Don’t miss it!  ESPN Sports has feature column by Robert Montgomery “Sockeye sock out“  Here’s an excerpted quote from Jack Stanford, a professor of ecology at the University of Montana, added, “As an expert on rivers, I can say with authority that Bristol Bay is in nearly the same situation that faced the great salmon rivers in the Lower 48 before they were lost to development, dams, pollution, and other factors. The only real difference for Bristol Bay is that the decision can be by informed history.

Don’t miss this article by Seattle PI’s Joel Connelly on “A Mind Boggling Alaska Mine.”

Lindsey Bloom, a Whitman-educated fishing boat captain, puts it bluntly. “Everyplace else you look — down where you come from, for instance — fisheries have been badly managed and are in peril: Here, this place, is the exception.”

BBNC, which represents more than 8,600 Alaska Native shareholders has asked the EPA to step in to use its authority under 404(c) of the Clean Water Act to tailor a prohibition on the discharge of mine waste from the Pebble Mine.  Read about it in the Bristol Bay Times.

The Montreal Gazette covers opposition to Pebble Mine in recent article, “Canadian’s open pit mine plan panned in the U.S.” Here’s a quote from Bristol Bay fishermen Lindsey Bloom, “We live and make our living from where the Pebble mine would be
built,” says Lindsey Bloom, an official with the Alaska Independent Fisherman Marketing Association. “We want our  country’s top environmental experts to look into whether the Kvichak and Nushagak drainages are the right place for large-scale metallic  sulphide mining that could permanently harm the world’s largest wild
sockeye salmon fishery.”

Last week, Environmental Protection Agency Chief Lisa Jackson met with dozens of mine opponents at Dillingham High School, where tribal leaders and commercial fishermen began a push to have the EPA wield its veto authority.

“The location could not possibly be worse on the face of the earth,” said former state Senate President Rick Halford, a Republican from the Bristol Bay region. “This is a place of incredible value. It’s going to be probably the biggest environmental resource fight of our lifetime.”

Read the full story here

Hey everyone; If you’re in the Lake Tahoe area in September, don’t miss the Satelite Festival - featuring a whole host of fabulous events designed to highlight Bristol Bay, Alaska - starting with Savor Bristol Bay Restaurant Week from Sept. 5th - 12th. Many thanks to Blair Lauren Brown for her efforts!

One by one, representatives of a dozen Southwest Alaska communities stood to tell the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency of the threat they feel the massive Pebble mine prospect would pose to their way of life.  In an excerpt from an article in the Codova Times,

“If you take away who we are, our natural resources, that would be terminating us as a people,” Mary Ann Johnson from the tribal council of Portage Creek told EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson Wednesday, during a listening session at Dillingham High School.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson is traveling to Bristol Bay this week for a listening session on the Pebble Mine.

“I’m very glad they are coming out here,” said Robin Samuelsen, a Bristol Bay fisherman and president and chief executive officer of the Bristol Bay Economic Development Corp. “It’s about time that they conduct hearings in the Bristol Bay region. “The last poll I saw done showed that 82 percent were opposed to the mine,” he said, in recent news article.

Top scientist, Jack Stanford, rebuts misleading statements made by the Pebble Limited Partnership (Anglo American and Northern Dynasty) about the impacts of the proposed Pebble Mine on the Bristol Bay salmon fishery.  Here’s a quick excerpt of the lead in to the article, but read the whole thing in the Anchorage Daily News.

Members of the AK State Legislative Council will meet on July 19th to decide how to proceed with the independent science review of the Pebble Mine. Read more in the Bristol Bay Times