• Ocean

Alaska Confronts COVID: State May Close Salmon Season Just as Energy Projects Lose Funding

• Alaska
• ANWR
• Bristol Bay
• conservation
• environment
• fishing
• Pebble Mine
• wild salmon

Alaska’s Bristol Bay is home to the world’s most valuable wild salmon fisheries (and also an infamous mining project – the Pebble Mine) but salmon towns in the region lost 30% of their population to the 1918 Spanish Flu and locals fear it will happen again due to lack of medical capacity to handle the virus, unless the Governor, Republican Mike Dunleavy, shuts down fishing for this summer.

Why This Matters:  Alaska could be hit hard by a double whammy of no fishing this year and the loss of new oil and gas jobs in the future.

• Land

Trump Administration Full Speed Ahead on Drilling and Mining In Alaska

• ANWR
• drilling
• mining
• Native Alaskan Tribes
• Pebble Mine

The Trump Administration in recent days has moved to quickly walk back protections for pristine areas of Alaska, advancing projects to develop the Pebble Mine that threatens Bristol Bay and its billion-dollar salmon fishery and also oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) over the strenuous objections of Alaska native tribes and their corporations, local communities, fishers, tourism businesses, and environmental groups.  

• Land

Trump Administration Breathes New Life Into Alaska’s Pebble Mine

• Alaska
• Bristol Bay
• mining
• Pebble Mine
• Salmon

The Trump Administration in 2017 had decided to continue the Obama Administration’s decision to block the highly controversial Pebble Mine in Alaska, but yesterday they reversed themselves and are now restarting a process that could result in the EPA lifting the Clean Water Act restrictions and letting the proposed gold, copper and molybdenum mine move forward.