Anti-Pebble forces step it up

The Anchorage Press (AK)
December 12, 2006
By MONICA BRADBURY

Groups opposing the proposed Pebble Mine Project in Southwest Alaska have launched a new advertising campaign directed at fly fishers everywhere. The ads, printed in the form of an open letter to the governor of Alaska, the Alaska Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, are running in Fly Fisherman and Fish Alaska magazines, hoping to make the point that fly fishers, among others, ought to be worried about the mine's environmental impact. Trout Unlimited, Sportsman's Alliance for Alaska, Renewable Resources Coalition and several of the fishing industry's top names, including G-Loomis, Sage and Gamakatsu, appear on the ads.

Tim Bristol, Alaska Program Director with Trout Unlimited, says Trout Unlimited is not an anti-mining organization, but they feel strongly about this project.

“It's about this mine and this place,” Bristol said.

The ads state that the Bristol Bay watershed's “salmon, trout and wilderness character are worth far more than the gold that may lie below the land's surface.” They ask the Bureau of Land Management to maintain prohibition of hard rock mine prospecting on publicly-owned land and reject permit applications submitted by Northern Dynasty Mines Inc., the Vancouver-based company that plans to develop the Pebble Mine. The logos of dozens of fishing gear companies appear at the bottom of the letter.

But Bruce Jenkins, Northern Dynasty's Chief Executive Officer, says mining is allowed on state land, such as much of the area that the Pebble Project encompasses, although the Renewable Resources Coalition has led people to believe otherwise. “Their ads are full of misinformation,” Jenkins said. “People are entitled to their opinion even if they are wrong, but they don't have the right to deny us due process.”

Jenkins says the ads, and the opposition to the Pebble Mine as a whole, are largely the work of one wealthy Alaskan who has a private fishing retreat in an area near where Northern Dynasty plans to mine - an individual whom Jenkins declined to name.

Tim Bristol disagrees. “We all love fishing and we really cherish healthy and clean water,” Bristol said. “The stakes are really high in this place.”

Date: 12/12/2006