A Message From Save Bristol Bay

The following press release is courtesy of Save Bristol Bay.

I know we say this a lot, but we need your help now more than ever. This week we’re expecting a big announcement between the EPA and the Pebble Partnership. Based on recent reports, the Trump Administration may be brokering a deal with Pebble to remove proposed protections for Bristol Bay that we worked so hard to achieve over the past decade.

Click here to tell Administrator Pruitt NOT to put foreign jobs over American interests.

Please tell Pruitt and Alaska’s leaders: do NOT pave the way for the Pebble Mine. A majority of Alaskans, including 80% of Bristol Bay residents, do not want the Pebble Mine and we urge our leaders to understand the importance of protecting this unique region and fish-dependent economy.

Please send a message to our leaders to stand up for Bristol Bay.

We are counting on them to not cut a deal with a foreign mining company that risks our salmon, cultures, jobs, and communities.

Here’s also a great blog post from Bristol Bay conservationist and Trout Unlimited president Chris Wood, and a sample of that post:

For the past decade or so, I have had the pleasure of visiting and fishing Bristol Bay for salmon and (very large) native rainbows. Lodge-owners, commercial fishermen, people from the native villages, and guides all impressed upon me the importance of protecting this remarkable $1.6 billion fishery that supplies half of all of the world’s wild sockeye salmon, and nearly 12,000 jobs.

Within a few days, we’re likely to get our first glimpse of how the Trump Administration will deal with Bristol Bay and the proposed Pebble Mine. It is an opportunity for the Administration and the EPA to stand with Alaskans and defend high-paying, family wage jobs in the sport and commercial fishing industries not to mention the families that depend on the fishery for sustenance. What we cannot allow is the construction of a massive, open pit mine, complete with the industrialization of the landscape and several-mile-long earthen dam to be built in a seismically active area. …

… The campaign to protect Bristol Bay is made-in-Alaska, and Alaskans overwhelmingly recognize that industrializing the Bristol Bay watershed with the Pebble Mine is a short-sighted and bad idea, and we remain dedicated to defending Bristol Bay’s world-class fisheries.

Well said.