From Kokhanok on Iliamna Lake in the heart of the land of opposition to Alaska’s Pebble Mine, 58-year-old Gary Nielsen has a unique perspective on the simmering war over salmon habitat that has split the 49th state in a way not seen since the D-2 Lands battle of the late 1970s.
After D-2, after President Jimmy Carter signed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) into law in 1980, the big environmental battles were thought to have ended in the north.
Now, however, in the state where everyone loves salmon, Alaskans are deeply divided by those who “Stand for Salmon” and those who “Stand for Alaska.”
Nielsen, the one-time mayor of a census-designated place of less than 200 and for a long time a commercial fisherman, finds his heart in one place and his head in another.
“Fishing has been good to me,” he said. “I bought my house with fishing money. I bought my land with fishing money.’
But he worries about the future of children in Bristol Bay and fears the Stand for Salmon initiative could be the death knell for his corner of Alaska.
Long ago, he said, his Alaska Native grandmother warned him, “the salmon are nice, but they aren’t always there.”
Bristol Bay, he said, needs to diversify its economy. He thinks Stand for Salmon, which puts a priority on salmon above other resources, could lock future development out of the remote Iliamna country. He sees people already moving away and fears that out-migration will only worsen.
Preserving salmon
The initiative on the ballot in November falls into the national park category. It would establish strict – opponents say onerous – standards for development activities in or near streams used by salmon and other anadromous fish.
As was the case during the Alaska Lands battle, Outside interests have taken a major role in trying to influence the outcome of this political tussle.
The Alaska Policy Forum, an organization that has pushed for limited government and a profitable private-sector economy in the 49th state, has calculated the California-based Hewlett Foundation and the California-based Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation have funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars through Alaska-based environmental groups and provided immeasurable staff support to drive efforts to encourage voters to back the initiative.
“The New Venture Fund has contributed more than $400,000 directly to efforts tied to Ballot Measure 1 thus far, some in funding and some in staff time and other non-monetary forms,” Larry Barsukoff reported at the Forum. “It has also served as the conduit for sending more than $560,000 to establish Salmon State. And according to APOC disclosures, New Venture Fund is also listed as the employer for Ryan Schryver, who is directly tied to the Yes for Salmon campaign through the Alaska Center.”
Initiative backers contend their plan would not interfere with development, only protect salmon. Developers argue the opposite.
Calista, the regional Native corporation for remote Southwest Alaska, has been urging its shareholders to vote no on the initiative. The corporation has been trying for decades to mine in the Crooked Creek drainage of the Kuskokwim River to bring jobs to a part of the state with little in the way of a private-sector economy.
Crooked Creek is a salmon stream about 280 miles northwest of Anchorage, upriver from Bethel on the Kusko. Mining in the watershed would eliminate about 4 miles of one tributary stream and part of another, according to the project’s environmental impact statement.
Under existing law, Donlin Gold would be required to perform mitigation work such as building salmon spawning channels to compensate for any habitat changes. What further steps the eight-page initiative would require if approved is unclear.
The initiative makes no mention of mitigation, and the wording would appear to make it difficult, if not impossible, to eliminate a salmon stream to allow for mining, a practice that was once the norm in the state.
Devastation and resilience
The history of mining in the north is a testament to the mess humans will make of the environment when driven by greed and of the resilience of nature – salmon in particular.
What was true of the Klondike along the upper reaches of the Yukon River in Canada was true on down the Yukon drainage through the frozen heart of Alaska and west across the then-Alaska Territory to the Bering Sea and south to the Gulf of Alaska.
Mining on the Kenai Peninsula, south of Alaska’s largest city, and in the Susitna River valley, north of Alaska’s largest city, devastated some salmon stocks in the period from 1900 to the second World War.
All across Alaska this history of mining is much the same. The miners came, and the salmon disappeared. When miners cleaned up their operations, the fish eventually returned.
As with commercial fishing so, too, with mining: Once humans stop killing salmon in excess numbers, salmon populations recover.
Salmon are among the most resilient and adaptable species on the planet. Scientists studying hatchery salmon early in this decade were a little surprised to learn they can evolve within a generation.
Salmon and closely related rainbow trout were considered so resilient, adaptable and plentiful, as once noted by assistant Secretary of the Interior Bill Horn, an avid fisherman and one-time aide to Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, that little thought was given to establishing refuges for them during the lands battle.
