Rolling Stone has a really good piece on what the Trump Administration has been doing in Alaska as a whole, but I’ll pick some key points out for everyone:
FOR CONTEXT: In 2001, Canadian mining-exploration company Northern Dynasty Minerals began plans for extracting the Pebble Mine, a massive store of copper, gold, and other minerals that lies underneath two of Bristol Bay’s most productive salmon streams. Following years of fighting led by Lyon and others, the EPA blocked the Pebble Mine in 2014 after scientists found it would result in “complete loss of fish habitat.”
Mid-2019 Trump ordered his administration to remove protections on Bristol Bay, following a meeting with Gov. Mike Dunleavy. Within two months after that, he also ordered protections removed on Tongass National Forest, in southeast Alaska, the largest intact temperate rainforest on the planet, which scientists have called the “lungs of the country.” The Tongass absorbs more carbon than any other national forest, on par with the world’s most-dense terrestrial carbon sinks in Chile and Tasmania.
The government is expected to award a permit for the Pebble Mine any day now, and to lift restrictions on logging the Tongass by late summer or early fall. And this is on top of the move to open up 1.6 million acres of the Coastal Plain in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil and gas development — a plan that was officially approved on Monday.
The construction of Pebble Mine would cross more than 200 streams and the Iliamna Lake headwaters; its dams and embankments would block critical salmon habitats; and it would destroy 81 miles of salmon streams and close to 3,500 acres of existing wetlands, lakes, and ponds.
In 2011, local tribes petitioned the EPA to prohibit large scale mines in the area. As a result, EPA conducted the peer-reviewed studies of Northern Dynasty’s early plans that led to the agency blocking the mine in 2014, citing a provision in the Clean Water Act.
Northern Dynasty sued the EPA, reaching a settlement with the agency in 2017, and applied for a permit to initiate a federal environmental-review process. This time, the company called for a 1.4 billion-ton mine — nearly six times bigger than the 2014 scenario the EPA analyzed. A 2019 report by the Nature Conservancy found habitat losses could exceed the 2014 scenario by as much as 400 percent.
Northern Dynasty argues that the economic opportunity outweighs keeping Bristol Bay pristine.
But according to their own web site, Northern Dynasty promises only 750 to 1,000 direct jobs with the Pebble Mine, while the salmon run generates 14,000 jobs annually in addition to providing subsistence for the tribes.
On June 27th, 2019, the day after Trump and Dunleavy met on Air Force One, the EPA internally informed its staff scientists that the agency would be reversing its protections on Bristol Bay.
That decision was more or less finalized last month, when on July 24th, the Trump administration released its final environmental-impact statement, determining Northern Dynasty’s proposal for a 1.4 billion-ton mine to be the “least environmentally damaging” option for moving forward. All that’s left is for the EPA to publish the decision, which is set to happen by mid-August, and the mine will officially be greenlighted.
After his June 26th meeting, the president ordered the Department of Agriculture, which oversees the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), to wipe all roadless protections from the Tongass forest: a green light to begin logging its old growth again. (A recent report from the Center for Sustainable Economy documented taxpayer losses of nearly $2 billion a year from federal logging programs, largely due to the fact that demand for timber has been flagging nationally.)
On July 21st, nine southeast Alaska tribes submitted a petition to the Department of Agriculture to create a first-of-its-kind Traditional Homelands Conservation Rule “to save their ancestral lands in the Tongass National Forest from destruction at the hands of the agency itself.”
Donate to protect Bristol Bay
Petition to elected officials to prevent Pebble Mine
Natural Resources Defense Council Petition Against Pebble Mine
Wild Salmon Center Petition Against Pebble Mine
Donate to the United Tribes of Bristol Bay
Donate to the Alaska Conservation Foundation
Sitka Conservation Society Tongass Donations
Alaskan Bears and Wolves Protection Restored Petition
Donate to the Alaska Wildlife Alliance
