A TOXIC WAR IN ALASKA | 1

b y K i l e y A u s t i n - y o u n g

SILENCE REIGNS OVER the land. Glaciers

and snowfields thaw in the sun, dissolving

into the torrents of ceaseless rivers. The jag-

ged banks show the green shoots of summer,

but there are no commercial fishermen. The

melted, mossy mush of beaver ponds, but

no concrete dams. The stern, white faces

of craggy buttes, but no ski tourers or snow

machines. This is the Wild, the savage, vast

Northland Wild.

Today, there are men here—gainseekers

groping in the Arctic darkness. And they have

found a yellow metal.

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the place is the Bristol Bay region of Alaska, about two hun-dred miles southwest of Anchorage and seventy miles from tidewater at Cook inlet. this place is the foremost wildlife area in all of Alaska, the source of the largest salmon runs on the planet, home to more than one hundred thousand cari-bou and tribes of moose and bear, and not least, the towns of iliamna, nondalton, and newhalen—small villages of indig-enous, subsistence peoples who have been in the region for thousands of years, carving a culture and a life out of nature.

And here lies a great fortune—a treasure trove tucked in the tundra, resting as calmly as the grizzly bear and caribou herds that graze on the doorstep of its vault. the booty, a vast depository of gold and copper, lies at the headwaters of the Mulchatna/nushagak River and the newhalen/Kvichak River—two of the most famous salmon-producing river drainages on the planet. Both feed into Bristol Bay, where an estimated forty million salmon come to spawn each year. experts say the deposit—some eighty million pounds of cop-per, over one hundred million ounces of gold, and six billion pounds of molybdenum—could be worth as much as half a trillion dollars.

On far-away fields, in the courts of Anchorage and in the corridors of Washington D.C., there is a burgeoning battle over a proposed open-pit mine of almost mythical size—to be called Pebble—which would extract the metals while altering the landscape irrevocably and, many say, pushing the native salmon, ecosystem, and cultures into extinction.

if built, the mine will be one of the largest in the world. its open pit will carve twenty-seven hundred feet into the earth’s crust. each day, the resource-thirsty operation will soak up at least twenty million gallons of fresh water and use more energy than the city of Anchorage. it will include the grandest dam on the globe, a structure bigger than three gorges Dam in China—made not of concrete but of dirt and rock, in order to hold back the toxic waste created in the mining process. the estimated seven billion tons of toxic dust will need to be responsibly contained.

Ken taylor, head of environmental assessment for the group seeking to develop the mine, pitches cleanliness as a cer-tainty, boasting that the project will result in “zero loss” to fisheries.

But a rag-tag cadre of conservationists, sportsmen groups, businesses, commercial fisherman, and Natives—led by an improbable but powerful ally, Anchorage-based businessman Robert gillam—is unconvinced. they think responsible con-tainment is a fantasy or a fairytale at best, a lie or a scam ped-dled by Pebble’s backers at worst. They are forging a fierce oppositional fight.

if a portion of the seven billion tons of rock were not properly contained, if even traces of the toxic dust—arsenic, mercury, acid drainage, and copper tailings—were to flow or blow into the fish-filled streams, the red salmon, and by extension, all the wildlife in the area, would begin to die. Chemical con-

centrations of three or four parts per billion in fresh water destroy a salmon’s ability to navigate and thus threaten its ability to spawn. gillam insists the mine would mean “the destruction of the last great salmon run on earth.”

the impassioned, partisan hullabaloo over the Arctic nation-al Wildlife Refuge (AnWR) pales in comparison to the cata-clysm erupting over Pebble. the Bristol Bay area of Alaska is shaping up to be ground zero for the most important envi-ronmental, ecological, and political war this nation has seen in years. the war—as Bill lardley put it in a New York Times feature—is one between economies and cultures, copper and clean water, gold and wild salmon.

sinCe tHe RussiAn fur trappers arrived in the 1780s, the last Frontier has been a place where man harvested nature, pressing out of it, like juices from the grape, all the glittery exaltations and conjured self-values of his race. Fir and oil and natural gas dwelled among the blind elements and great forces of nature, where they were found and co-opted, trans-ported, sold.

More than a century ago, man first discovered the yellow metal, and with steamship and transportation companies booming the find, thousands rushed into the Northland. Since then, mining has been encoded in Alaska’s genes.

Miners are now digging precious metals out of the ground in Alaska at the fastest clip since 1916. As several of the world’s most reliable currencies plummet in confidence and exchange value, precious metals are going for record prices—gold is now worth over $1,100 per ounce—boosting fervor for great-er fortunes among mining conglomerates.

the Pebble Partnership—composed of Anglo American, a london-based company, and northern Dynasty, a Canadi-an company that has never built a mine—seeks permission to build the Pebble mine. if allowed, Alaska could join the ranks of the world’s largest gold producers, bringing bullion to market on par with the outputs of south Africa or China or Russia. the multi-billion-dollar industrial excavation at Pebble would require the construction of bridges and dozens of miles of roads and electric power lines across wild, undeveloped terrain; the erection of prodigious pipelines for fuel and rock slurries; the impoundment of large quantities of surface wa-ter; and the frenzied transport and use of toxic chemicals.

the opposition sees the environmental risks as unacceptably high. they frame their foes as despoiling, money-minded mischief-makers with no concern but immediate commercial success. They point to dire scientific research reports and enshrine the words of state and federal biologists who warn that toxic residue from the project could irreparably harm the

salmon, crippling the fishing industry and the entire ecosys-tem.

ultimately, the biggest battle is poised to erupt in the politi-cal realm, where the judgment is split. three former Alaskan governors, two Republicans and a Democrat, and former sen-ator ted stevens, a Republican, have spoken out against the mine. in november 2009, governor sean Parnell shot back at the Pebble critics, pledging that the state would “vigorously defend” the permits it grants and its mine-permit process.

