October 11, 2001 - The additional permits are intended to give private owners day access by motorboats.
October 3, 2001 - Dry weather last week allowed for the DNR to set portions of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness on fire to help growth.
October 3, 2001 - Minnesota mining is at a crossroads. A slump in the nation's steel industry has hammered the state's taconite producers. One Minnesota mine has closed, others have cut production and jobs. Now, fallout from the terror attacks threatens to push the industry, and the nation into recession. Minnesota Public Radio's Bob Kelleher has the next installment of the MPR series, Economy On The Edge, a report on how different parts of the state are faring in the slowdown.
August 22, 2001 - Duluth Airplane manufacturer Cirrus Design has been sold to a Mideast-based investment bank. Company officials say the sale of controlling interest gives Cirrus the cash it needs to retire debt, and to ramp up production of it's two popular models of aircraft. Minnesota Public Radio's Bob Kelleher reports: (Stockholders approved the sale Tuesday, giving fifty-six percent of Cirrus Design to Crescent Capital, an American subsidiary of the First Islamic bank of Bahrain. Cirrus Design is a privately held aircraft manufacturer, which produces two composite-bodied four passenger airplanes. Each airplane comes equipped with a full parachute, intended to bring the aircraft down safely in an emergency. But Cirrus is a young company that's been suffering growing pains ... struggling to pay off start up debt while investing in production improvements and research and development. The pains were evident in February when Cirrus laid off twenty percent of its work force - One hundred thirty seven employees.
August 7, 2001 -
July 16, 2001 - There's a new round of mineral exploration in Northeastern Minnesota. The region best known for iron-bearing taconite could soon produce precious minerals like gold, silver and platinum - maybe even diamonds. New developments are making the prospects of prospecting more appealing. Minnesota Public Radio's Bob Kelleher reports: {A barge, floats on an island studded lake near Ely. It's actually several barges strung together; one equipped with a rotating drill - another stacked with dozens of rusty steel pipe-sections. Dick Backstrom's drilling company is looking for riches under Birch Lake.
July 16, 2001 - Gold fever struck Minnesota in the turbulent years following the Civil War. The state Legislature commissioned a mineral survey of the lands north of Duluth. Geologist Henry Eames completed the survey in 1865. According to historian Dana Miller of Hibbing, the payoff was a large supply of gold. The governor got the samples, the news got out, and the gold rush ensued; people feeling that gold was there for the taking, and it really wasn't. What gold was there was trapped, locked in hard quartz rock and surrounded by another hard rock, Greenstone. Yet hundreds of miners made the 80-mile trip from Duluth to Lake Vermilion, many during the winter of 1865-66 , ready to stake a claim before the snow melted. They travelled in winter over snow packed forests and swamps.
July 12, 2001 - Dry conditions are forcing new restrictions on wilderness hiking, campfires and outdoor burning in Northeastern Minnesota. Firefighting reinforcements are arriving in case wildfire breaks out in the huge blowdown in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.
May 4, 2001 - The Spring Fire season has arrived with a vengeance in Minnesota, with more than 300 wildfires last weekend. It's an ominous sign of what could be very lively fire season. In Northeastern Minnesota, officials worry about fire in timber badly damaged in a July 1999 blowdown storm. Despite intense planning and preparations, some believe the danger of fire might be higher this year than last, although as Minnesota Public Radio's Bob Kelleher reports, not everyone: {sfx, chain saw)
April 26, 2001 - As part of Mainstreet Radio series "Broken Trust: Civil Rights in Indian Country,” MPR’s Bob Kelleher reports on the obstacles for American Indian children within the education system.