Book Excerpt: A Teaching Moment For Conservation And The Pebble Mine Fight

The following appears in the May issue of Alaska Sporting Journal:

Editor’s note: Alaska arguably is ground zero in the fight to save the planet’s natural resources, at least as far as the United States is concerned. From President Donald Trump’s agenda of “drill baby, drill” in caribou herd ranges of the Arctic, to transboundary rivers along the Southeast Alaska/Canada border threatened by mining, and the never-ending saga of Bristol Bay’s salmon-inspired crusade to prevent the Pebble Mine from ever being developed, the Last Frontier is a battleground for conservation, fish, wildlife and angling and hunting.

A new book features 56 essayists who discuss various issues around the globe, including longtime Alaska campaigner Shoren Brown (see an interview with him on page 17), who chronicles the battle to keep the mining operation out of the Bristol Bay watershed, home to salmon runs that annually generate more than $2 billion in value.
That book, Tools to Save Our Home Planet: A Changemaker’s Guidebook, is being published by Patagonia, and its founder, Yvon Chouinard, wrote the foreword. “In these pages, you’ll find the best practices and tricks of the trade from those on the front lines, fighting for the planet and for thriving communities. Learning from and being inspired by those on the front lines is the best way I know to gain momentum in this fight for our lives.”
Brown, who’s also been on the front lines to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as well as represented interests in Southeast Alaska, has a special connection to Bristol Bay, its people and the fish that have sustained generations of residents who fear a Pebble Mine accident could wipe out that resource.
The following is excerpted from Tools to Save Our Home Planet: A Changemaker’s Guidebook. Reprinted with permission by publisher Patagonia.

BY SHOREN BROWN

Since time immemorial, the Bristol Bay watershed has been one of the world’s largest wild salmon nurseries. Every year tens of millions of fish – over half of the world’s wild sockeye – return through the wild rivers of this unaltered watershed. Along the way they feed stunning congregations of wildlife, such as giant coastal brown bears, as well as people from all around the world. This vast, largely roadless landscape also provides tens of thousands of jobs and over $2 billion in annual revenue and is the cornerstone of ancient Indigenous cultures that thrive to this day.

For more than two decades, the people of Bristol Bay have fought the threat of the Pebble Mine, a monstrous gold and copper mine proposed in the heart of the watershed. The commitment of the residents to defend their homeland has inspired people – the world over and with diverse backgrounds and cultures – to cross political lines and divisions to rally together. On January 30, 2023, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a Final Determination under its

Clean Water Act Section 404(c) authority to protect the most productive wild salmon ecosystem in the world.

Here are a few lessons learned from the decades-long effort. Fair warning: This is not a formulaic checklist that leads to success. In fact, if we learned anything, it is that every issue campaign is different and every decision is situational. Don’t expect a “playbook” that you can use to defeat any multinational company. Instead, we will dig into the way we thought about this campaign and how those approaches do and don’t make sense in the context of other issues.

SOME THOUGHTS ON GRASSROOTS ACTIVISM

In many ways the campaign to stop Pebble Mine is a story about grassroots activism. In many ways it is not. A pivotal aspect of the campaign’s success was our ability to mobilize individuals at local, national and even international levels and sustain that mobilization over time. Environmental organizations, Alaska Native groups, chefs, hunters and anglers, commercial fishermen, businesses, and concerned citizens organized protests, petition drives, and community outreach events to raise awareness.

Grassroots efforts played a crucial role in building a groundswell of opposition. But grassroots activism alone would never have defeated such powerful and entrenched mining corporations or convinced three separate presidential administrations to stand up to those companies. Grassroots actions were part of a layered approach that included mobilizing political donors, lobbyists, opposition research, paid media, and other key tactics. In an ideal world, “people power” alone could defeat the corporations that threaten our home planet. But in this case, it’s a much more complex story.