The Great Settlement
Instead, ANILCA focused on preserving charismatic megafauna – grizzly bears, caribou and wolves – and wilderness.
Afterward, the rest of the state was supposed to start to open for development. But not all that much happened. Anchorage and the neighboring Matanuska-Susitna Borough boomed, and the Central Alaska city of Fairbanks grew, but overall the human footprint in the north remained small.
At the 1980 census, there were reported to be 143,000 people living in rural Alaska. The state has grown significantly since then, but there might now be fewer people living rural than there were 38 years ago.
What happened outside of these urban areas didn’t much matter to most Alaskans, either, until the early 2000s when along came Pebble, a massive copper deposit near Iliamna Lake in the heart of the watershed that supports the Bristol Bay sockeye salmon fishery, the largest sockeye fishery in the world.
More than that though, Bristol Bay was home to a lodge owned by one of Alaska’s richest men, and he didn’t relish the idea of a massive copper mine in his backyard. Thus the late-Bob Gilliam launched a high-profile campaign to stop a possible Pebble mine, and the battle has raged for more than a decade now with major victories for opponents stymied by counter-attacks from Pebble.
The Alaska Clean Water Initiative made the ballot in 2008. It was aimed at severely restricting mine wastes and a clear attack on Pebble. Alaskans voted it down 57 percent to 43 percent.
But the fight was far from over.
The Environmental Protection Agency under President Barrack Obama six years later moved to ban the mine under the Clean Water Act. Pebble sued. The two sides settled in 2017. Pebble proposed a new, smaller mine plan to regulators in 2018 in an effort to secure the necessary state and federal permits.
Opponents counter-attacked with the initiative with a name hard for Alaskans to resist – Stand for Salmon – that stretched beyond Pebble. That sucked other business interests into the fight.
Out in the hinterlands of Alaska where he has spent his entire life, a well-read Nielsen sees the Pebble mine as inevitable with his community and other villages the likely collateral damage in the present skirmish which he figures to settle nothing.
Money, money, money
“There’s a trillion dollars in the ground there,” he said. “Do you think this is going to stop them?”
That argument has some merit. The mine site is estimated to contain 80.6 billion pounds of copper, 5.6 billion pounds of molybdenum, and 107.4 million ounces of gold. The gold is already highly valuable, but the value of the copper might far exceed it.
Major financial institutions are predicting a steadily growing demand for copper as some governments try to shift from oil-driven economies to electric-driven economies.
The financial incentives to develop Pebble are, in Nielsen’s view, only going to keep growing.
“The fanatics and zealots are cutting off their noses to spite themselves,” Nielsen said. “Why do this when we aren’t going to stop it (Pebble)?”
One of the supporters of the initiative, former Commissioner of Fish and Game Frank Rue, lent some weight to Nielsen’s analysis in an editorial in the Juneau Empire where he wrote this:
Nielsen worries about what could happen in those two years in rural Alaska where state and federal environmental regulations already make it hard for small communities to get anything done.
He talks about how it took years for Kokhanok to get a sewer lagoon permitted and how much existing regulation added to the cost.
“The paperwork cost was about half the project,” he said. He only sees the initiative making things worse.
“Where is the money (for increased costs) going to come from?” he asked. “The big guys aren’t going to care. It might slow them down a little,” but eventually they will win.
He’s not sure that would be bad, either.
Alaska is changing. The value of the fish that once supported Bristol Bay is falling in the face of competition from farmed salmon. Commercial fishermen are “stacking permits”, a form of consolidation, to maximize profits, he said.
That has the effect of making for fewer permits, and there haven’t been enough to go around for years already. Few young people can get into the fishing business. The average age of a Bristol Bay fisherman is now 50, and half the region’s permits have moved away because of the modern attractions of city life.
“The kids,” Neilsen asked, “what going to be available for them?”
Regulatory realities
Many, if not most, of those familiar with Alaska salmon and the state’s habitat protection laws agree the nearly 40-year-old standards for protecting salmon streams could do with an update. The Legislature had the issue before it earlier this year, but legislation went nowhere.
As with so many issues in so many places in the country today, compromise is near impossible because there is no trust. Instead, in states like Alaska, there are stalemates in what has become a regulatory-environmental Cold War.
