September 24, 2020 — The Pebble Partnership’s CEO Tom Collier has resigned in the fallout of secretly recorded videos that were posted online Monday, 21 September.
Parent company Northern Dynasty Minerals published a statement announcing that John Shively will step back into the role of CEO for the partnership on an interim basis. Shively has been serving as chairman of the board for Pebble since 2014, when he handed off the title of CEO to Collier.
September 23, 2020 — Alaska fishermen can increase their federal trade relief funds by adding higher poundage prices for 15 fish and shellfish species. While it’s welcomed, the payouts are a band-aid on a bigger and ongoing problem.
Through December 14, fishermen can apply to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Seafood Trade Relief Program (STRP) if their bottom line has been hurt by the Trump administration’s ongoing trade standoffs, primarily with China.
“STRP is part of a federal relief strategy to support fishermen and other producers while the administration continues to work on free, fair and reciprocal trade deals to open more markets to help American producers compete globally,” said a USDA fact sheet.
The damages to fishermen are calculated as the difference with a trade tariff and the baseline without it based on 2019 catches.
September 22, 2020 — Pink salmon, the most plentiful and cheapest of Alaska’s five salmon species, are finding more hospitable habitat in the warming northern Bering Sea, a new study finds.
There is a clear link between warming temperatures at Nome and better juvenile salmon productivity in rivers that flow into the northern Bering Sea, said the study, published in the journal Deep Sea Research Part II: Topical Studies in Oceanography.
Pink salmon, a species more associated with waters off Alaska’s southern coast, appear to be among those boreal species working their way into more northern waters in response to climate change.
Pink salmon’s short life cycle makes their population more adaptable to these changes in environmental conditions, according to the study. Other salmon species spend up to seven years at sea before returning to freshwater to spawn, but pink salmon have a total life cycle of only two years — counting their time in both saltwater and freshwater — and that relatively quick turnaround gives more chances for succeeding generations to shift their migration patterns.
“Pink salmon are definitely good at straying,” said lead author Ed Farley of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “They definitely want to go seek out other habitat.”
September 22, 2020 — An environmental group released videos on Monday of Pebble mine executives privately discussing their pull with Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy and other Alaska political leaders and the huge potential for expansion at the controversial Southwest Alaska copper and gold prospect.
The recordings, made by a Washington, D.C. group, the Environmental Investigation Agency, underscore longstanding criticisms by mine opponents about Pebble Limited’s political influence in Alaska and the White House.
The group hired people to pose as potential investors interested in the mine’s long-term prospects during video calls with the Pebble officials in August and September 2020, according to a written statement from the group.
September 22, 2020 — Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport will be the recipient of a USD 21 million (EUR 17.9 million) federal transportation grant that will help fund a large cold-storage facility at the site, the U.S. congressional delegation from Alaska announced last Monday.
Plans for the site itself had already been announced, but the grant, which was awarded to the Alaska Energy Authority, was made public last week.
September 22, 2020 — The Alaska Symphony of Seafood, scheduled to be held this November, has been postponed until spring 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a press release from the Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation (AFDF), which organizes the event.
The program has been hosted since 1994 and allows Alaskan value-added seafood products to compete against each other, which “encourages companies to invest in product development, helps them promote those new products and competitively positions Alaska Seafood in national and global markets.” A call for products will be reissued early next year.
September 22, 2020 — Two executives with the company seeking to develop an open-pit gold and copper mine in Bristol Bay, Alaska, said they expect the project to grow much larger in size than the proposal currently under final review by the Army Corps of Engineers.
Northern Dynasty Minerals CEO Ronald Thiessen and Pebble Limited Partnership CEO Tom Collier told members of an environmental advocacy group posing as potential investors that the mine could operate for much longer than currently proposed, and could expand to other areas where the partnership owns mineral rights.
September 21, 2020 — Executives overseeing the development of a long-disputed copper and gold mine in Alaska were recorded saying they expected the project to become much bigger, and operate for much longer, than outlined in the proposal that is awaiting final approval by the Army Corps of Engineers.
The executives, who were recorded in remote meetings by members of an environmental advocacy group posing as potential investors, said the project, Pebble Mine, could potentially operate for 160 years or more beyond the current proposal of 20 years. And it could quickly double its output after the initial two decades, they said.
“Once you have something like this in production why would you want to stop?” Ronald W. Thiessen, chief executive of Northern Dynasty Minerals, the parent company of Pebble Limited Partnership, said in one of the recordings. Mr. Thiessen said local villages in the area would support extended operation of the mine because of the tax money they would receive. “It’s $10,000 per man, woman and child,” he said. “They want that to go away? No.”
September 18, 2020 — A television ad on Fox News from the developer of the Pebble copper and gold mine in Southwest Alaska seems to have gotten the ear of President Donald Trump, who on Wednesday tweeted that politics will not play a role in whether the mine is permitted.
“Don’t worry, wonderful & beautiful Alaska, there will be NO POLITICS in the Pebble Mine Review Process. I will do what is right for Alaska and our great Country!!!” the president tweeted.
Tom Collier, chief executive of Pebble Limited, said the company decided to run the ads on Fox to reach the administration and remind officials of the president’s policy of keeping politics out of permitting procedures.
The ad features former President Barack Obama, a favorite target of Trump, when it says that the Obama administration attempted to halt the project after putting “politics over policy.”
September 18, 2020 — Americans can be proud of their fishery management system over the past few decades, particularly in the Pacific Northwest, where one of the world’s single-largest stocks of fish, Alaska pollock, is harvested, bringing in some $2 billion (€1.7 billion) and tens of thousands of jobs.
It’s an incredible case study in how science and policy can combat poor regulation and lead to a full recovery of threatened stocks and improved management through meticulous science and shared commitment.
One example: If you’ve been on an Alaska pollock fishing vessel, you have seen the exhaustive monitoring systems that go into keeping track of salmon bycatch. Despite trawl nets that can bring up 200,000 fish in the space of an hour, each of the catcher processors plying the waters can — and by most accounts do — keep track of individual salmon that are caught to mitigate the impact on those threatened fish.
That kind of investment does not happen without the voluntary participation of fishing companies that are committed to science-based fisheries management.