By Joe Friedrichs,
Paddle and Portage
Two of the most accessible locations for visitors to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness to pick up their permits won’t be an option as the 2025 paddling season arrives.
The Gunflint and Kawishiwi ranger stations in Grand Marais and Ely, respectively, won’t be issuing BWCA Wilderness permits this year. The quota season for permits runs from May 1 to Sept. 30. Ongoing budget and staffing woes impacting the U.S. Forest Service are the root cause of the change, according to multiple sources Paddle and Portage spoke with for this news story.
An estimated 4,300 permits were issued between these two ranger stations last year alone, meaning those permits will need to be handled somewhere else this year. The bulk of those permits are expected to be handled by various outfitters and other small businesses based near the BWCA Wilderness.
The Kawishiwi Ranger Station in Ely, operated by the U.S. Forest Service, is traditionally one of the most utilized places for BWCA Wilderness visitors to obtain their overnight paddling or hiking permits. The ranger station in Ely issued approximately 3,000 permits in 2024, according to multiple officials Paddle and Portage spoke with for this story. The ranger station will be open Monday through Friday this year, but it will not be issuing permits. There will also be no retail sales at the ranger station, which traditionally has a bustling storefront in the lobby area, with books, Smokey Bear paraphernalia, maps, shirts, and other merchandise available for visitors to purchase. Officials from the Forest Service confirmed the accuracy of this report.
The Gunflint Ranger Station in Grand Marais is also a popular place for BWCA Wilderness visitors to obtain their permits during the busy quota season. The Gunflint Ranger Station issued approximately 1,300 permits last year, according to data obtained by Paddle and Portage for purposes of this story. The ranger station is located off Highway 61 in Grand Marais. There are already limited options for BWCA visitors to obtain permits in Grand Marais, with Northern Goods (formerly known as Stone Harbor Wilderness Supply) being the only other option in Grand Marais itself. There are numerous outfitters up the Gunflint Trail that can and will be issuing BWCA permits this year.
The reduction by the Forest Service on which of its facilities will be issuing permits leaves the bulk of the agency’s capacity with the Tofte and LaCroix ranger stations. Visitors can also choose the Forest Supervisor’s Office in Duluth or the Laurentian Ranger Station in Aurora as permit pickup spots.
Based on traditional visitor use and now given the fact that the Gunflint station will not be issuing permits this year, the Tofte Ranger Station will likely be bustling this summer. For one thing, most BWCA visitors traveling to the Gunflint Trail or Arrowhead Trail drive by it while motoring up Highway 61. Similar to the Gunflint station, the Forest Service issued approximately 1,300 BWCA permits last quota season. The Tofte Ranger Station will be open Wednesday through Sunday this quota season, multiple officials confirmed with Paddle and Portage. This means there will not be a ranger station on the east side of the BWCA Wilderness issuing any permits on Mondays or Tuesdays. Ely, meanwhile, will not have a Forest Service facility issuing permits all quota season. The difference between the situation in Ely and Grand Marais/Tofte is that there are numerous outfitters inside Ely city limits that serve as “cooperators,” meaning they have the ability to issue permits. In Tofte, only Sawtooth Outfitters serves as a cooperator. Another option is Sawbill Outfitters, which is located 24 miles from Highway 61 and down a dead-end road.
Recently, including this week, the Forest Service attempted to contact every group that had a permit registered for pickup at the Gunflint and Kawishiwi ranger stations during the upcoming quota season, according to agency officials. The agency contacted people by email to inform them that they would need to change their pickup location in order to obtain their permit. That’s why it is important that people put accurate contact information into recreation.gov when they first register their payment, according to Forest Service officials. That said, Paddle and Portage spoke with a person who has three BWCA permits scheduled to be picked up at the Gunflint Ranger Station this summer. The person still had not heard from the Forest Service about the fact that they need to choose a new location to obtain their permits.
During a meeting the Forest Service held Wednesday, April 23, with numerous cooperators spread across Superior National Forest and northeastern Minnesota, information was shared about the specifics of how many permits will need to be moved from the Gunflint and Kawishiwi ranger stations this year. The total number for Kawishiwi, as of April 23, is 3,800 permits. The total number for Gunflint is approximately 1,700, according to sources Paddle and Portage spoke with following the Wednesday meeting.
Meanwhile, Paddle and Portage spoke with multiple outfitters on April 21 about the fact that the Gunflint and Kawishiwi ranger stations will not issuing permits this year.
Mitch Reaume is the owner of Northern Goods in Grand Marais. This will be his first year running the business after purchasing it near the end of 2024. When asked his thoughts about being the only location in Grand Marais for people to be issued a BWCA permit, Reaume said, “The short of it is we’re bummed for the Forest Service because they continue to be under-resourced and the work they do is so important.”
