Bristol Bay Salmon and Proposed Copper Mining: Risks to Fisheries

Forty two million wild salmon returned to Bristol Bay, Alaska last year. Commercial fishers set their nets for the 126^th year sustainably harvesting over 30 million salmon.  Alaska Natives harvested over a hundred thousand salmon that they smoked, salted, canned, and stored for winter, as they have for thousands of years.  Sport fishers pumped millions into Alaska’s economy, in trade for an unforgettable experience.  Bristol Bay is the most valuable commercial salmon fishery in the U.S., produces about 51% of all sockeye salmon on earth, and is considered the best of the last remaining salmon strongholds- a place where wild salmon remain abundant, genetically and phenotypically diverse, and their essential habitats remain intact.  Two rivers that have produced over half of all Bristol Bay salmon are the Nushagak and the Kvichak rivers. 

Recent Alaska State management of Bristol Bay uplands, changed from a fish and wildlife priority to one making mineral development a “designated use” on almost 12 million acres and an exclusive use on 9.4 million of those acres—these acres include a significant proportion of Nushagak and Kvichak drainages.  About 800 mi² of mine claims are now staked on these lands.  The first proposed project up for permitting is called Pebble; to date, over 1,000 exploration holes have drilled over 800,000 feet of core throughout the region indicating about 10.78 billion tons of low grade (<1%) copper sulfide resource which includes gold, molybdenum, silver and other precious metals.  Identified risks to salmon from development of this resource include: habitat destruction, dewatering of salmon habitats, acid mine drainage, metal leaching, accidents, large-scale pollution events, fugitive dust, and loss of salmon habitat connectivity.  Mine proponents claim fisheries and mining can coexist, however, given site conditions: deposit lies under salmon habitat, soils are highly conductive, ground and surface waters are interconnected, area experiences high winds, is seismically active, and ore data suggest a relatively high risk of acid mine drainage, all indicate development of Pebble poses a high risk to Bristol Bay salmon productivity and sustainability.  

Arguably the most controversial Alaskan project since ANWR, the Pebble project should interest those interested in future sustainability of world salmon resources.