The warriors for the environment see many established resource industries as modern evils to be transformed into something “cleaner,” or eliminated. The warriors for industry see environmentalist as disingenuous deal makers who cannot be trusted and will challenge any development in court no matter what sort of political agreement is reached.
Given this sort legislative standoff, environmental issues in the 49th state sometimes have nowhere to go but to the initiative process, which is easier in Alaska than some other states. An effort to ban commercial setnet fisheries to protect king salmon made it on the ballot in 2014. It failed as had the clean water initiative six years earlier.
This time the state Board of Game responded in 2002 by beginning an aggressive strategy of lowering bear and wolf numbers under the guise of the state’s “intensive management” law.
Officials of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game countered that the program was effective in boosting prey numbers. Intensive management continues to this day.
Eighteen years after the last initiative against aerial hunting was approved, not as many of the animals are being shot from airplanes – only state wildlife officials are to allowed to do such shooting now in specially approved “control” areas – but just as many wolves are dying.
And grizzlies have been added to the list of predators for which removal has been made easier. In the end the ban on aerial hunting seems only to have strengthened the resolve of those who wished to reduce predator numbers in Alaska in the name of increasing survival odds of for their prey.
One can only guess what strange twists will come if the salmon initiative passes.
Categories: News
FORMER U.S. COMMISSIONER TO ANADROMOUS FISH COMMISSION SAYS “VOTE YES ON 1!”
By Bob Shavelson | October 23, 2018
“I spent 38 yrs. managing fisheries from California to the Arctic, and I support Ballot Measure 1. My career included: Salmonid (salmon, steelhead, trout) management as a Pacific and North Pacific Fishery Management Council member; developing amendments to the Forest Practices Act; an advisor in US/Canada Salmon Treaty negotiations and implementation, and reviewer of funding…”
“Today Cook Inletkeeper released a statement from 58 retired state and federal agency scientists and managers who strongly support the Stand for Salmon Ballot Measure 1. Taken together, these experts have more than 1500 years’ experience managing and overseeing salmon and salmon habitat In Alaska.”
https://inletkeeper.org/inletkeeper-blog/
Prop 1 is socialist Propaganda. It is an end around to the State Constitution. It deserves defeat. Just look at who promotes it: The “new” Left – further to the Left than ever!
Chris,
Do you use the government subsidized road system?
How about benefiting from subsidized snow plowing, fire, ems, police, healthcare, social security??…
Did you or family use the public (subsidized) school system?
How about railroad, ferry or air ports throughout the state?
What about UAA and UAF school systems?
Milatary protection??
You can end the socialist b.s. comments, cause we both know you would not be living in AK today without all the help from the government subsidized programs in place today…like state fisheries and that set net you love that catches subsidized hatchery reds!
Another thing the pro-prop 1 folks never talk about is what this actually impacts. I mean that on many levels but specifically, this measure impacts state land and water and nothing more. The Sturgeon case before the Supreme Court yet again deals with our states rights and who controls our waterways. Every Prop 1 supporter should be a Sturgeon supporter, if they aren’t then they are inconsistent in their beliefs.
All state lands comprise less than 40% of the lands (and waterways) in the state, the vast majority belong to the feds, roughly 61%. This proposition will not affect the federal lands at all.
Wow ! Steve o . Hadn’t thought of that . I am a sturgeon supporter. I think it’s past due time feds turned all our lands and waters to state control.
Begich sounds like Pelosi in reference to 1, pass it read and figure it out later.Getting him as our next Gov could be as disastrous as Hildebeast for pres. Development of our resources is paramount to Alaska’s future and economic well being.As Teddy Roosevelt (originator of National Parks) said;”I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use the natural resources of our land;but I do not recognize the right to waste them,or to rob,by wasteful use,the generations that come after us.”Our bureaucracy’s have become embedded with protectionist Lib-Tards who have a stay off the grass remove the human from the equation attitude.That along with their prevalent resist and obstruct activities hamper responsible development and make it nearly impossible to get anything done for the better of us all.In todays environment men like Teddy Roosevelt along with Charles Sheldon and Bellmore Brown wouldn’t have been able to bring us Mt.McKinley National Park.Brought to you by hunters for Sheep and stolen and Bastardized by Protectionists Dip-Shits for the Wolves they worship!God help us…
Talking about salmon as a “resource” like copper or gold fails to recognize how people have used it for thousands of years. As food. As a non-monetized basis for their movements, cultures, and connections with nature and other communities. The continued effort to increase reliance on farmed salmon, together with the destruction of wild salmon habitat, means people will not be able to catch, process and cache fish for themselves. The loss of wild salmon has already had huge and enduring impacts on many rural Alaskan communities.
