We all have
a Bristol Bay and a Pebble Mine in our backyards.
Alaska
produces a huge amount of protein for the rest of the world. Alaska fisheries
are a model for not only for sustainable seafood but sustainable food in
general—it’s a place where science-based management still takes precedence;
fisheries are managed so that future generations of fishermen can fish the same
way their forebears did. As wild fish like salmon, halibut, and sablefish are
some of the last commercially available wild meats left on this planet, Alaska
really is our last chance as human beings to get this right.
The
connection between wild food and people’s needs makes clear the idea that we
need to take care of where we live. When we take care of where we live we take
care of ourselves.
I work for a fishermen's cooperative. Owned and operated by 590+ small boat fishermen, we are essentially 590 small American businesses in one.
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| Lance Preston with a line-caught salmon, the "Craft Beer of Seafood" |
These small family businesses depend on the resources. Small American family
businesses like the Duna, owned by Amy Grondin and her
husband Greg fish
for salmon so that people around the world can enjoy a quality protein, known
for its plentiful numbers and brain and heart-healthy properties. There’s also Lance Preston, who calls the salmon he
catches on the Seaboy, his classic wooden
troller, “the craft beer of seafood.”
These are
the farmers of the sea who fish because of the pride in quality in harvesting a
sustainable healthy food for our nation and others. All of us who fish or
depend on catching wild fish for a living are in it for the long haul. It’s a
way of life that we’d like to pass down to future generations.
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| Amy Grondin fishes for sustainable seafood on the Duna. |
Given that
salmon start their lives in rivers and creeks, shaded by trees, they are the
canary in a coal mine of a human existence that depends on clean water and
nurtured earth. They’re the indicator of how healthy a watershed is. They warn
us when we’ve been too rapacious in our logging practices. They feed noble
creatures like bears and bald eagles and in turn their digested carcasses
fertilize the forest. Their existence and thriving is nature’s reward for our
being stewards of their habitat.
Before we
build something, a good way to determine whether what we’re doing is right or
wrong is to look at it through the eyes of a salmon.
Should we
build a dam? Should we pour a ton of chemicals on our lawns? Should we extract
resources for the benefit of very few at the expense of a great many?
There are 10
open pit mines operating on the British Columbia side of the border that
separates Alaska from Canada. These mines operate near the headwaters of the
Stikine, the Taku, and the Unuk rivers, what is essentially the breadbasket of
Southeast Alaska.
These mines
carry with them so many risks that no insurance company will write a policy for
them. So, tax payers are on the hook not if but when the integrity of these
mines is breached. Because all of these mines give and leach toxic tailings
into the water where they work.
It’s not
even a question of mine or no mine. There are gold mines on the Juneau side of
the border. But they operate with dry stack tailings rather than water
tailings. These dry stack tailings cost more to operate but do not have as
great an impact on the water and surrounding environment, thereby keeping
salmon safer.
There is
nobody not at risk in Southeast Alaska from the danger of the mines in British
Columbia. Yet there is no incentive for the Canadian mining companies not to
mine in egregious manners that detriment the lives of thousands of Alaskan
families and really the breadbasket and heart of some of the last really wild
protein sources on this planet.
A 1909
treaty between the United States and Canada states, “Waters flowing across the
boundary shall not be polluted on either side to the injury or health of
property on the other.”
Do we have
to wait until the tailings from these mines pollute our water, everybody’s
water?
Everything
that we have that sustains life comes from the dirt upon which we stand. Our
natural surroundings determine how we live our lives.
