RIVERS WITHOUT BORDERS

Wild Pacific salmon don’t need another threat

“Pacific salmon just don’t need another threat.” So stated James Winton, a fish virologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. He was quoted in a Seattle Times article (10/19/11) covering news of two wild sockeye salmon smolts in British Columbia waters recently found by researchers to be carrying a highly contagious virus. The virus killed millions of farmed salmon in Chile, and it may be connected to Atlantic salmon grown in BC fish farms. It’s not known yet if it poses a threat to wild Pacific salmon, but that concern is very high. U.S. Senators have already called for an immediate investigation.

Rivers Without Borders shares the concern. Winton’s statement hits the nail on the head relative to what our organization is about. Wild salmon need wild rivers. That’s why we advocate safeguarding wild salmon habitat by keeping it intact and productive. And some of the best salmon habitat in the world is embodied in the transboundary watersheds of northwest BC and southeast Alaska.

Unfortunately, another “threat” to salmon in this region is looming ever larger. Rivers Without Borders has been challenging proposed mining on the Taku, near the Alaska – BC border, for years. Now the threat of development has spread to the transboundary Stikine, Iskut, and Unuk watersheds. Four huge open pit mines are proposed on the Canadian side of the border, along with associated roads and infrastructure, and more mines are under serious consideration. All the development and contaminated water that could come with it would be upstream of prime salmon habitat. And what may be North America’s largest run-of-river hydroelectric power complex is slated for the Iskut. Two factors are behind this impending development boom. One is sky high metals prices. The other is BC government’s decision to build a transmission line bringing subsidized industrial power into the southern transboundary region.

For our part, we will raise awareness of what could be lost, push government to consider cumulative impacts of the development it is championing, and demand an international conversation about the future of transboundary watersheds, especially relative to wild salmon.

Because one thing is certain. Wild salmon just don’t need another threat.

Taku River Task Force

After months of discussion and negotiation between Alaska bipartisan legislators, government officials, commercial fishermen, sport fishermen, property owners, processors, businesses, and other stakeholders, including Rivers Without Borders, a Taku River Citizen’s Task Force has been established. The Task Force embodies Resolutions introduced in the 2011 Alaska legislature reflecting these community concerns. Juneau’s legislative office made the official announcement of the Task Force on September 19th.

The Task Force will provide a public forum to consider the Taku and its importance to Southeast Alaska, assess threats to wild salmon habitat, and explore ways to ensure the long term productivity of the watershed. Potential Canadian mining immediately above the Taku’s premier salmon habitat, and the prospect of related barging and dredging, is driving the creation of this unprecedented citizen’s body.

The facilitated eight member Task Force is scheduled to meet in a series of meetings in Juneau this fall. It is to report its findings and recommendations to the 2012 legislature.

In addition to highlighting the Taku’s ecological and economic importance relative to wild salmon via a formal, legislatively sanctioned citizen’s body, the Task Force underscores that Alaskans care about the Taku, and that upstream activities on this international river could have downstream consequences. It should be noted that Task Force deliberations will only apply to the river itself, as opposed to the larger river corridor, and that traditional river usage will in no way be affected by any habitat protection recommendations. Concerns about river barging and dredging relative to salmon will figure prominently in discussions.

Salmon is at the heart of the Southeast Alaska lifestyle

An opinion piece today in the Juneau Empire by Heather Hardcastle, co-owner of Taku River Reds, and Mason Bryant, a retired research fisheries biologist with the U.S. Forest Service, highlights the importance of conserving salmon habitat to the economy of Southeast Alaska. The authors note, “The more than 5,000 salmon streams in the Tongass National Forest produce roughly one-third of all salmon caught on the West Coast…” They go on to say, “Continued high salmon productivity in Southeast Alaska is directly tied to the health of the watersheds that produce these fish.” This is especially true in the Taku, the most productive salmon river in all of Southeast Alaska.

As noted in a recent study, the economic impact of Southeast Alaska’s salmon and trout fisheries reach toward the $1 billion mark in local $, and 10% of jobs in the region. 96% of Alaskans recognize this strong personal connection to salmon and believe that the fish is essential to the Alaska way of life according to a recent survey reported in the Anchorage Daily News. The Taku River alone supports hundreds of sport and commercial fishing jobs and contributes millions of dollars to the regional economy.

As Heather and Mason state, “Salmon is at the heart of the Southeast Alaska lifestyle.” Conserving salmon habitat, and the watersheds that are an essential part of that habitat, is key to the economic viability of the region.

