{"id":71468,"date":"2021-06-07T22:30:00","date_gmt":"2021-06-08T06:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/proposed-conservation-plans-could-affect-pebble-mine\/"},"modified":"2021-06-07T22:30:00","modified_gmt":"2021-06-08T06:30:00","slug":"proposed-conservation-plans-could-affect-pebble-mine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/proposed-conservation-plans-could-affect-pebble-mine\/","title":{"rendered":"Proposed conservation plans could affect Pebble Mine"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Becky Bohrer <\/strong><\/ins><\/p>\n

Associated Press<\/p>\n

<\/em><\/ins><\/p>\n

An agreement announced Tuesday between an Alaska Native village corporation and conservationists would restrict development on lands in the Bristol Bay region where a mine developer has proposed a road, a move that could create another obstacle for the proposed Pebble Mine.<\/p>\n

The Conservation Fund said it has launched a fundraising campaign to buy the land easements on more than 44,000 acres from the Pedro Bay Corp. for $18.3 million. Terms call for the money to be raised by the end of 2022, said Ann Simonelli, a spokesperson for the Virginia-based conservation group.<\/p>\n

The corporation would retain ownership of the land, and the easements would be managed by the Bristol Bay Heritage Land Trust, a group focused on preserving salmon and wildlife habitat in southwest Alaska’s Bristol Bay region. According to a statement announcing the agreement, terms of the deal would bar the execution of any right-of-way agreements with the mine project due to the easements’ restrictions on development. The planned easements cover part of a transportation route proposed by the Pebble Mine, the statement says.<\/p>\n

Mike Heatwole, a spokesperson for the Pebble Limited Partnership, which seeks to develop the mine, said Pebble’s focus is on a pending appeal with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.<\/p>\n

“This recent development hasn’t really changed that focus in any way,” he said by email.<\/p>\n

The corps last year denied approval of a key project permit. The corps division handling the appeal said a decision on whether it has merit could take more than a year.<\/p>\n

Critics of the proposed copper and gold mine have said they want permanent measures implemented that would place the Bristol Bay region off limits to large-scale mining. Bristol Bay supports the world’s largest runs of sockeye salmon, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.<\/p>\n

Matt McDaniel, Pedro Bay Corp. CEO, said the conservation agreement “supports the values of our community members by protecting their land, their subsistence and their traditional way of life.”<\/p>\n

“This is an opportunity that will provide our community benefits and economic value in perpetuity,” he said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Simonelli said The Conservation Fund and its partners are seeking to raise $20 million, which in addition to the easement purchases includes funding for easement stewardship and $500,000 to the nonprofit Pedro Bay Benefits Corp. for an educational and cultural fund for Pedro Bay shareholders.<\/p>\n

Tim Troll, executive director of the Bristol Bay Heritage Land Trust, said in weighing long-term salmon productivity, “you’ve got to look at landscape-level stuff.”<\/p>\n

“So that’s why this deal is important,” he said.<\/p>\n

The organizations also have worked together previously in the region.<\/p>\n

A fishery doesn’t last as long as the Bristol Bay salmon fishery “if you don’t have the habitat to make that happen,” he said, adding later: “We’d be wanting to do this deal, regardless of a road.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Agreement would restrict development. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":71469,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[198,230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-71468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news","tag-pebble-mine","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71468"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=71468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}