Fealty to extractive industries does not inspire community agency. It does not inspire proactive and sustainable innovation. It instead forces people to cater to the needs of extraction rather than to their public health and human rights needs. Let’s be clear: This is not a two-sided issue, nor one that only influences our future through the next few years when the legislature gets its hands on it (if passed), or the next few decades of salmon evolution or economic development.
Ps. The notion of allowing or ignoring damage because you can count on the quiet resilience of the harmed to bounce back is not new. It’s precisely what the collective #MeToo experience (and others) is about. Honestly, some people are just sick of it.
Well said on many fronts !!!!!
But still you guys are singularly unable to articulate a single salmon run, the total number of salmon harmed, and the number of years the resource has been harmed by mining.
Medred in the above article wrote about the Little Su, something you guys never ever mentioned or knew about. Yet the data is out there and available for everyone.
Fealty is to whatever you want it to be – jobs, religion (environmentalism or some nebulous notion of salmon availability). Until you guys come up with some real numbers, you guys are still in the arm waving, chair throwing stage of the discussion. And yes, it is a two-sided argument. Prove it otherwise. I dare you. Cheers –
Of course I am for protecting salmon, but we have laws that protect salmon already. This proposition is suffocation and hypocrisy for Alaska. Anti-development, anti-economic diversity, larger and more costly government. NIMBYism by people that use products that are mined but have this sense of elitism that mines should only exist in some far-away third world country. Alaska is getting to the point that the dominating work sector for Alaskans is government (fed, military, state, local). Lack of industry makes Alaska’s economy welfare-based on public money from elsewhere. And welfare economies only want more welfare, at the expense of private industry, as can be seen by Prop 1.
Vote NO on Ballot Measure #1 and vote YES for Mike Dunleavy.
Mark Begich says he will vote yes on Ballot Measure #1 and then as the newly elected governor he will “fix” the restrictive measure in the initiative to allow continued mining, pipeline construction, and oil & gas development.
Really? And what do the preservationist voters think about that? If Begich is telling the truth then their efforts to stop resources development in Alaska were for not.
State statutes necessary to keep salmon spawning rivers healthy are the law now. Making those laws better, if needed, through the legislative process is possible. It just takes voting in a governor and Alaskan Legislative Representatives who can read the Alaska State Constitution Article 8, Natural Resources.
Voting in a Governor who would tell the public not to fear a voter initiative because he can “fix” it is waste of time and money. And your vote.
I’m more concerned with all wildlife being able to drink from our waters including humans . Anyone want to drink directly down stream from red dog mine ? Look it up . Alaska has one of the highest rates of pollution in the nation. To me this initiative is about far more than salmon . Most of Alaska is relatively clean now but large foreign business with world wide stock driven by profits and lack of care how they get those are at our door steps . Even poor thinking politicians are a danger . Think proposed susitna dam built within a fault zone area ready to bust open wipe down stream towns that proposal would have changed water temps , and area ecology . Resource development has a horrible history. Alaskans need more tools to defend our state now and for our future inhabitants man and animals. Let’s get it started vote for measure # 1 . Currently Ballot one needs a revision to require bonding for native tribes and government entities. Without that big buisness will use loop holes and cause unfair buisness practice. Money is nice and development is nice – in the 20 th century let’s make darn sure it’s done responsibly . IMO
Another example of how resilient salmon are comes from Aniakchak, where the Aniakchak River drains Surprise Lake in the middle of the Aniakchak caldera. That caldera was created in a massive eruption 3,400 years ago that put a 30′ tsumani across Bristol Bay and a few inches of ash on the North Slope. Today it supports runs of all 5 species of salmon. Cheers –
https://www.americanwhitewater.org/content/River/detail/id/2
Ballot measure number 1 is not the end of the discussion, but a wedge into the collusion between government and corporate resource extraction…
A vehicle for Alaskans (of all types of income and occupation) to have a larger say in the future of large commercial development throughout the state.
