A mother bear and her cubs have temporarily halted construction of a controversial high-voltage powerline in northern Wisconsin.
Construction crews working on an American Transmission Company (ATC) powerline project stopped construction in Rusk County’s Ladysmith at the end of February when a mother bear and her cubs were found hibernating in the snow just 200 feet from the powerline’s path. Coincidentally, Rusk County is also home to a leaking metallic sulfide mine that ran its course in the 1990s.
The powerline will run 210 miles from Duluth, Minnesota to Wausau, Wisconsin carrying power largely generated by destructive mega-hydro projects on Cree land in Manitoba. The Cree, Anishinaabeg and other ruralites have campaigned hard against the powerline for various ecological, health and cultural reasons. The Upper Peninsula may soon have to join the fight as ATC has recently announced plans to expand its high-voltage powerlines running out of Marquette, Michigan.
A ceremony to honor Makwa and Mother Earth will be held in Ladysmith on March 11. One of the organizers, an Anishinaabe opponent of the powerline, Michael Chosa, said, “[H]er simple act of ‘just being there’ at just this time, is something more than coincidence. This relative has provided us humans with the opportunity to unite over the eternal issue of taking versus giving, and we now need to fulfill our obligations to our sacred creator and our ancestors and relatives.”