{"id":10574,"date":"2015-07-31T07:10:17","date_gmt":"2015-07-31T12:10:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=10574"},"modified":"2015-07-31T07:10:17","modified_gmt":"2015-07-31T12:10:17","slug":"the-wild-alaskan-lands-at-stake-if-the-pebble-mine-moves-ahead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=10574","title":{"rendered":"The Wild Alaskan Lands at Stake If the Pebble Mine Moves Ahead"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The Wild Alaskan Lands at Stake\u00a0If the Pebble Mine Moves Ahead<\/a><\/h3>\n

\"Pebble<\/a><\/p>\n

Robert Glenn Ketchum<\/div>\n
This highland backcountry is some of the wildest in North America and supports an impressive array of wildlife.\u00a0View the photo gallery.<\/a><\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n

The proposed Pebble Mine in southwestern Alaska is a project of almost unfathomable scale. The Pebble Limited Partnership intends to excavate a thick layer of ore \u2014 nearly a mile deep in places \u2014 containing an estimated 81 billion pounds of copper, 5.6 billion pounds of molybdenum, and 107 million ounces of gold. The mine would cover 28 square miles and require the construction of the world\u2019s largest earthen dam \u2014 700 feet high and several miles long \u2014 to hold back a 10-square-mile containment pond filled with up to 2.5 billion tons of sulfide-laden mine waste.<\/p>\n

All this would be built not only in an active seismic region, but also in one of the most unspoiled and breathtaking places on the planet \u2014 the headwaters of Bristol Bay, home to the world\u2019s most productive salmon fishery. Composed of tundra plain, mountain ranges, hundreds of rivers, and thousands of lakes, the greater Bristol Bay region encompasses five national parks and wildlife refuges, and one of the largest state parks in the U.S.<\/p>\n

Landscape photographer Robert Glenn Ketchum first came to this region in 1998, and was immediately captivated by its beauty. He is now part of a broad-based campaign \u2014 which includes numerous conservation groups, fishermen\u2019s organizations, and corporations such as Orvis, Patagonia, and Tiffany \u2014 to halt the Pebble Mine. Despite a highly critical environmental impact assessment from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last year and the defection of major investors, Pebble Mine is not dead, its fate currently wending its way through state and federal courts.<\/p>\n

Ketchum is hopeful that his photographs \u2014 depicting what he describes as \u201cone of the most beautiful places I have ever had the pleasure of spending time\u201d \u2014 may help tip the scales against the gargantuan mine project.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Wild Alaskan Lands at Stake\u00a0If the Pebble Mine Moves Ahead Robert Glenn Ketchum This highland backcountry is some of the wildest in North America and supports an impressive array of wildlife.\u00a0View the photo gallery. The proposed Pebble Mine in southwestern Alaska is a project of almost unfathomable scale. The Pebble Limited Partnership intends to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2037,7704,7703,7163],"class_list":["post-10574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-alaska","tag-pebble-limited-partnership","tag-pebble-mine","tag-yale-environment-360"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10574"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10575,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10574\/revisions\/10575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}