Saving Seafood

On the Water in Alaska, Where Salmon Fishing Dreams Live On

April 19, 2021 — My camera lens is pressed against the window of the small floatplane as it flies below a thick ceiling of clouds. The mist clings to the hillsides of a temperate rainforest that descend steeply to the rocky coastline of southeast Alaska.

The plane banks, and a tiny village comes into view. A scattering of houses are built on stilts on the water’s edge. We circle and I see fishing boats tied up next to a large dock and a floating post office. The pilot throttles down and the pontoons skim across the glassy water inside the bay. We taxi to the public dock and I step out in front of the Point Baker general store.

Life along the Alaska coast is economically and culturally dependent on fishing. Each summer, millions of salmon — after maturing in the ocean — begin their journey back to the rivers in which they were spawned. Fishermen, along with whales, eagles and bears, share in the abundance.

Alaska is home to five species of Pacific salmon. These fish are anadromous; they begin their lives in freshwater rivers and lakes and eventually make their way down rivers and into the ocean. Depending on the species, salmon may spend between about one and seven years in the ocean before beginning their journey home to the freshwater where they were born.

The ability of salmon to find their way home is one of nature’s greatest miracles. Among other navigational aids, salmon can detect a single drop of water from its home stream mixed in 250 gallons of saltwater.

Read the full story at The New York Times

ROBERT VANDERMARK & LINDSAY LAYLAND: United we stand against Pebble Mine

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.

Read the full opinion piece at National Fisherman

ALASKA: 2 Pebble appeals, 2 different outcomes

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.”

Read the full story at the Juneau Empire

ALASKA: Army Corps agrees to reconsider Pebble Mine permit denial

March 3, 2021 — The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will reconsider its decision denying a permit for the proposed Pebble Mine.

The agency has accepted an appeal application from the Pebble Limited Partnership. The Army Corps says the application is sufficient to begin an administrative appeal.

The Corps decided in November that Pebble’s plan to mitigate the environmental damage was inadequate and that the project doesn’t serve the public. The open pit gold mine would be among the largest in the world. The site is upstream from Bristol Bay.

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

Army Corps accepts appeal from developer of proposed Pebble mine but rejects Alaska’s appeal

March 2, 2021 — The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has accepted an appeal request from the developer of the proposed Pebble copper and gold mine in Southwest Alaska, keeping alive the company’s hopes that it could one day see the project developed after the Corps denied the project a key permit last year.

The Corps also rejected the state of Alaska’s request for an appeal, prompting a response from Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who said that the rejection sets a precedent that could put other projects on state land at risk.

“This is another example of the federal government imposing a flawed decision that blocks Alaska’s ability to responsibly develop its land and resources,” Dunleavy said in a statement issued Friday.

The Corps’ Alaska District in November, under then-President Donald Trump, denied a permit for the project, calling it “contrary to the public interest.”

Read the full story at Anchorage Daily News

Alaskans pursue permanent protections for Bristol Bay

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.

Read the full story at High Country News

Department of Justice serves subpoenas to Pebble mine developer and former chief executive

February 8, 2021 — The U.S. Department of Justice has issued a grand jury subpoena to the developer of the controversial proposed Pebble mine and the company’s former chief executive as part of an investigation involving already-disclosed private conversations about the project, according to a statement from the project’s parent company.

The Pebble Limited Partnership and its former CEO, Tom Collier, have each been served with a subpoena issued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Alaska, according to an online statement from Northern Dynasty Minerals, Pebble’s parent company on Friday.

The company and Collier must “produce documents in connection with a grand jury investigation apparently involving previously disclosed recordings of private conversations regarding the Pebble Project,” the statement said.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

OP-ED: Governor’s Pebble appeal ignores the law, science and voices of Alaskans

February 2, 2021 — While Alaskans are looking ahead to a bright future for Bristol Bay, Gov. Mike Dunleavy continues to look backward and is seeking to keep the proposed Pebble Mine project alive through dubious legal tactics. The latest example of this is the state’s appeal of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ decision to deny a key Clean Water Act permit for the project. The appeal is wrong on the law. It is wrong on science. And it is wrong for Alaskans.

Let us start with the legal arguments. The applicable regulations specify that only the party denied a Clean Water Act Section 404 permit can file an administrative appeal of that decision. Corps of Engineers guidance on the appeal process is equally specific, the process “provides permit applicants with an opportunity to seek a timely and objective reconsideration of an adverse permit decision,” and “there is no third-party involvement in the appeal process itself.” This is black and white. Moreover, the Pebble Limited Partnership (PLP), the permit applicant, has already filed an appeal. At best, the state’s appeal is duplicative. At worst, it is an unlawful and wasteful action.

Second, the Corps’ permit denial is based on science and grounded in longstanding precedent. Pebble, even under the conservative 20-year mining plan that PLP itself acknowledges will expand considerably, would impact nearly 200 miles of streams and more than 4,500 acres of wetlands – with no plan to replace these significant losses. These streams and wetlands are part of the unique ecosystem that allows 50 million-plus sockeye salmon to return annually, supporting $1.5 billion in economic output and a millennia-old Alaska Native way of life. The Corps’ finding that the mine would cause significant damage to aquatic resources and is not in the public interest is wholly consistent with extensive scientific data and evidence.

Read the full opinion piece at the Anchorage Daily News

Pebble asks Army Corps to reconsider its mine plan in Southwest Alaska

January 25, 2021 — Pebble Limited Partnership has filed an appeal with the Army Corps of Engineers, asking the agency to reconsider its application to build an open-pit gold mine upstream from Bristol Bay.

In November, the Army Corps rejected the application, saying the mine would not comply with the Clean Water Act. The mine would be built on state land, but dredging and filling in federal waters and wetlands requires a permit from the Corps.

Pebble Chief Executive John Shively says the decision was rushed, coming just days after the company submitted its final document — a plan to compensate for damage to the area.

Read the full story at KTOO

Pebble petition: Alaska governor appeals on mine’s behalf

January 15, 2021 — On 8 January, Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy announced the state would take action to appeal the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ decision to deny a permit application for the Pebble Mine.

The Pebble Limited Partnership submitted its plan for a mine in Alaska’s Bristol Bay region almost two years ago. The 1,500-page document was immediately and widely panned by scientists, fishery managers, fishermen, and many representatives of Bristol Bay’s Native tribes.

Read the full story at Seafood Source