Pebble Mine

Pebble Mine

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
Josh Mills with a conservation alarm

The proposed Pebble Mine at the headwaters of the rivers in the Bristol Bay region in Alaska is at the forefront of conservationists minds again. The Pebble. Mine is a proposed mine that will be over a mile wide and a quarter mile deep.

It's open pit mining that uses a lot of chemicals and uses a lot of nasty stuff to extract things like copper and gold out of the ground. The associated Rivers that lead into Bristol Bay are home to the most productive sockeye run in the world. Chances are, if you eat sockeye, they're coming from Bristol Bay. Last year, over 60 million sockeye returned to Bristol Bay in Alaska and they harvested over 35 million. And it provides the backbone of a regional economy that is based upon salmon. It is very likely it will destroy the intactness of that magnitude. And you can't mitigate your way out of mining disasters, which there hasn't been an open pit mine of this scale anywhere in the world. It will dwarf the Berkeley pit in Butte, Montana. Its environmental albatross. If this mine goes in, we're putting at risk our greatest and most healthy salmon fishery in the world, along with all the rainbows and char and bears, because salmon form the food web of everything in that region. A couple of places you can go to as Trout Unlimited Alaska and save Bristol Bay. Sounds like sportsmen need to intercede.

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