Salmon habitat and local fishing jobs in danger

The Tulsequah Chief mine is in the news again. After recently barging equipment up the Taku River, the Canadian mining company Chieftain Metals, its current owner (with ties to the former owner, bankrupt Redfern Resources), announced its intent to begin active development of the mine in 2012. With development planned so soon, there is little apparent option other than the river as the transportation corridor for this mine.

Jev Shelton, a Juneau resident who has fished commercially for 51 years and served Alaska on the Pacific Salmon Commission for 15 years, has called for a public forum on the plan to barge mining materials down the Taku River in a My Turn piece in the Juneau Empire.

The Taku River is the largest salmon producer in Southeast Alaska. As Jev says, “Maintaining that productivity is a matter of importance for the entire Juneau community.”

Full Fish Box?

The ad below promoting the significance of the Taku watershed relative to wild salmon recently appeared in the Juneau Empire and the Capital City Weekly. This is part of Rivers Without Borders’ continuing effort to highlight the potential Canadian Taku mining right over the Alaska border, and its associated industrial barging up the Taku river. These activities could diminish the salmon values that are of such economic importance to Southeast Alaska.

With the Atlin-Taku Land Use Plan now finalized and approved, leaving open resource development activity in the Tulsequah Valley, Alaska support for or opposition to Tulsequah mining may be a crucial factor in determining whether the reopening of the Tulsequah Chief mine moves forward in the Taku watershed.

Atlin Taku Land Use Plan

The Taku River Tlingit First Nation and the government of British Columbia recently announced the Atlin Taku Land Use Plan. This management plan covers the entire Canadian side of the transboundary Taku watershed. The agreement establishes a system of decision making for land use management, and sets aside a large part of the region for conservation.

The Land Use Plan is a notable conservation achievement. But Rivers Without Borders is concerned that it leaves the Tulsequah Valley open to mining development. The Tulsequah Valley is just up river from the confluence of the Tulsequah and Taku rivers, and right above the Taku’s best salmon habitat, a maze of winding streams and backwaters vital to rearing salmon. The Taku river is Southeast Alaska’s most important salmon producer.

Chieftain Metals is now proposing to re-open the Tulsequah Chief mine within the area set aside in the Land Use Plan for resource development. A recent article in the Juneau Empire announces the Plan and discusses the development of the Tulsequah Chief.

Tulsequah mine owners barging again in the Taku

In what most people here in Juneau hope will not become a regular or annual event, industrial barging has returned to the Taku River. The new owner of the Tulsequah Chief and Big Bull mines, Chieftain Metals, barged materials upriver to the two mines last week and plans more barging this month.

Chieftain Metals Inc. barging equipment up the Taku river to the Tulsequah mine site in June 2011. Photo courtesy of Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

Despite the previous owner’s (Redfern) inability to develop the mine and eventual bankruptcy, Chieftain is ramping up its efforts to develop the two mines, with a new exploratory drilling program underway and a new preliminary feasibility study just released.

With no road access for the foreseeable future and Chieftain planning on starting construction next year, the Taku is likely to see extensive barging for at least the next few years, if the project proceeds, and possibly longer. A soon-to-be released Land Use Plan developed by the Taku River Tlingit First Nation and the BC government clearly demonstrates a preference for mine access via river barge and raises a number of significant hurdles to an access road. Chieftain still has not obtained a Special Use permit for the road.

While last week’s few barge runs came off without incident (unlike Redfern’s barging in 2007 and 2008), the frequent, year-round river barging required for mine development and operation poses clear threats to the Taku’s water quality and wild salmon.

After the experience with Redfern, numerous sport and commercial fishermen, fish processors, charter operators, former Alaska Department of Fish and Game fisheries managers and many other businesses, groups and individuals called for stronger habitat protections and more public involvement in the Taku. Yet progress has been slow.

If Alaskans hope to proactively initiate any management measures to safeguard the lower Taku salmon habitat from industrial barging, now is the time to have that conversation, before barging gets a serious foothold on the river.

Protecting the wild salmon of the Taku

Writer Timothy Egan’s 3/17/11 New York Times opinion piece titled “Frankenfish Phobia” is a good read. With a few choice words, he evokes the seasonal wonder that is spring Chinook salmon returning to home waters. “The alpinists of the maritime world” he calls them, honoring their long upstream journeys from the sea to interior Pacific Northwest mountain headwaters to spawn and die.

