Waves of Change: Meet Protect the Porkies founder Tom Grotewohl

Waves of Change is an online interview series highlighting the diverse faces and perspectives shaping the environmental justice movement throughout the Great Lakes region.

This month, we spoke with Tom Grotewohl, a resident of Wakefield Township in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and founder of the Protect the Porkies campaign.

Listen to the full interview:

The Protect the Porkies campaign began in June 2023, when a petition was launched asking people to sign on to oppose the development of the proposed Copperwood Mine, a Canadian company’s plan to mine underground near Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park and Lake Superior.

“This is a very sparsely populated area, if a project like this were happening right next door to Traverse City or Lansing you’d have millions of people up in arms,” Grotewohl said. “But because there’s actually no power grid out here, there’s no permanent human development or residence near where the mine side is being proposed, the community is really the flora and the fauna and other lifeforms who don’t have a voice in this process.”

The Porcupine Mountains, Lake Superior and the North Country Trail are entities of such tremendous collective value, Grotewohl said, so the fight to protect them transcends county lines and state lines. They are hoping to spread the word all over the country, and provide people with ways to get involved and speak up.

“In order to maintain the vibrancy of that ecosystem, you don’t want any sort of large human development there,” Grotewohl said. “Once you do that, you’re opening the floodgates not just for a mine but for large scale human development for decades to come, which would forever change the nature of this area.”

Learn more about the featured organizations:

• Protect the Porkies
• Upper Peninsula Environmental Coalition
• Citizens For A Safe and Clean Lake Superior
• Economic Development Responsibility Alliance
• Deep Green Resistance
• Planet of the Humans 
• Green Illusions

Catch more news at Great Lakes Now:

Public hearing draws on big questions about Upper Peninsula copper mining

Points North: Copper Country’s Conundrum

Featured image: Photo courtesy of Tom Grotewohl