Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Alaska lawmakers introduce bill to ban metals mining in Bristol Bay watershed

June 17, 2025 — On the last day of Alaska’s legislative session, House Speaker Bryce Edgmon introduced a bill to ban metal mining in the Bristol Bay watershed – including the controversial Pebble Mine.

House Bill 233 still has a long way to go before it could become law. But if passed, it would be the region’s first state-level restriction on metallic sulfide mining.

There are more than 20 active mining claims across the watershed, home to the world’s largest sockeye salmon run. That includes Northern Dynasty Minerals’ proposed Pebble Mine — which remains under consideration after more than 20 years despite local, state and federal challenges.

“The bill itself, I think, is a vehicle to continue the fight against the Pebble Mine,” said Edgmon, I-Dillingham. “Whether or not it advances or whether it just sits there and makes a very large statement that the region by and large is opposed to the mine.”

The bill, co-sponsored by House Reps. Andy Josephson, D-Anchorage, and Sara Hannan, D-Juneau, builds on a 1972 state law that established the Bristol Bay Fisheries Reserve to protect the watershed against oil and gas drilling. In the past few decades, several bills have been introduced to ban metals mining, too, but none became law.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

As glaciers melt, salmon and mining companies are vying for the new territory

May 28, 2025 — The Tulsequah Glacier meanders down a broad valley in northwest British Columbia, 7 miles from the Alaska border. At the foot of the glacier sits a silty, gray lake, a reservoir of glacial runoff. The lake is vast, deeper than Seattle’s Space Needle is tall. But it didn’t exist a few decades ago, before 2 miles of ice had melted.

On an overcast day, a helicopter carrying three salmon scientists zoomed up the valley. As it neared the lake, the pilot banked to the right and flew over the south side of the basin, whirring over a narrow outlet where it drains into the Tulsequah River. He landed on a beach of small boulders and the researchers clambered out one by one.

“We don’t think there are fish here yet,” said one of them, Jon Moore, an aquatic ecologist at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. “But there will be soon.”

The lake, so new to the landscape that it doesn’t have an official name, is still too cold and murky for salmon, but that’s likely to change soon. As the Tulsequah Glacier above it retreats, the lake is getting warmer and clearer, becoming a more attractive environment for migrating fish. “It’s going to be popping off,” Moore said.

Read the full article at KYUK

ALASKA: New bill would prohibit hard-rock metals mining in Alaska’s Bristol Bay watershed

May 23, 2025 — Mere hours before he banged his gavel to adjourn this year’s session of the Alaska House of Representatives, Speaker Bryce Edgmon, I-Dillingham, introduced a bill to bar metals mining from the Bristol Bay watershed.

The measure, House Bill 233, would expand on the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2023 decision prohibiting permitting of the controversial Pebble Project in the region. The Biden administration action, which followed up on a process started in the Obama administration, invoked a rarely used provision on the Clean Water Act to prevent development of the huge open-pit copper and gold mine planned for the region upstream from salmon-rich Bristol Bay.

Edgmon’s bill would ban all metallic sulfide mining in the area designated as the Bristol Bay Fisheries Reserve, which encompasses state land in the Bristol Bay watershed.

Metallic sulfide mining, also known as hard-rock mining, is the type of mining that extracts elements like gold and copper from acid-generating rocks classified as sulfides. When these sulfides are processed, they commonly cause acid to drain out. It is a method distinct from placer mining, which sifts out metals from loose sediments. The copper and gold that would be produced at the Pebble project is held in sulfide ore and would be extracted through hard-rock mining.

The Bristol Bay Fisheries Reserve was established by the Legislature in 1972 to prevent oil and gas development in the region. The effort was led by Jay Hammond, who was president of the state Senate at the time. He later became governor.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

ALASKA: As glaciers melt, salmon and mining companies are vying for the new territory

May 22, 2025 — The Tulsequah Glacier meanders down a broad valley in northwest British Columbia, 7 miles from the Alaska border. At the foot of the glacier sits a silty, gray lake, a reservoir of glacial runoff. The lake is vast, deeper than Seattle’s Space Needle is tall. But it didn’t exist a few decades ago, before 2 miles of ice had melted.