RELATIONSHIPS AND TRUST

Relationships and trust matter. This seems obvious, yet I frequently see campaigns falter because people fail to build trust. In our case, we structured intentionally to keep a core group of allies together for over a decade of winning, losing, elation, frustration, and, at times, extreme exhaustion. While the broader coalition ebbed and flowed, the same roughly 12 people stuck together.

Twice a year we gathered to recommit to our campaign plan, establish specific lanes for each partner, and ensure everyone stayed at the table. Success for that core group depended on people and organizations willing to use their resources for the collective win. Had our core leadership group crumbled, I am convinced that Pebble Limited Partnership (PLP) would be digging a mine in Bristol Bay as I write this.

CAMPAIGN STRUCTURE THAT WORKED FOR US

Every campaign must figure out the structure that works best for them. In our case, we struggled for years while everyone pursued different approaches, intentionally undercut each other’s strategies, and ran with confusing messages and no clear pathway to success. The first step forward was to settle on a single goal – stopping Pebble Mine via the Clean Water Act. Then we invested exclusively in building the campaign structure that would achieve that goal. After several false starts, we focused on function rather than campaign form. We spent a lot of time building trust and not so much on governance, and lived by a very specific ethos: If you truly want to work on the Pebble campaign, you need to be all-in and give maximum effort, represented by the amount of time and/or money (or both) you invest. The result was a small, centralized structure with a close-knit steering committee, a shared campaign fund, and a campaign director who woke up every day with only one objective. Without those ingredients, it would have continued to be chaos.

KNOW YOUR OPPONENT AND BE READY

While this may or may not apply to your effort, it must be a part of any discussion about the campaign that ultimately defeated the Pebble Mine. We underestimated the great lengths that PLP would go to intimidate and silence our grassroots supporters and allies.

Over the years, PLP relied on some questionable legal tactics to subpoena nearly all the key players in the campaign – Patagonia included. I was served three separate times. PLP demanded every document we had produced over a decade. It was terrifying. Our core group pulled together, hired attorneys and fought the subpoenas. Ultimately no one was forced to hand over their hard drive. Certain groups, however, ignored good counsel and released thousands of emails and campaign documents, which did incredible damage to our momentum and trust within the broader coalition. The stress and pressure that PLP put on our campaign with their aggressive legal tactics threw us into a tailspin that took more than a year to straighten out. Plan for the worst and be prepared.

TUCKER CARLSON DID WHAT?

One of our greatest strengths was that we intentionally set out to include people and perspectives from different backgrounds and political persuasions. We knew the odds were overwhelmingly against us and our campaign would have to survive multiple changes in political leadership. For instance, during the Obama administration it would have been very easy to focus entirely on the progressive side and push conservative political donors and hunting and fishing allies to the outskirts. Many of those folks strongly disliked the Obama administration and especially the EPA. Instead, we developed meaningful strategies and tactics to keep those valuable partners engaged.

This paid huge dividends when Donald Trump was elected in 2016 and the vast majority of our campaign suddenly had no access to the White House or decision-makers at EPA. Because our conservative allies were still engaged and at the table, we were able to engage both [Donald] Trump Jr. and Tucker Carlson, who had direct discussions with the president about their own opposition to the mine. The Trump administration eventually denied permits through the Army Corps of Engineers – one of a small number of big conservation wins during that administration – and one that set the Biden administration up to use its Clean Water Act 404c authority three years later.

GET POLITICAL

Perhaps the greatest thing our campaign had was a formidable network of anti-Pebble activists from diverse racial, social and vocational backgrounds who were unafraid to tie our issue to specific elections, something conservation campaigns almost never do.

In 2014, Alaska Senator Mark Begich (a Democrat) was focused on reelection and therefore soft on the Pebble Mine. We needed that to change quickly. Our campaign up to that point had done no electoral work. With the steady guidance of Paul Tewes, an Obama campaign Jedi master, we raised our first C4 money and launched a very public campaign that showed Senator Begich that we would hold him accountable at the ballot box unless he took a stronger position. Under overt electoral pressure he changed his tune and our campaign kicked into high gear. Simply put, we would have failed if we had framed Pebble as a campaign that Mr. Begich “should care about because it’s the right thing,” rather than an issue that was a difference-maker in his election.

