Salmon controversy

Alaska’s Bristol Bay is home to salmon — and maybe a mine

By Culinate staff

June 9, 2010

Alaska’s Bristol Bay is home to the world’s largest sockeye-salmon fishery. It’s also home to billions of dollars in gold and copper ore. So it’s long been a natural-resources battleground, with the fishing industry joining environmentalists in fending off attempts to build the proposed Pebble Mine. Now comes a June study in Nature, stating the obvious: building a mine in the bay would be a disaster for the salmon. As the study’s author told Wired, “The decision needs to be made: Is Bristol Bay going to be a mining area, or a salmon area?”