An economic disaster

The closure of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness due to the ongoing threat from major wildfires is certainly understandable. It is also an economic gut punch for resorts, outfitters, and other businesses in the region who rely on summer visitors drawn to the region by the wilderness and the surrounding Superior National Forest.
While the Boundary Waters has experienced a full closure before, this one has the potential to be the most devastating one of all, potentially the longest and coming at the height of the summer season. Add in the dense smoke that has ebbed and flowed into the area on an ever-shifting basis, and the evacuations that have left numerous camps, resorts, and outfitters completely shuttered, and this has the makings of a major economic disaster.
The Forest Service, to be sure, made the right call in shutting down the BWCAW. Nobody up here is sensibly arguing otherwise. The physical dangers of fire and the likely health effects of the dense smoke leave no responsible alternative. Public safety comes first, and outfitters and other businesses based in Ely, Crane Lake, or Grand Marais don’t argue with that.
But understanding the necessity of a closure doesn’t pay the bills, and it doesn’t refund the money an outfitter, shop, or resort owner already spent getting ready for a season that has now been thrown into uncertainty. Every spring, outfitters and other businesses across the Arrowhead commit tens of thousands of dollars to retain fleets of canoes, tents, packs, fishing gear, as well as consumer items for retail outlets. They hire and train seasonal staff, often months before the first permit is issued. They do this every year on faith: faith that the ice will go out, that the fishing opener will draw a crowd, that July and August will deliver the bulk of their annual revenue, because that’s how this business has always worked. It is a seasonal industry with a brutally short window, and there is no way to make up in October what is lost in July. A closure that lingers for weeks, as is certainly possible in this case, would be devastating. This is where government must be prepared to step up.
None of the economic suffering is the fault of the businesses involved. An outfitter, resort, or retail store that staffed up for a normal season did nothing different than they have always done — and did nothing to cause the lightning strikes and drought conditions that are now keeping them idled at peak season. This is not a business failure. It is a natural disaster that happens to be hitting a wilderness-dependent industry instead of a cornfield.
And that comparison is apt, because Minnesota and the federal government already have a well-worn playbook for exactly this kind of situation — it just usually applies to a different set of small businesses. When drought, flooding, or an early frost wipes out a season for farmers, the state doesn’t shrug and say that’s just the risk of being in agriculture. It activates disaster relief programs, works with the federal government on emergency loans, and treats the loss as what it is: an act of nature that deserves a public response, because the alternative is watching viable, longstanding local businesses suffer or go under through no fault of their own.
The summer tourism industry is no less a part of our regional economy than farming is elsewhere in the state, and the Boundary Waters is no less central to the livelihoods of so many businesses here than good soil is to farming communities elsewhere in the state.
The good news is we hear that our legislators are already discussing possible forms of assistance, and they’ve set a meeting for this Friday in Ely to take input from the community on the need. It remains to be seen what form that assistance might take, but at a time when Congress is weighing a multi-billion-dollar bailout for farmers hurt by tariffs and high costs, similar assistance should certainly be on the table for business owners in our region hurt by conditions equally beyond their control.
The fires will eventually burn out, the smoke will clear, and the Boundary Waters will reopen. When it does, we want the same outfitters, resorts, and other business owners who have been serving visitors for generations to still be here, ready to serve for generations more. That won’t happen by accident. It will take the same kind of state support we’ve always been willing to extend to the farmers who face their own season lost to weather beyond their control. Our local business owners and their employees affected by the fires deserve nothing less.