On an overcast day, a helicopter carrying three salmon scientists zoomed up the valley. As it neared the lake, the pilot banked to the right and flew over the south side of the basin, whirring over a narrow outlet where it drains into the Tulsequah River. He landed on a beach of small boulders and the researchers clambered out one by one.

“We don’t think there are fish here yet,” said one of them, Jon Moore, an aquatic ecologist at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. “But there will be soon.”

The lake, so new to the landscape that it doesn’t have an official name, is still too cold and murky for salmon. But that’s likely to change soon: As the Tulsequah Glacier above it retreats, the lake is getting warmer and clearer, becoming a more attractive environment for migrating fish. “It’s going to be popping off,” Moore said.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

ALASKA: ‘Mining and salmon have never gotten along’: Alaskan tribes don’t want B.C. gold mine

December 20, 2024 — Southeast Alaskan tribal groups are decrying a proposed mine in northwestern British Columbia, arguing it will have disastrous environmental repercussions for the Taku River watershed.

Vancouver-based Canagold Resources Ltd., is proposing to develop the New Polaris gold mine, an underground gold mine located 100 kilometres south of Atlin, B.C. and 60 kilometres northeast of Juneau, Alaska.

The remote, fly-in mine would produce around 1,000 tonnes of ore per day.

“The people of the Taku have subsisted, survived and stewarded the Taku River watershed for thousands of years,” said Jill Weitz, government affairs liaison for the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska.

“It’s such a magical place that to even think about activity like that, for those of us downstream, it’s kind of mind boggling,” she said.

The Taku River, as well as the Stikine and Unuk rivers, flow from northwestern B.C. to southeastern Alaska.

The rivers are home to all five species of wild Alaska salmon, brown bears, moose and other wildlife and fish species.

Read the full article at Yahoo! News

ALASKA: A Canadian gold mine spill raises fears among Alaskans on the Yukon River

July 30, 2024 — A cyanide spill at a major gold mine in the Yukon Territory, high in the Yukon River watershed, has sparked widespread concern in Canada.

But Alaska salmon advocates say the mishap isn’t just a problem for Yukoners. The spill happened upstream of a tributary of the Yukon River. The Yukon is Alaska’s biggest transboundary waterway, and residents along its shores who have depended on salmon for generations are already suffering amid crashes of multiple species.

Officials on both sides of the border say it’s too early to know the full impact of the spill, which happened in late June. And they’ve advised that there likely isn’t a health risk to residents along the Yukon.

Still, some advocates fear that the pollution, which has not been fully contained, could make matters worse for the Yukon River’s struggling fish.

Still, some advocates fear that the pollution, which has not been fully contained, could make matters worse for the Yukon River’s struggling fish.

“Now we have a new threat to our salmon,” said Brooke Woods, a tribal member and salmon advocate in Rampart, an interior Alaska village on the upper Yukon River.

Read the full article at KYUK

EPA challenged over veto of Pebble mine

July 3, 2024 — A public interest law firm in Sacramento, California has filed suit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on behalf of two Alaska Native corporations over the agency’s veto of permits needed for the proposed Pebble mine in Southwest Alaska.

Litigation was filed on June 25 by the Pacific Legal Foundation on behalf of Iliamna Natives Limited and the Alaska Peninsula Corporation, which represent Native shareholders in South Naknek, Port Heiden, Ugashik, Kokhanok, and Newhalen.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Anchorage, contends that the EPA exceeded its authority by vetoing the copper, gold and molybdenum mine proposed for construction in land in Southwest Alaska abutting the Bristol Bay watershed, home of the world’s largest run of wild Alaska sockeye salmon. The Bristol Bay fishery, now underway for the 2024 season, is a multi-million dollar commercial and sport fishery that provides thousands of jobs for harvesters, processors, the transportation industry and other businesses engaged in contractual relations with the fishing industry. It also provides sustenance for subsistence harvests and extensive wildlife, including bears, eagles and more.

