Wilderness champions are renewing their push to safeguard Wolf Lake, in the Chiniguchi area near Sudbury, from the impacts of mining activity. In a recent article published at the Ontario Nature website, former Science North biologist and Wolf Lake Coalition member Franco Mariotti argues there should no longer be any dawdling on a plan the province itself articulated years ago — in the Mike Harris era, no less — for the area’s protection. “In 1999 the Ontario government’s Lands for Life public planning process declared Wolf Lake ‘a park in waiting,’ stating that once the mineral leases would lapse the area would become a park,” he notes. Two-dozen years later, it’s the park proponents who are still waiting, while junior miners continue to probe for riches — without, in Mariotti’s assessment, finding anything worth the disruption to the environment.