This effort also took our Alaska grassroots organizing to the next level as we invested in building an in-state voter file so we could track our supporters and mobilize that anti-Pebble constituency in elections. The work continued into the 2020 U.S. Senate race, when former Pebble cheerleader Dan Sullivan shifted his position, and in 2022 when the Alaskans for Bristol Bay Action PAC supported both Senator Lisa Murkowski and newly elected Representative Mary Sattler Peltola.

PLAN FOR A MARATHON, PRAY FOR A SPRINT

In today’s political world, it seems increasingly en vogue to look for quick fixes to pressing problems. The truth is that any cause worth spending time on is going to take years to achieve. Pace yourself. Getting clear on the duration of your effort is also critically important for the tone you use and the frequency of your asks. Whether support comes from a Fortune 500 company or a grassroots activist, telling people that this is “The Big Moment” three times a year for 11 years will erode trust and push away potential supporters.

TAKE ADVICE FROM THE SMARTEST PEOPLE … AND BE WILLING TO IGNORE IT
In 2014, the EPA published its Watershed Assessment, which showed that Pebble would damage wetlands, rivers, land, fish, people, bears, etc. The report sent shock waves through the mining and conservation worlds, and for the first time, environmental leaders in D.C. started to pay attention. The Clean Water Act 404(c) decision suddenly seemed within reach. Overnight, the inside-the-Beltway crowd was calling us and offering advice. The central idea was: If you want White House support, beg the big “green groups” to put your issue on their priority list. The message was clear: “It’s time for you local folks to step back and let the D.C. insiders take over.”

This was a ludicrous approach to those of us who built and ran the effort. Our campaign was always based on the idea that we had to build a national campaign that honored local knowledge and traditions – not the other way around. So we took that smart advice based on “the way things are done” and we aggressively ignored it. We hired our own D.C. insiders (like Tommy Veitor and Jon Favreau before their “Pod Save America” fame) and brought them to Bristol Bay so they could meet the incredible people who call this place home. We created opportunities for local people to tell the White House in their own words what is so special about Bristol Bay. Suddenly we had the same access in D.C. as large environmental organizations, but it was based on building direct relationships between the Obama administration and the people of Bristol Bay. That made us a unicorn issue in 2014 and one that got attention in a crowded marketplace of ideas. It was a key reason we won. Build your own power. Create your own weather.

DON’T GET STUCK USING THE SAME OLD BORING TACTICS

If there was a playbook in the campaign to stop Pebble Mine, it was simply to never say no to a good idea. From [Natural Resources Defense Council’s] incredible work that supported Alaska Native leaders who traveled to PLP shareholder meetings, to a PR campaign that undercut a sham “collaboration” effort by the Keystone Center, comparing it to its namesake cheap and terrible-tasting beer, we didn’t back down from a challenge or an opportunity – ever. The best example? “The Pebble Tapes,” a series of recorded conversations between the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and Pebble executives. EIA staff posed as potential investors and exposed company executives who bragged about their control over the governor, Senator Murkowski and federal officials. After the tapes went public, Pebble’s CEO resigned and Murkowksi took the strongest position against the mine to date.

CONCLUSION

I truly hope these insights are thought provoking and inspiring to anyone engaged in their own David-versus-Goliath battle to protect the planet. I encourage you to jump in with both feet and face the corporate bullies. Commit to a winning strategy and don’t deviate. Surround yourself with good people who are fun to work with – people who make you laugh when you need it most. Raise money. Get political. Fight like hell. Never surrender. And if you ever need a hand, please reach out. We can make good trouble together. ASJ

Editor’s note: Order the rest of the book at https://www.patagonia.com/product/tools-to-save-our-home-planet-a-changemakers-guidebook/BK925.html.