Alaska’s Choice: Salmon or Gold

[Hestia]

Alaska’s Choice: Salmon or Gold
If built, a huge mine would trans­form Alaska’s Bristol Bay region, possibly jeopar­dizing the world’s richest sockeye salmon fishery.
By Edwin Dobb
Photograph by Michael Melford

All that the American West once was, Alaska still is. Abounding with natural marvels and largely untouched by human ambition, it strikes the newcomer as a land of endless prospect, an impression vividly reinforced from the passenger seat of a low-flying Cessna 180. Rick Halford, a bush pilot and former Republican state legislator, is showing me a piece of Alaska tucked between national parks and other protected lands about 250 miles southwest of Anchorage: the heart of the Bristol Bay watershed. Never was the term more meaningful. In every direction the dominant feature of the landscape, the element that binds everything together, is water. Within this 40,000-square-mile area are nine major rivers fed by dozens of tributaries that sometimes resemble stiff tree branches, sometimes sinuous arteries. Here are ponds so great in number and whimsical of shape they call to mind a crowded Joan Miró canvas stretching to the horizon. In more places than not, the water table lies near the surface, producing seeps and springs, continually recharging the spongelike tundra. This is a wet place indeed.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2010/12/bristol-bay/dobb-text/1

[Blue_In_AK]

1. I'm so very happy that National Geographic is bringing this to everyone's attention

It's been a brewing battle here for years, with the vast majority of the people in the state opposed to this huge and senseless project which could drastically affect the ecosystem and the lives of thousands of fishermen and Native Alaskans. There are just no words for this insanity.

I'd give them 10 ANWRs if they'll just leave Bristol Bay alone.

[BrklynLiberal]

2. money hungry cretins who do not give a rat's ass about the planet or its people...

just their own pockets. PLEASE let this project disappear....

[yurbud]

3. Alaska has this as a perennial conflict: extraction industries versus fishing and tourism

what's good for oil & now gold is often harmful for things that depend on a clean environment.