Like any piece of legislation, it is a fluid body open to improvements or future changes.
Getting this initiative passed will put the voices of more common Alaskans “at the table”…not just lobbyists and politicians.
Alaska needs this measure to pass, not just for Salmon, but for open discussion and democracy in the permiting process of large commercial projects throughout the state.
Remember Guthrie’s famous song…”This land is your land, this land is my land…”
Vote Yes on One!
When supporters of Prop 1 are telling us how bad the proposition is, why would anyone vote for it?
Mark Begich recently told us that the legislature will fix it if it is passed, why would they need to fix it if it isn’t broken going in?
Frank Rue said “If this initiative passes, the legislature has the ability to immediately clarify language in the initiative if necessary, and in two years the legislature can amend, or even go so far as to repeal, the initiative.” A Prop 1 supporter is already saying it could be so bad for Alaska that the legislature could repeal it completely.
To finish my comment: any pro or anti development Alaska legislature can make changes to the law coming out of the initiative. Politics of the day will drive the law. Who knows what that will entail. Nielsen’s concern about what could happen in a two year period seems more like a Chicken Little “the sky is falling” fear. And the same can be said about all of the fears expressed by supporters and opponents of the initiative.
The next administration in the White House, with the flick of a pen, could alter the landscape of habitat protection or development one way or another. No matter what happens to this initiative.
One thing that we all know is that some developments including mines have not been environmentally healthy for fish stocks. Is a mine that produces a trillion dollars of copper and other ore worth the measurable risks to Salmon? Does the money involved make it inevitable as Nielsen implies? It might all depend on the politics of the day in Alaska or Washington D.C.
but as for what happens after Nov. 6, the sky is not going to fall.
Certainly unusual for us to be on the same side of an argument, TFC.
My own thoughts here are that those spooked by their feelings that this initiative would close the door on development did not make any attempt to fix their concerns during last legislative session. May have been just a political guess that our Supreme Court would throw out the thing, or that reducing the concerns may insure it’s passing.
Whatever their thinking, we are left with it and my opinion is that our water quality needs are too important for such selfish thinking. I agree that salmon are particularly resilient, overall, but salmon in a particular river not so much. I intend to vote yes.
There was legislation during the last session dealing with this issue. To say there was no effort made is false.
http://www.alaskajournal.com/2018-04-11/latest-fish-habitat-bill-goes-too-far-or-not-far-enough#.W9IwNXtKipo
Here is article explaining Stutes adjustment to her original bill on Initiative. She made great effort to fix so-called problems with initiative and could not get it passed out of her own committee.
I did not say there was no effort made, just that there was ‘NO’ follow through by those thinking there were concerns. I also suspect that those complaining now were not willing to compromise on anything hoping for a Supreme Court hail mary pass.
Seems like the legislative process is working, the bill couldn’t be agreed upon by our representatives so it wasn’t advanced. As a Constitutional Republic it’s good to know that the issue was proposed and debated, it’s unfortunate that a deal couldn’t be found that would shore up the few areas that might need it.
Putting an issue with this amount of complexity to a vote of the public is contrary to the scientific and public process that our Country and State are founded upon.
It is unfortunate Steve-O, I agree.
As for the scientific end, I am of the opinion that these guys have it pretty-well covered: https://www.juneauempire.com/news/alaska-scientists-pen-letter-backing-salmon-measure/
Bill,
I have to be honest with you, you’ve proven time and time again that there is no reason to follow your links. On top of that, I’d much rather hear what your opinion is, even if I disagree with it, than what your opinion of somebody else’s opinion might be. I can cite just as many opinions on why Prop 1 is bad for the state, even the opinions of scientists.
Providing links is valuable when citing actual scientific fact or sources of information, letters to the editor and other’s opinions not so much. A scientists opinion is no more valuable than a layman’s opinion, in some cases they actually might be worse since they could be tainted with preconceived notions or they might not be able to see past their little slice of expertise to see the greater picture.
Well Steve-O it’s starting to look like one of your “rational civil discussions”
that you keep patting yourself on the back about. Heheh!
You don’t like what I write, tough noogies.
Former Commissioner Frank Rue is spot on when he explains that the initiative is not the final
word on any protections for which it is intended. And therein lies one of the faults of the initiative. It can be changed