There are no roads to the fat bears.
Visitors take floatplanes to the remote brown bear realm in Alaska's Katmai National Park and Preserve, where the rotund animals feast on salmon. After skimming down on the water, pilots glide the craft to the shores of turquoise Naknek Lake. Gaping visitors, stepping off the plane, wobble on wooden planks before they set foot on Katmai's beach, which is blanketed in exploded volcanic rocks from the largest eruption of the 20th century. Rangers and visitors alike must avoid snoozing bears on the shore.
It's another world. But just beyond Katmai's northern border, in equally pristine wilderness, there are plans to build a colossal development, called the Pebble Mine.
The Trump administration — which previously slashed the size of Bears Ears National Monument by 80 percent, endeavored to weaken the Endangered Species Act, and has installed a former coal lobbyist to lead the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) — is now weighing a permit to build an unprecedented copper and gold mine in the area. The mine, which would operate for 20 years, requires two water treatment plants to discharge mine water into streams, a 188-mile-long natural gas pipeline to power the mine, pits for mud-like mining waste (known as tailings), roadways for trucking, and a brand new port to unload mined materials onto ships.
"They're going to turn the world's greatest and most productive wild sockeye salmon ecosystem into a mining district," said Joel Reynolds, western director and senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
The fat Katmai bears dwell in the greater Bristol Bay watershed, which is indeed home to the largest run of sockeye salmon on the planet. But dense concentrations of fat bears thrive all over the region. They are an iconic part of one of the last pure, untrammeled wilds left on Earth. A massive development would mean a profound alteration of the land.
"It's not just the mine," said Alaskan bear-viewing guide Drew Hamilton, who is the former assistant manager of Alaska's bear-filled McNeil River State Game Sanctuary and Refuge. Hamilton cited the new coastal port, gas lines, and roads. "It's talking about turning a large part of Alaska into an industrial mining district," he said, echoing Reynolds.
"This project would happen in some of the densest bear populations and largest fish runs in the world," added Hamilton, who is also the president of the non-profit organization Friends of McNeil River, a group opposed to the large-scale mine.
"It is the single most important land-use decision in North America in our lifetimes, and certainly one of the most important decisions in the world," ecologist Carl Safina told Mashable in March.
The Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency responsible for either issuing or denying a mining permit to Northern Dynasty, the Canadian company seeking mining approval, is now reviewing over 115,000 public comments received this year about how the development would impact the region. The impacts are detailed in the official environmental review called an Environmental Impact Statement, or EIS. However, government agencies, bear biologists, and local citizens alike have all criticized, sometimes harshly, the document's failure to recognize the ecological ramifications that an industrial-scale mine would bring to Bristol Bay's wilderness and natural bounty.
Mining Animosity
The "vast majority" of over 115,000 public comments oppose the mine, noted Reynolds.
A mine with roads for trucking, processing plants, pits brimmed with mining waste (tailings), and the possibility of unplanned disasters would not bode well for the "the best-known, high-density brown bear viewing areas in the world," said Andreas Zedrosser, president of the International Association for Bear Research and Management, in a public comment to the Army Corps of Engineers.
"Our overall scientific assessment is that the proposed project will likely have severe negative impacts on important natural resources, including native salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.) water quality, many terrestrial wildlife species, and the long-term ecological health of the impacted area," Zedrosser said.
In a stark public letter, almost caustic at times, the U.S. Department of Interior found that the current Pebble EIS "is so inadequate that it precludes meaningful analysis." Specifically, the conservation agency found the EIS simply didn't acceptably account for how "landscape-scale industrialization" would impact both federal land and fishing industries.
And the Trump administration's own EPA scientists cited in its public comment that the mine would have "substantial and unacceptable adverse impacts on fisheries resources in the project area watersheds, which are aquatic resources of national importance."
What's more, in 2014 the EPA had already concluded that the mine was bad news. Obama's EPA found the development "could result in significant and unacceptable adverse effects on ecologically important streams, wetlands, lakes, and ponds and the fishery areas they support." The EPA then imposed clean water restrictions on the project, effectively prohibiting mining activity.
"It seems politics has overridden science."
But in July, coincidentally during the peak of the Bristol Bay salmon run, the Trump administration decided that the EPA would remove these Obama-era environmental restrictions on the Pebble Mine. A CNN report found the administration decided to roll back EPA's protection after President Trump met with Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy (a Pebble mine proponent) aboard Air Force One this summer.
So, while EPA scientists oppose the mine, appointed federal politicians support the development. "It seems politics has overridden science," said Reynolds.
The Canadian company pursuing the mining permit, Northern Dynasty, has no qualms about the mine. They've created another company, the Pebble Partnership, to act as the face of the project. The group's vice president of public affairs, Mike Heatwole, told Mashable in March that the mine would not pose any significant "population-level challenges to fish and wildlife resources."
And Pebble Partnership CEO Tom Collier told Anchorage's KTUU News that the "project will not do any damage to the Bristol Bay fishery, period."
But Collier is in a significant minority, according to the over 115,000 public comments submitted to the Army Corps of Engineers.
"He's directly contradicted over and over and over again by the vast majority of comments," said the NRDC's Reynolds. "He’s looking for a green light. He’s looking to juice the public perception."
Tread carefully
The mine wouldn't impact the entirety of the vast Bristol Bay watershed. But, it wouldn't need to. Damaging one region of the watershed would likely have oversized consequences.
In research published this May, ecologists found that different parts of the Bristol Bay watershed vary dramatically in significance from year to year. "Any given year, some really small area could be disproportionately important," Sean Brennan, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Washington’s School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences and lead author of the study, told Mashable in May.
A limited portion of the river system may be incredibly productive one year, supporting or stabilizing a river's salmon population while other areas see weaker fish numbers.
What's more, like all ecosystems, Bristol Bay naturally sees fluctuations in salmon runs as wavering food availability and dominant ocean patterns shift. Historically, there are periods of terrific runs followed by grimmer years. It's the natural course of things. That's all the more reason for humans not to bore into the ground and essentially build a small town, replete with its own port.
"Why on top of that [bad years] would we want to risk really screwing this thing up?" asked Norm Van Vactor, president of the Bristol Bay Economic Development Corporation.
And there's yet another, looming, unfolding threat. It's almost certain that Bristol Bay salmon populations will be impacted, perhaps severely, by climate change. The oceans absorb over 90 percent of the heat trapped on Earth by human activities. Salmon, like most aquatic creatures, are profoundly vulnerable to temperature changes.
And all it takes is a single climate-enhanced heat wave to raise river temperatures to untenable levels. Already, Katmai's salmon have been hit by Alaska's warming climes.
"It was never-seen-before hot."
"Air temperatures at [Katmai's] Brooks Camp reached about 90˚F in early July, which wasn't just hot. For that area, it was never-seen-before hot," said Mike Fitz, a former park ranger at Katmai National Park and currently a resident naturalist for explore.org. "The water temperature in the river rose significantly during the heat wave and salmon stopped migrating through the river until the water temperature cooled down."
Alaska's brown bears are impressively robust, adaptable creatures, but the mounting consequences of naturally fluctuating salmon runs, a rapidly warming Arctic, and adverse impacts from an industrial mine would pose an unprecedented threat to these dominant Bristol Bay inhabitants.
It's a world defined by bears and salmon. Just look at this animal.
"This project threatens two of our most prominent wilderness resources," noted Hamilton.
"It’s just ridiculous," said Reynolds.
Topics Animals
