“I would have said yes to the mine project 20 years ago,” the retired politician said over the headset. “What I didn’t understand then was the size of this project, nor the connection of water to everything; the blood of this system is water, and it’ll bleed everywhere.”

When I travel outside of Alaska, friends are surprised when I ask a server if the salmon on the menu is wild or farmed, and whether it is from Alaska. For many non-Alaskans, salmon is salmon. They never stop to consider where it comes from or how it was raised.

By now, Alaskans have come to the unfortunate realization that the proposed Pebble Mine — a potentially massive gold and copper mine owned by a Vancouver company — is not dead. A new administration in Washington, D.C. that is taking a vastly different approach to resource management is giving fresh life to a proposal to build a mine in an ecologically sensitive and economically important area of the state.

AUGUST 25, 2017, 8:41 AM| Alaska has both a surging salmon fishing industry and gold mining industry. But a mining company's proposal to build what could be the biggest gold and copper mine in the world may be toxic to the salmon population. It's causing some to question what's worth more: the salmon or the gold? Bill Weir reports.