Saving Seafood

Ninth Circuit Revives Fight Over Mining Plans in Pristine Alaskan Bay

June 18, 2021 — Home to the greatest wild salmon fisheries in the world, Bristol Bay in southwest Alaska also lies near prized natural resources long sought by a mining enterprise. To protect the pristine Alaskan frontier, the Obama administration’s U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sought to restrict a proposed mining operation in 2014 — a move later dumped by the Trump administration.

Conservationists sued, but a federal judge found the Trump EPA’s decision unreviewable and dismissed the case.

On Thursday, a Ninth Circuit panel ordered the case remanded to determine if the EPA’s about-face was “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or contrary” to federal law.

The legal history surrounding this pristine slice of Alaskan wilderness stretches back to 2014, when the EPA announced it would seek to restrict mining operations in Bristol Bay under the authority of the Clean Water Act. The proposed Pebble Mine operation would extract copper, gold and other minerals and would be the largest of its kind in North America. The operation’s toxic waste pits could sit at the headwaters to Bristol Bay, and any type of collapse would likely contaminate the region’s watershed.

But in 2019 the Trump EPA withdrew its proposed determination. Several lawsuits followed including a complaint filed by Trout Unlimited, a nonprofit advocacy group, in the District of Alaska. The group challenged the agency’s withdrawal decision as a violation of the Clean Water Act and the implementing regulations.

Read the full story at the Courthouse News Service

Pebble: Appeals Court revives case challenging EPA’s removal of watershed protection

June 18, 2021 — A panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has revived a lawsuit aimed at blocking construction of the Pebble Mine in Southwest Alaska.

The lawsuit, filed by environmental groups, tribes and other mine opponents, challenged a 2019 Environmental Protection Agency decision to remove protection for the Bristol Bay watershed.

U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason ruled last year courts could not review the decision because the Clean Water Act did not specify what legal standard applied. The appeals panel agreed the law did not include that standard — but said EPA’s regulations do.

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

Businesses call for long-term salmon protections in Bristol Bay, Alaska

June 14, 2021 — A group of more than 200 businesses and industry associations sent an open letter to the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden and the U.S. Congress yesterday asking for lasting protections in Bristol Bay, Alaska, home to world’s largest sockeye salmon run.

The letter was signed by large foodservice and retail players like Sysco, Hy-Vee, Wegmans, and Publix, as well as outdoor recreation and commercial fishing companies like Grundéns, Patagonia, Costa del Mar, and Keen.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

ALASKA: Record-high Copper River prices boost market optimism ahead of the Bristol Bay fishery

June 14, 2021 — It’s been a tough spring for Copper River’s sockeye fishery.

Copper River is among the first fisheries to offer fresh salmon — its runs signal the start of the state’s commercial season. But the low number of sockeye returning this year has led to limited opportunities to fish.

The run is picking up, but until last week the season was similar to 2020, which finihsed with some of the lowest sockeye catches on record. But one thing is very different from last year: A record-high price for salmon.

“Markets were hot. And we were able to pay that price and pass it on to the fishermen,” said Jon Hickman, the executive vice president for Peter Pan Seafoods.

In May, the company announced that it would pay triple last year’s prices for sockeye and kings. This year, it will pay $19.60 per pound for kings and $12.60 a pound for sockeye. In 2020, sockeye went for around $4 and kings for $6.

The Cordova Times reported retailers’ pre-orders for sockeye fillets were as high as $54 a pound. King fillets went for up to $80 a pound.

Read the full story at KDLG

Alaska Native corporation deal with conservation nonprofit complicates planning for massive Pebble mine project

June 9, 2021 — Growing up in a village in Southwest Alaska, Sarah Thiele had a childhood defined by sockeye salmon.

Her father caught the fish in summer by the net-full as a commercial fisherman while her mother would cure and cold-smoke hundreds of fillets so Thiele and her eight siblings, plus the family’s team of sled dogs, could dine on sockeye year-round.

Now 66, Thiele is a board member of the Pedro Bay Corp., an Alaska Native group that owns land near Bristol Bay, the site of the most prolific sockeye fishery in the world. It is also the precise spot where the backers of the Pebble Mine hope to build a road to transport ore.

Late last month, Thiele and nearly 90 percent of the corporation’s shareholders voted to let the Conservation Fund, an environmental nonprofit organization, buy conservation easements on more than 44,000 acres and make the land off limits to future development – including the mining road.

