Foreign conglomerates would love to develop one of the world's largest open-pit mines—known as Pebble Mine—in the heart of Alaska's wild Bristol Bay region, an area known for the largest salmon runs in the world. But what they don't advertise is that this proposed g
Opposition to the proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska’s Bristol Bay is growing to the point that one has to wonder who — outside of the mining companies — could still support the idea of an open-pit mine that would endanger a pristine watershed where tens of millions of salmon spawn
We spend hours at the table splitting our salmon. Both young and old hold the ulu as we cut hundreds of wild salmon that feed us during the long, cold winter months. Everyone has a job and everyone contributes, even the tiniest ones. Aiden, my 4-year-old great-nephew, is charged with washing our fish and taking care of his younger brother, younger cousin and, this summer, a younger sister.
The ads, paid for by the Renewable Resources Coalition, an anti-Pebble nonprofit in Anchorage, are already running in some Alaska magazines and are pegged to run on statewide TV later this year.
Eventually, conservation groups hope to target a national audience with the "Deadliest Catch" ads, said Lindsay Bloom, who works for Trout Unlimited, another nonprofit group that opposes Pebble. Bloom, a Bristol Bay commercial fisherman, set up the ad shoot.
If you’ve ever savored the flavor of wild Alaska salmon, there’s a very good chance that salmon came from southwestern Alaska’s Bristol Bay, where the cold, clean waters of the eastern Bering Sea generate the largest sockeye salmon run in the world.
If you’re a fan of this fish, it might come as a surprise, then, to learn that the world’s largest wild salmon runs are at serious risk.
Despite its status as a world-renowned fishing ground, Bristol Bay has recently come under threat from off-shore drilling and mining proposals.
Bristol Bay, the largest wild salmon fishery in the world, is at risk from industry proposals to drill for oil offshore, and to develop the world’s largest open pit gold and copper mine onshore.
The Wilderness Society is fighting these dual threats and working to protect this southwestern Alaska region renowned for its biological productivity and cultural history.
