Saving Seafood

In court filing, Trump administration hints at a lifeline for embattled Pebble project

July 14, 2025 — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency took a rare step under former President Joe Biden to block development of the Pebble mine, Alaska’s largest known copper and gold deposit, which for years has fueled controversy over its potential impacts on one of the world’s largest salmon runs.

Now, under President Donald Trump, the agency is giving its past Pebble decisions another look and negotiating a deal that could end a lawsuit filed by Pebble’s developer — an announcement that’s boosted the company’s stock price this week.

Administration officials “have been actively considering the agency decisions” and are “open to reconsideration,” according to a recent court filing submitted by U.S. Department of Justice lawyers. The three-page document does not elaborate, though it references the past decision by the EPA and a separate decision by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to deny Pebble a key permit.

Read the full article at the Northern Journal

EPA ‘open to reconsideration’ of Alaska’s Pebble mine — DOJ

July 8, 2025 — Some Trump administration officials are open to reconsidering its prior opposition to the contentious Pebble mine in Alaska’s pristine Bristol Bay watershed, which is a prime salmon habitat, according to federal lawyers.

Attorneys with the Department of Justice said in recent court filings that EPA officials are considering a veto the agency issued in 2023 under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act that halted the open-pit copper and gold mine. The mine has drawn considerable pushback given it would be built near the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery.

“Agency officials remain open to reconsideration, and Defendants and [Pebble Limited Partnership] are negotiating to explore a potential settlement,” Adam Gustafson, acting assistant attorney general for the Environment and Natural Resources Division, wrote in a Thursday legal filing.

Read the full article at E&E News

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