September 16, 2026

Recommending Stronger Safeguards for Proposed Drilling in Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest

The Forest Service must conduct a more rigorous environmental review and enact stronger safeguards before additional exploratory drilling moves forward.

By Elise Zaniker, Associate Attorney & Wendy Bloom, Senior Attorney & Max Lopez, Associate Attorney

The Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest (CNNF), located in Northern Wisconsin, has over 1.5 million acres of woods and waterways enjoyed by recreationists and is home to countless precious species, including the wood turtle, great blue heron, and northern long-eared bat. This is a special place that can host an array of species like these because it contains diverse ecosystems including old growth forests, wetlands, and stream environments.

GreenLight Wisconsin, a subsidiary of the Canadian company GreenLight Metals, has applied for a prospecting permit to expand mineral exploration across a 519-acre area of the forest. The company is doing exploratory drilling on a 40-acre site but now wants to add up to 25 new drill holes, including in wetlands, an old-growth forest, and near the North Fork Yellow River. Additionally, there are known infestations of the invasive reed canary grass all throughout the proposed site, which is at risk of being spread throughout the forest by these drilling activities.

This exploratory drilling is a potential precursor to an active sulfide ore mine in the national forest. A full-scale mine poses extreme environmental harms like acid mine drainage, putting the many pristine rivers, streams, and wetlands of the forest at severe risk of sulfuric acid contamination. A mine would also inherently degrade habitat for numerous species, including the northern long-eared bat, gray wolf, and monarch butterfly.

This exploratory drilling is a potential precursor to an active sulfide ore mine in the national forest. A full-scale mine poses extreme environmental harms.

In July 2025, ELPC, Sierra Club Wisconsin, Wisconsin’s Green Fire, and River Alliance of Wisconsin called out the Forest Service’s attempt to bypass a full environmental review, arguing that the project’s risks to sensitive forest resources demand greater scrutiny before approval. Ultimately, the Forest Service decided to prepare an Environmental Assessment as we requested. However, that assessment has several key deficiencies, and the proposed drilling project still poses a risk to the health of the forest. As a result, we recommended that the Forest Service

• Consider an alternative drilling plan that avoids drilling in sensitive surface resource areas like wetlands and the old growth forest.
• Analyze the potential impacts of the proposed drilling more closely, including the cumulative impacts of the drilling.
• Propose common-sense stipulations that Forest Service should require the company to follow if it approves the drilling project to ensure that the Forest is protected.

Our full comments filed along with Wisconsin Chapter of the Sierra Club, Wisconsin’s Green Fire, and River Alliance of Wisconsin can be found below.

READ OUR COMMENTS

The Forest Service should not merely rubber stamp GreenLight’s proposed project. Rather, it must actually analyze the project’s potential impacts and impose stipulations to ensure that the forest is protected and that the proposed exploratory drilling will not negatively impact this remarkable public resource, the people who use it, and the species that call it home.