the proposal to burn in the Boundary Waters is still a threat to the very concept of wilderness.

“The Fernberg Project could set a terrible precedent for the Boundary Waters, if not for across the National Forest system, for invading wildernesses and doing these sorts of manipulations,” he says.

Forest management on Superior National Forest is, of course, not a new concept. In addition to the past 100 years of fighting every fire possible, the future of the forest is also expected to include big challenges. Climate change will have a variety of effects on the region in the next few decades, with impacts on fire, forestry, and more. Kania points out that much of the logging currently done on the Superior National Forest is conducted in the winter, when frozen ground makes access to timber easier, and prevents damage to sensitive soils.

The Forest Service stresses that the current proposal for the Fernberg Project remains in draft form. It is currently in the public comment phase.

The draft EA and supporting documents will be available along with the public outreach and scoping documents on the project website.

The Kawishiwi Ranger District will host the following for the Fernberg Project in Ely and online:

Virtual open house, Feb. 4 from 4 to 6 p.m.

In-person open house, Feb. 5 from 4 to 6 p.m. At this event, the public will be able to review the Fernberg Corridor Project Draft Environmental Assessment documents and maps with Forest Service officials. The Kawishiwi District Office is located at 1393 Highway 169 in Ely.

Paddle and Portage writer Greg Seitz contributed to this report.

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