Environment: Storm over Voyageurs' Country

It's canoe against motorboat in Minnesota's lake country

It extends much farther than the eye can see: a great tapestry pf shimmering blue lakes and islands forested with silver birch, black spruce and majestic red pines. Eagles and ospreys wheel overhead, while moose and wolves roam the woods as they did in the days of the 17th century voyageurs. Crystal-clear lakes teem with enough trout and walleyed pike to make even the fishing novice feel like the compleat angler. At dusk the call of the loon is heard.

Now the peace of this magnificent million-acre northern Minnesota tract, known prosaically as the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA), has been broken by a bitter environmental dispute. Like many land-use arguments raging across the country, it pits dedicated environmentalists (many of them city dwellers), who want to save the wilderness at all costs, against country folk, who feel jobs and recreational activities must be preserved as well. For a look at what Minnesotans are calling the battle of the canoe vs. outboard, TIME Correspondent Madeleine Nash toured the combat zone by car, on foot and, of course, by motorboat and canoe. Her report:

Ely, Minn. (pop. 5,000), just outside the wilderness area, is normally a quiet, friendly town. But lately residents have been in a surly mood. SIERRA CLUB KISS MY AXE and NO SKIDOO NO CANOE, proclaim bumper stickers. A group of snowmobilers who whined into the forbidden area two winters ago and were promptly arrested are now local folk heroes dubbed the Ely Ten. The strife has also been marked by violence: car windows have been broken, tires slashed and 200-year-old trees felled to block access to the canoeing paradise.

Most of Ely's outdoor-loving people demand unrestricted use of "their" wilderness, including the right to crisscross it in snowmobiles and outboard-powered boats. As a local insurance man puts it: "Why should we be locked out of an area we love?"

One of the few residents who disagree is Author Sigurd Olson, 79, author of The Singing Wilderness and The Hidden Forest. A trim, white-haired outdoorsman, he has been fighting for six decades to keep the BWCA free of mechanized intrusion. Says he: "Motors of any kind are a violation of wilderness values."

For all the efforts of environmentalists, the BWCA has long been roiled by Evinrudes and Johnsons. Even after it was included in the 1964 National Wilderness Preservation Act—making it by far the largest region of its kind east of the Rockies—logging and motorboating continued under an amendment sponsored by the late Senator Hubert Humphrey. But lumbering has since been voluntarily suspended and will be permanently outlawed under legislation slowly making its way through the political thickets of Capitol Hill. So environmentalists are now concentrating their ire on the remaining target: motorized recreational vehicles.

Under a bill passed by the House, only 17% of the region's water surface would be left for motorboating, though outboards would still be permitted in the 2 million acres of adjoining lakeland in Superior National Forest. The rules would be still tougher against snowmobiles, with the vehicles barred from all recreational areas except two corridors leading to Canada.