Wild Rice Fields of Minnesota Threatened by Increasing Pollution

What’s the reason for that? While there are a number of factors, including changing water levels, the clearing of shorelines for beaches and acid rain, it’s the sulfate pollution from nearby iron mines that lays at the center of the problem.

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This would be a bad situation regardless, but at present half a dozen companies are prospecting for copper and nickel in northeastern Minnesota. A successful coring could then lead to the building of more mines that would, subsequently, release more sulfate (a form of sulfur that comes off the rock when it’s dug up and exposed to air). If that happens, score one for mining and one less for traditional access to wild, native food.

You’ll still find rice beds in the region, but in an interview with Minnesota public radio, Ojibwe elders say that the rice beds aren’t nearly as rich and plentiful as they once were. Their findings are backed up by Len Anderson, a retired science teacher who has been harvesting wild rice in the area for many years.

Anderson points to research from the DNR that relates a spike in sulfates in the St. Louis River at the point where it passes south of the mines, collecting water from tributaries near the mines. Said Anderson, “Above the Partridge River, the river’s choked with wild rice and, of course, flocks of ducks that go with it. When you get to the Partridge River … the end of wild rice. That’s when the first mining-impacted water hits the St. Louis River.”

Let’s hope that more mines don’t really mean the end of wild rice.

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