Alaska Native Corp. To Protect Its Land, Deals Blow To Pebble Mine

"The nearly $20 million agreement includes land near Bristol Bay that covers part of the company’s proposed route for transporting ore"

"Growing up in a small village in southwest Alaska, Sarah Thiele had a childhood defined by sockeye salmon.

Her father caught the silvery-red fish in the summer by the net-full as a commercial fisherman while her mother would cure and cold-smoke hundreds of filets so Thiele and her eight siblings, plus the family’s team of sled dogs, could dine on sockeye year-round.

Now 66, Thiele is a board member of the Pedro Bay Corp., an Alaska Native group that owns land near Bristol Bay, the site of the most prolific sockeye fishery in the world. It is also the precise spot where the backers of the Pebble Mine hope to build a road to transport ore.

Late last month, Thiele and nearly 90 percent of the corporation’s shareholders voted to let the Conservation Fund, an environmental nonprofit organization, buy conservation easements on more than 44,000 acres and make the land off limits to future development — including the mining road."

Joshua Partlow and Juliet Eilperin report for the Washington Post June 8, 2021.

Source: Washington Post, 06/09/2021