March 16, 2021 — Advocates for protecting Bristol Bay welcomed the U.S. Senate’s confirmation of Michael Regan as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency on 10 March.
The appointment hopefully marks a return to Obama-era policy on the proposed Pebble Mine and water quality, according to United Tribes of Bristol Bay Executive Director Alannah Hurley.
March 12, 2021 — The following was released by the Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association:
There are two open Board seats in this year’s election. A total of four members have been nominated and qualified as Board Seat Candidates:
Seat B (Alaska Resident Seat):
Tim Cook
George Wilson, Jr.
Seat E (Non-Alaska Resident Seat):
Larry Christensen
Michael Jackson
Candidate statements can be found on our website (LINK). Questionnaire answers from Candidates will be posted to the same link later this month.
BBRSDA Board members are elected to three-year terms (this year’s open seats will be up for re-election in 2024). Ballots will be mailed out to BBRSDA members in early April and election results will be posted to the BBRSDA website no later than May 13, 2021. See the Elections page for more information about the 2021 BBRSDA Board Seat Election timeline. BBRSDA members will also be able to submit write-in votes in this year’s election.
March 10, 2021 — President Joe Biden has the perfect opportunity to make good on his promise to unite our ideologically fractured country by moving quickly to preserve Bristol Bay, Alaska, one of our nation’s greatest natural and cultural treasures. Bipartisan support for this issue makes it a popular and easy win early in his presidency. And on top of that, protecting Bristol Bay supports thousands of American jobs and promotes food security both domestically and internationally during these difficult times.
Pebble Limited Partnership, a subsidiary of a Canadian mineral exploration and development company, is seeking to extract copper, gold, and molybdenum from Bristol Bay, which could permanently damage more than 100 miles of rivers and streams and 2,200 acres of wetlands in the surrounding area.
The Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and independent technical experts have all determined that even without an accident or a catastrophic event, the Pebble Mine would destroy critical fish habitat and aquatic resources in the near pristine watershed. Bristol Bay needs federal protection to forever preserve this unique ecosystem from the potential harm this mine would inflict.
Wildlife from belugas to eagles to brown bears inhabits this region, but the economic and cultural heart of this area is salmon. Bristol Bay’s annual wild sockeye salmon runs are the largest on Earth. The area supports a $1.5 billion annual commercial fishery, creates 14,000 jobs in fishing and tourism, and produces more than half of the world’s supply of wild sockeye.
March 8, 2021 — The United Tribes of Bristol Bay, Bristol Bay Native Association and Bristol Bay Economic Development Corporation published “The Call” in December, after the Army Corps of Engineers denied Northern Dynasty’s permit application for the proposed Pebble Mine.
United Tribes of Bristol Bay is a Tribal consortium that represents 15 Tribes in the region. The Bristol Bay Native Association and the Bristol Bay Economic Development Corporation support UTBB’s proposal.
At a virtual town hall earlier this month, UTBB presented a road map for the two-part plan.
“Tribes in the region and BB leadership have came together once again, to revive their previous request for 404c action, and we put a proposal forward for both administrative and legislative action for Bristol Bay,” said UTBB Deputy Director Lindsay Layland said.
404c is a section of the Clean Water Act that restricts discharged dredged waste in defined waters or wetlands. Tribes in the region called for that veto over 10 years ago, when Pebble was first proposed.
March 3, 2021 — Two requests to appeal the decision to deny a key permit for a proposed copper and gold mine in Southwest Alaska met different fates.
The Army Corps of Engineers didn’t accept the state’s attempt to appeal a November 2020 decision to deny a permit for the proposed Pebble Mine, a long-controversial effort to place an open-pit mine near the headwarters of the largest sockeye salmon fishery in the world.
Meanwhile, Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd., the Vancouver-based parent company of Pebble Limited Partnership, reports that a Feb. 24 letter indicated the corps accepted Pebble’s request for an administrative appeal.
Mike Heatwole, a spokesperson for Pebble Limited Partnership, said Saturday in an email Pebble looks forward to having the appeal fully vetted.
In an email, Luciano Vera, deputy chief of public affairs for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Pacific Ocean Division, said the division engineer determined that the state does not meet the definition of an “affected party.”
March 2, 2021 — Despite record retail prices and a consistently strong demand, Bristol Bay salmon fishermen saw a nearly 50 percent drop in their base ex-vessel price in 2020 — from $1.35 a pound in 2019 to $0.70 in 2020. That’s a 65-cent drop in a single year.
The Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association published a new report that lays out likely reasons for the low base price. It also offers the region’s fishermen a range of solutions to consider for the future, and is seeking feedback from stakeholders to help set goals for the association.
“Demand for Bristol Bay sockeye is very high. Retail prices are at record levels. Anecdotally, wholesale prices are flat to up compared to last year — significantly so for once-frozen fillets,” says the BBRSDA’s white paper, released Monday, March 1. “When consumer prices are high or increasing for a product, the underlying raw material price usually goes up, not way down. In short, 2020 should have been a terrific season for Bristol Bay fishermen and ex-vessel prices, but it wasn’t (or at least it hasn’t been thus far).”
March 2, 2021 — Despite record retail prices and a consistently strong demand, Bristol Bay salmon fishermen saw a nearly 50 percent drop in their base ex-vessel price in 2020 – from USD 1.35 (EUR 1.12) per pound in 2019 to USD 0.70 (EUR 0.58) in 2020, a USD 0.65 (EUR 0.54) drop in a single year.
The Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association has published a new report that lays out likely reasons for the low base price. It also offers the region’s fishermen a range of solutions to consider for the future, and is seeking feedback from stakeholders to help set goals for the association.
February 24, 2021 — Alaskans are preparing for another salmon season of poor to average runs in most regions.
The big exception once again is at Bristol Bay, where another massive return of more than 51 million sockeyes is expected. Managers predict that surge will produce a harvest of over 36 million reds to fishermen.
Bristol Bay is home to the largest wild sockeye salmon run in the world and typically accounts for 42% of the world’s sockeye harvest. Those fish and all wild salmon compete in a tough worldwide commodities market, where Alaska salmon claims 13% of the global supply.
Farmed salmon production, which outnumbers wild harvests by nearly 3 to 1, is Alaska’s biggest competitor; the other is Russia.
According to global seafood trading company Tradex, Pacific salmon catches from Russia are projected to top 1 billion pounds in 2021. As a comparison, Alaska’s 2020 catch of nearly 117 million salmon weighed in at just over 500 million pounds.
The Russian catch breaks down to more than 700 million pounds of pinks, nearly 206 million pounds of chum salmon, 70.6 million pounds of sockeyes, over 24 million pounds of coho salmon and 8.8 million pounds of Chinook.
February 16, 2021 — Robin Samuelsen still recalls his first meeting about the prospective Pebble Mine. It was around 2005 or 2006, in Dillingham, Alaska. Listening to an early plan for developing a copper and gold mine in the spawning grounds of Bristol Bay’s abundant salmon, this Curyung tribal chief and commercial fisherman quickly made up his mind. “You’ll kill off our salmon,” Samuelsen remembers saying, adding: “I’ll be up there to stop you.”
More than 15 years later, in November 2020, the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) denied the Pebble Mine a key permit, a sharp setback for the mine — though not the first. Already, the mine’s developer, Pebble Limited Partnership (PLP), has filed an appeal challenging that decision. PLP was joined by the State of Alaska, which, in an unusual move, filed its own appeal. Both appeals are currently under review.
Even before these latest developments, however, the people living around the Bristol Bay region had been trying to bring this long-running tug of war to rest once and for all.
Just as he promised at the meeting in Dillingham, Samuelsen is part of a tribally led campaign to garner permanent legal protection for the Bristol Bay region’s thriving wild salmon from large-scale mining proposals — whether that be the Pebble Mine, or whatever comes next. Lindsay Layland, deputy director of the United Tribes of Bristol Bay (UTBB), which is involved in the effort, says the goal of the coalition is to find a way to legally prioritize the salmon that mean so much to the people living and fishing in the region.
February 10, 2021 — The parent company of the proposed Pebble Mine said it’s cooperating with a federal grand jury investigation. The company said the case relates to conversations about the mine that were secretly recorded. But who is being investigated, and for what alleged crime, is not clear.
The company, British Columbia-based Northern Dynasty, issued a statement Friday that leaves a lot unanswered. It said the U.S. Attorney’s office in Alaska issued subpoenas to Pebble Limited Partnership and its former CEO, Tom Collier, requiring them to hand over certain documents.
The statement said the investigation appears related to “previously disclosed recordings of private conversations regarding the Pebble Project.”
That seems to describe the so-called Pebble Tapes, undercover recordings produced last year by an environmental group.