Egan compares this marvel of nature with a new product of technology, the so-called Frankenfish – “a lab created hybrid that could soon become the first genetically engineered animal approved by the [U.S.] Food and Drug Administration for human consumption.” This modified Atlantic salmon, reared in captivity, apparently grows to market size in half the time wild salmon require, without the complexities of arduous fresh water river journeys, a life at sea covering vast swaths of the north Pacific, or the need to, miraculously, return to the stream of birth. As Egan says, with Frankenfish it’s “fast fish from the factory, without the hassle of habitat preservation.”

Rivers Without Borders isn’t ready to embrace this new approach. We’re continuing to call for habitat preservation, because we believe wild salmon are a good thing, and wild salmon need wild rivers.

That’s why we’ve been advocating for a proactive measure to protect the Taku. In the heart of the Alaska- B.C. transboundary region, the Taku is southeast Alaska’s number one salmon producer, and one of Canada’s top salmon systems. It’s also threatened by proposed mining development. The Land Use Plan being finalized for the Canadian side of the watershed will protect significant portions of the Taku. And we’ve hoped the Alaska legislature would see fit to designate the lower Alaska portion of the river as Critical Habitat in light of its importance to salmon. Such a designation would insure that salmon habitat is safeguarded.

All this fits with something else Egan wrote. Alaskan’s enjoy “the world’s largest salmon runs because they’ve protected habitats, kept water quality fairly good and regulated fishermen.”

We wish it were so simple. Despite strong and diverse Alaskan support for a Taku Critical Habitat designation, led by commercial and sport fishermen and processors, there has been resistance to this initiative to protect salmon, based, it seems, on a general dislike of proactive government oversight. Where we had hoped to see a Taku Critical Habitat bill advance in the 2011 Alaska legislature, it hasn’t happened. Sights were lowered to a Resolution creating a citizen task force to consider means, including Critical Habitat, to protect Taku salmon runs. But even that goal has encountered opposition. The Resolutions did get introduced, with good language about the importance of the Taku, how fishermen depend on it, and the need for stewardship, but they did not pass out of the legislature. They are in a good position to advance in next year’s session, though the delay is unfortunate.

If anyone opposes Frankenfish, it’s Alaskans. And if anyone appreciates the value of wild salmon, and where they come from, it’s Alaskans as well. But appreciation is not enough. Action is needed, especially if Egan’s words about Alaska’s commitment to protecting salmon habitat are to ring true.

The Taku is a “Most Endangered River” in 2011

The Taku is once again on British Columbia’s “Most Endangered Rivers List” for 2011. The list, released by the Outdoor Recreation Council on April 18^th, placed the transboundary Taku at number seven, citing mining related concerns threatening its exceptional natural values.

That the Taku remains on the list is particularly unfortunate in light of the Land Use Plan now being finalized between British Columbia and the Taku River Tlingit First Nation. Covering the northwest corner of the province, the Plan embraces all the Canadian portion of the Taku watershed. According to the provincial government, it will provide for “world class salmon management,” and indeed it does protect the main stem Taku (to the Alaska border) and the Taku’s Nakina and Inklin tributaries, representing a significant conservation gain. But the Plan also sanctions a mining district in the Tulsequah Valley, where the Tulsequah River joins the Taku just before crossing into Alaska. From an environmental perspective, this would be a terrible location for such development.

Small scale mining occurred in the Tulsequah Valley into the 1950s. Two abandoned mine sites have been bleeding acid and toxic metals into the Tulsequah River ever since. Fortunately the pollution is not sufficient to cause major impacts, but it’s a vivid warning that the sulfide geology of the area, if disturbed by mining, will generate acid. A bigger mine, or mines, would be bound to produce more acid. Add an abundance of rain and snow to the mix, frequent flooding, avalanches, plus seismic activity at this remote locale, and all the makings of a serious environmental problem are there. With a tailings impoundment failure, for example, the consequences could be catastrophic. The Taku’s best salmon habitat, a maze of winding streams and backwaters vital to rearing juvenile salmon, is immediately downstream of Tulsequah. And virtually all of some two million salmon leaving or returning to the Taku system annually must pass by Tulsequah.

In sum, mining at Tulsequah would undermine conservation gains of the Land Use Plan. That threat is the reason the Taku, one of North America’s premier wild salmon systems, is also one of British Columbia’s most endangered rivers.

Fishing is $1 Billion industry in Southeast Alaska

A recent article in the Juneau Empire announced the results of a study commissioned by Trout Unlimited to generate numbers on the economic impact of Southeast Alaska’s salmon and trout fisheries. Those numbers add up, reaching toward the billion mark in local dollars and 10% of jobs.

To read the article, click here. To see the study, click here.