The Hi, my name is Megan Barker. I am the Bristol Bay organizer for Trout Unlimited based in

Anchorage and Trout Unlimited is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to the conservation of cold water fisheries nationwide, but in Alaska we work in a couple critical areas in southwest Alaska. We work in a couple critical areas in Southwest Alaska. We work in traditional Athabaskan,

Lutik, and U-Pik homelands to protect and preserve the Bristol Bay fishery from the proposed pebble mine.

All right, so today we'll be talking about pebble mine and the controversy surrounding it.

But to begin, would you mind explaining what pebble mine is?

Sure, my one sentence description of peble is it's the proposal to build the largest open pit,

copper, and gold mine that would be in North America right in the headwaters of the most productive

sockeye salmon fishery on the planet which is in Bristol Bay.

So for someone not familiar with the mine,

can you describe where it's located?

Sure, so the mine as it's currently proposed would be it's slated for about 20 miles north of Lake Ileamna. Again, we're talking southwest Alaska in the headwaters of Bristol Bay.

So not in the bay itself, but upstream from some of the most productive salmon rivers in Alaska and also on the planet.

And what kind of mine will it be or would it be?

So it's an open pit mine which means they, the company behind the effort to develop this proposal

wants to dig a massive hole in the headwaters and then from that extract fairly low grade copper and gold ore that would be processed and then

extracted to again get primarily copper and gold but other minerals like molybdenum and a couple other trace elements as well.

Could you describe the the landscape or surrounding area?

Sure, this is definitely a fun thing to do.

I think for anyone that's ever been to Bristol Bay or has heard of it,

it's famous because it is truly like the quintessential Alaska

wild. I mean we're talking hundreds of miles of untouched landscape. We're talking rivers that are gin clear minus the fact that in the

summers they run red with with sockeye salmon that flush through these systems and you know everywhere in between it's a mecca for wildlife

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