Reaume acknowledged that having more people enter his retail store to pick up their permit could be good for business, though there’s also concern about his staff being able to handle the influx of visitors.
“Will it be good for our store? Maybe slightly in the short term in terms of bringing folks through that might shop with us,” Reaume said. “It can’t hurt from that perspective, and that’s how we keep the lights on. The concern would be that if too many folks come through at once for permits, it could be a slower process than people are used to, just due to the bottleneck of visitors coming through that is usually spread among more (permit-issuing) stations.”
Sarah Lynch from Sawtooth Outfitters in Tofte echoed those sentiments, saying it’s important to remember that businesses that rent gear and sell equipment to BWCA visitors are small businesses that rely on customer support. She hopes people will be patient and financially supportive as these businesses pick up some of the workload of the federal government. They can also show up prepared, Lynch said. For instance, a group should have their BWCA permits filled out completely upon arrival. A complete permit means all those who are going on the trip are added online via recreation.gov before the group shows up to have their permits issued. Have the names spelled correctly and include the number of watercraft the group is taking. Also, Lynch said, it’s important groups have their issuing station correct (Sawtooth, not Sawbill, for example.)
In prior years, changes to a permit could only be made by calling the Forest Service. It’s now possible to make changes online, including where you pick up your permit, up to the day before the start day of the permit. This should streamline the process of changing a permit from Gunflint or Kawishiwi to another location, said Jason Zabokrtsky from Ely Outfitting Company. However, there’s still the possibility for “bottlenecking” at businesses when multiple groups show up in close proximity to obtain their permits, Zabokrtsky said. Similar to the sentiments shared by the other outfitters P&P spoke with for this story, Zabokrtsky said it’s important that people are patient when they pick up their BWCA permits from a small business this year. And there is a process when it comes to obtaining a permit for the Boundary Waters. Among the requirements is watching a series of educational videos the Forest Service created, in which various facts and rules pertaining to the canoe-country wilderness are presented. Visitors must also take a short “quiz” of sorts once they watch the video, essentially showcasing they retained the information and have at least a basic concept of the rules in place for the BWCA Wilderness.
“When we’re talking about watching the video, asking the questions about rules and regulations, doing any last-minute adjustments to the permit, and finalizing payment, that process can take up to 30 minutes,” Zabokrtsky said. “And that’s valuable staff time for these smaller businesses around the wilderness.”
There’s not much monetary reward for BWCA cooperators to issue the permits themselves. Businesses are allowed to charge $2 to issue each BWCA permit, and some do, Lynch acknowledged. However, even if an outfitter issues 30 permits each day, that would only bring in an extra $60, while the staff of these small businesses take time away from other tasks in order to help people get into the Boundary Waters. John Schiefelbein started North Country Canoe Outfitters in 1984. He says the news of the Kawishiwi Ranger Station in Ely not issuing permits this year is “a turnabout from what we were told, at length, at our annual spring cooperator’s meeting.” That meeting took place April 1 at the ranger station in Ely. Schiefelbein says the Forest Service made no mention of not issuing permits at all this year, though they did say the Ely ranger station would be open only five days per week, rather than the standard of seven, as it has been most years.
“This is going to have a tremendous impact on staffing needed to write all of the permits,” Schiefelbein said of the change.
By contract, cooperators are required to issue permits to anyone requesting them, Schiefelbein explained. North Country has never charged the $2 fee it could charge, though that may need to be reviewed by both the outfitters and, hopefully, Schiefelbein said, the Forest Service.
“Governmental cutbacks in personnel and services have been a campaign promise for decades. Now those cutbacks are coming to fruition. I get it,” he said. “But if the workload is being moved to the private sector, let us charge for the services rendered.”
Schiefelbein said if a group purchases merchandise inside the retail part of North Country, it’s easier to overlook the optional service charge.
“But if they only want the permit, and maybe advice on campsites, and directions to the landing, and to use the restrooms, let us charge maybe a $5 service fee,” he said.
Outfitters from Ely to Grand Marais were abuzz April 23 as word of this situation started to spread. There was concern, both about how the permits that were scheduled to be issued at the ranger stations would be absorbed, but also where. There was also concern about the Forest Service itself, as staffing woes continue to plague the federal agency. The likelihood of portage trail maintenance being at a minimum or altogether absent is now a real possibility, according to multiple sources we spoke with for this article. More than 100,000 people come to the BWCA Wilderness every year. What any of this means for those who come, and how they engage with the canoe-country wilderness as a result of these changes, remains to be seen.
Nonetheless, the business owners P&P spoke with for this story all agreed that’s still the driving force behind being a cooperator: to help people enjoy the canoe-country wilderness.
“At the end of the day, we just want people to have a good experience going into the BWCA,” Reaume said. “That’s the only way they’ll have a connection to it and want to see it protected for the long haul. And we know that experience starts as soon as they start gearing up and picking up their permits.”
