Mining restrictions lifted across Southwest Alaska
BRISTOL BAY: Those opposed fear the effect on sockeye fishery

Anchorage Daily News (AK)
December 9, 2007
By ELIZABETH BLUEMINK

Federal land managers announced Friday they plan to lift mining restrictions on roughly 1 million acres in the Bristol Bay region.

The decision, which can be appealed, is a harsh blow to some Southwest Alaska villages, environmentalists and sporting groups that oppose mining in a watershed containing the world's largest sockeye salmon fishery.

"It's unbelievably disappointing," said Tim Bristol, the Alaska regional director of Trout Unlimited, a national sportfishing advocacy group.

"I don't know where this goes next. Maybe to Congress," he said.

The Bristol Bay region is already boiling with debate over potential development of the massive Pebble copper and gold prospect north of Iliamna Lake. Pebble is on state land not subject to Friday's decision. The controversial prospect lies in the headwaters of two of the five main rivers that feed the bay's world-class salmon and trout fisheries.

Some of the land that the U.S. Bureau of Land Management plans to re-open to mineral entry is in the same river drainages as Pebble, but many miles downstream.

However, BLM officials say the 1 million acres don't appear to contain valuable mineral resources. Also, they claim they do not have a legal basis to continue the ban.

"Its purpose has been served," said Gary Reimers, based in BLM's Anchorage office.

For more than 30 years, millions of acres of federal land in Alaska have been closed to mining or oil and gas leasing due to the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, the federal law that created Alaska's Native corporations. The land was put off limits to development while the new Native corporations selected land from federal holdings in their regions. Under the Alaska Statehood Act, which Congress passed in 1958, the state also can select land.

Soon, the state and Native corporations will soon receive the remainder of the land they selected in the Bristol Bay region.

"The lands of the highest mineral potential have been taken," Reimers said.

The BLM's critics do not find that reassuring.

Large blocks of land that agency officials plan to reopen to mineral entry are located on uplands in the Nushagak and Kvichak river drainages, which feed some of Bristol Bay's commercial, subsistence and sport fisheries. The Nushagak is the state's largest king salmon producer and the Kvichak is the state's largest sockeye producer.

Previously, a coalition of village Native corporations worried that pollution discharges from mining could harm their salmon runs unsuccessfully asked the BLM and congressional leaders to maintain the ban on mineral entry in the region, said Dillingham resident Bobby Andrew, a coalition spokesman.

The BLM decision isn't final yet: opponents have until Jan. 14 to file a protest letter to the agency's Alaska regional director, Tom Lonnie.

Conservation groups are weighing other legal options, too, said Jeremiah Millen with the Alaska Wilderness League.

Mining officials have said very little exploration has occurred n the region but they don't feel that the BLM should retain the ban.

"It doesn't make any sense to close it off because of some campaign against Pebble," said Steve Borell, executive director of the Alaska Miners Association, in an interview last year.

Some Bristol Bay residents and environmental groups have asked the BLM to postpone its decision until after mid-January.
 
Find Elizabeth Bluemink online at adn.com/contact/ebluemink or call 257-4317.

Date: 12/9/2007