Read the full article at the The Cordova Times

Alaska Native corporations challenge EPA veto authority

June 27, 2024 — Two Alaska Native Village corporations are suing the Biden administration and calling on a district court there to halt EPA’s Clean Water Act authority to stymie projects like the Pebble copper and gold mine in the pristine Bristol Bay.

Iliamna Natives Ltd. and Alaska Peninsula Corp. on Monday sued EPA in the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska, arguing the agency overstepped its authority when it issued a rare veto under the Clean Water Act last year to block the Pebble mine from being built in a watershed that supports the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery.

The Pacific Legal Foundation, a nonprofit known for arguing a precedent-setting Clean Water Act case before the Supreme Court last year that is representing the groups, asked the court to find Section 404 of the Clean Water Act to be unconstitutional.

Read the full article at E&E News

ALASKA: Federal case challenging Donlin mine’s environmental impact statement heads to court

June 24, 2024 — The environmental review process for proposed mining projects is a lengthy one. But Bethel’s Orutsararmiut Native Council and five other tribes from the region are suing the United States Army Corps of Engineers, saying the federal agency failed to consider important information in its review of the Donlin Gold mine project.

The suit focuses on three main points.

The first, the tribes assert, is that the Army Corps didn’t model a large enough potential spill from the tailings pond that would hold the mine’s waste material. Earthjustice attorney Maile Tavepholjalern represents the six tribes in the case.

“The Army Corps looked at a tailings spill of just 0.5% of the dam capacity,” Tavepholjalern said. “That’s even though larger tailings spills have happened, including during the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) process for this mine – that was when Mount Polley’s dam failed, spilling out more than 30% of its contents.”

Second, the tribes allege the Army Corps of Engineers didn’t look closely enough at the health impacts of a massive mine in the region. They point to an unreleased state report, which outlined the mine’s potential positive and negative impacts including diet and food security, marine traffic, and local economies.

The third point of contention is the impact of Donlin’s barging plan on the Kuskokwim, which could more than double the number of barges on the river during the spring and summer. The tribes argue that the Army Corps didn’t properly consider or mitigate the impact of increased barging on Kuskokwim rainbow smelt – an important subsistence food for communities up and down the river.

“Despite knowing about these impacts, the Army Corps of Engineers relied on ineffective measures to try to prevent those impacts,” Tavepholjalern said. The environmental review takes into account a barge communication plan with subsistence users, a monitoring program for rainbow smelt, and subcommittees to help coordinate communication.

Read the full article at KYUK

Bristol Bay salmon would benefit from added protection in federal law

May 29, 2024 — As we write, tens of millions of salmon are swimming their way back to Bristol Bay. And for the second year running, those who work the 15,000 jobs the salmon provide each year can celebrate that the proposed Pebble mine no longer threatens to contaminate the headwaters of the greatest wild sockeye salmon fishery in the world.

At least for now.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued Clean Water Act protections for this amazing fishery in January 2023. That news was welcomed by residents of the region and scores of businesses that are reliant upon the Bristol Bay fishery, along with its $2.2 billion annual economic impact. Since then, Pebble and the state of Alaska have filed four lawsuits in an attempt to keep this ill-conceived, acid-producing mine on life support. Math and science aren’t on their side — not only would the mine irreversibly harm a fishery that could, if not contaminated, continue to produce and provide jobs for centuries to come, but the state of Alaska made a basic math error in one of its lawsuits, leading it to inflate the amount they’re suing American taxpayers for by $630 billion. Clearly, those seeking to exploit Bristol Bay at the risk of its sustainable fishery aren’t taking “no” for an answer.

Read the full article at the Alaska Beacon