“I feel like we are doing our mission of preserving our heritage and our pristine lands from any development,” she said. “That is totally our identity, the fish and our land.”

In exchange for the surface rights, the corporation would receive nearly $20 million, including $500,000 for education and cultural programs for those in the village.

Read the full story from The Washington Post at Anchorage Daily News

Alaska Native group protects land coveted by Pebble Mine developers

June 9, 2021 — The road to Pebble Mine is getting rougher.

Pedro Bay Corp., a Native organization in Alaska’s Bristol Bay region, announced late last month that nearly 90 percent of its shareholders voted in favor of conservation easements for more than 44,000 of the corporation’s 92,100 acres of land in southwest Alaska. The agreement would make the land off-limits to development, including Pebble Corp.’s proposed mining road.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

ALASKA: On Dillingham trip, Murkowski gathers ideas on permanent protections for Bristol Bay

June 8, 2021 — U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski visited Dillingham last week.

She said the primary reason for her visit was to gather ideas for permanent protections against developments like the proposed Pebble Mine.

Murkowski used to chair the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and has historically supported resource development. For years, she declined to support or oppose Pebble, saying it was important to wait for the federal permitting process to play out.

As the Army Corps of Engineers neared its final perit decision last year, and undercover tapes emerged of Pebble leaders doubting she’d take a stand against the project, Murkowski did just that.

In Dillingham, Murkowski met with people from the commercial, subsistence and recreational fisheries. She also held a closed meeting with select community leaders at the Dillingham Middle/High School.

Read the full story at KDLG

JON BRODERICK AND KATE CRUMP: Stop the Pebble Mine forever

June 3, 2021 — Every summer, thousands of commercial and sport fishermen, seafood processors and sport fishing guides — many of them Oregonians — migrate to western Alaska for the remarkable annual return of tens of millions of wild sockeye salmon to Bristol Bay.

Bristol Bay’s salmon have sustained the Indigenous people of Bristol Bay for millennia, and today they remain the backbone of the bay’s local communities. These salmon also support a thriving, renewable industry that feeds Alaska’s economy and provides income for families like ours in the Pacific Northwest.

In recent years, Bristol Bay’s salmon generated 15,000 American jobs and created $2.2 billion in renewable annual revenue. Half of all the sockeye salmon sold in global markets comes from Bristol Bay.

And yet, since the late 1980s, Bristol Bay’s rare and sustainable fishery has been threatened by plans for a colossal open-pit gold and copper mine — the Pebble Mine — that a Canadian mining company would blast out of the bay’s pristine headwaters, irreparably disrupting the watershed and leaving behind significant toxic mining waste that must be stored in perpetuity.

Read the full story at The Daily Astorian

ALASKA: Tongass and Bristol Bay protection can help Biden meet new climate goal, fishing and conservation advocates say

May 10, 2021 — The Biden administration issued a conservation plan Thursday called “America the Beautiful.”

At 22 pages, it’s more of a statement of principles. The centerpiece is a goal of conserving 30% of the nation’s lands and waters by 2030, in part to combat climate change.

Republicans in Congress immediately criticized it as vague and an attempt to lock up natural resources.

Meanwhile, conservation groups are eyeing parts of Alaska they’d like to see protected. Their eyes are on salmon.

“It’s hard to think of two better candidates than the Tongass in Southeast Alaska and Bristol Bay in Southwest Alaska,” said Tim Bristol, executive director of Salmon State.

He said conservation measures in the Tongass and Bristol Bay would protect fish, wildlife and save thousands of jobs which depend on renewable resources.

Read the full story at KTOO

ALASKA: New report estimates at least $5M cost to replace subsistence salmon with other protein sources in Bristol Bay

April 23, 2021 — A third of the state’s subsistence salmon harvest was caught in Bristol Bay in 2017, according to a new report from the McKinley Research Group. The subsistence economy is critical to Bristol Bay’s culture, and it’s the oldest and most continuous use of salmon.

The report, “The Economic Benefits of Bristol Bay”, attempts to quantify what it would cost to replace subsistence salmon with other protein sources from stores in the region.

Bristol Bay subsistence fishers caught over 500,000 pounds of salmon in 2017, according to the latest data available. The research group estimates that it would cost $5-$10 million to replace that catch with other sources of protein. Rebecca Braun is one of the researchers who worked on the report.

“Because the world speaks in dollars, we tried to translate the subsistence harvest into dollars,” Braun said. “And it’s kind of an inherently impossible exercise because subsistence values goes beyond economics.”

Read the full story at KTOO