Proponents claim the mine would be an economic godsend to the region. the mining conglomerates say they will hire the rural peoples who have yet to enjoy the industrial innovations of the modern era. others foresee broken promises, as the mining companies import skilled laborers from abroad.

local, indigenous peoples are split. the business bigwigs boast of $70,000 annual salaries—the alluring promise of a better life and nicer things, the fruits of capitalism to which many of the peoples sustained by salmon have never been privy.

supporters note that mining yields many millions each year in local and state tax revenue, as well as in payments to Alaska native corporations; newly swollen government coffers and villages flush with cash could pave asphalt roads and con-crete runways, building better schools and post offices and playgrounds. the new money could buy tranches of Ameri-can culture’s modern mainstays as well. Copper, credit cards, and Citigroup subprime. Bullion, Jeeps, and Jim Beam bend-ers. the good life.

tHe stoRy Begins, like so many others, with sarah Pa-lin.

When she was a candidate for governor in Alaska, Palin bragged of her love for the vast and beautiful delta that drains into Bristol Bay—the salmon-filled province where tens of millions of the red swimmers come to spawn each year. in a campaign questionnaire, Palin promised that, “as part of a Bristol Bay fishing family”—her husband Todd is a part-time commercial fisherman and was raised near Bristol Bay—she would not “support any resource development that would endanger the most sensitive and productive fishery in the world.” Speaking to residents of a small native fishing village during her gubernatorial run, Palin gushed: “My daughter’s name is Bristol…i could not support a project that risks one resource that we know is a given, and that is the world’s rich-est spawning grounds, over another resource.”

But in August 2008, governor Palin dealt a death-blow to a pivotal statewide ballot initiative, Ballot Measure 4 or Prop 4, that would have enacted stricter guidelines and standards under which all mines operate. the Pebble-interested mining

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companies and the Resource Development Council of Alaska spent more than $9 million to fight the proposal, an unprec-edented sum for a political referendum in one of the nation’s least populous states. the opposition groups, led by Bob gil-lam, the initiative’s architect and single biggest individual donor, pledged hefty sums as well.

television, radio, and internet advertisements evoked dispa-rate portraits of the Pebble proposal—exploding mine sites and suffering red sockeye salmon on one side, sturdy-looking miners and contented natives on the other. the pro-Pebble and anti-Pebble portraits clogged the state’s airwaves and stuffed mailboxes for months. (The total sum spent fighting the initiative was a state record.)

During the run-up, Palin remained officially neutral—as governor of the state, she was not permitted to take sides on ballot measures. then, six days before the late-August vote, with the polls revealing a razor-thin difference in sentiment, Palin broke her silence. “let me take my governor’s hat off for just a minute here and tell you, personally, Prop 4—i vote no on that.” she went on to defend the permit process and praised what she saw as the stringent regulatory require-ments. “We’re going to make sure that mines operate only safely, soundly.”

the comments rocked the referendum. in less than twenty-four hours, the pro-mining coalition had placed full-page newspaper ads with Palin’s likeness and the word “no” in large black typeface. The initiative was defeated, with fifty-seven percent against.

Palin was cleared of wrongdoing by the Alaska Public of-fices Commission, which said Governor Palin made it clear her statement was a personal opinion and not the official po-sition of the state or the governor’s office. Palin’s stunt irked many. Former governor tony Knowles, a Democrat who lost to Palin in 2006, said: “Being a governor is not a costume—you either are the governor or not.”

on August 29, 2008, three days after the vote, sarah Palin was named Republican senator John McCain’s running mate, and the referendum was forgotten.

McCain campaign spokeswoman Meghan stapleton defended the charges against the then Vice Presidential candidate: “she supports responsible resource development…this is about process and ensuring that any company that wants to come to Alaska and develop our resources is at the very least provided the ability to avail themselves of the state’s process.”

the permitting process, involving both federal and state agencies, is a public-private hybrid whereby the agencies release their findings and conclusions for public comment. Many of the supporters do not defend the mine; they defend the process. But unfortunately for the opposition, the process is set up to approve, not to reject.

Alaska has never before denied a proposal for the construc-tion of a large-scale mine.

tHe ReFeRenDuM DeFeAt bruised the opposition cast, which remains an unlikely ensemble. At the helm is gillam, a lifelong Alaskan with conservative political ties who hap-pens to own land and a luxury lodge twenty-four miles from the area of the proposed mine. ironically, gillam spends his days and makes his dollars supporting global economic de-velopment; as president of an international investment firm he founded in 1990, he deploys billions of investor capital into enterprises just like Pebble all over the globe.

For years, gillam avoided the media spotlight, but he re-vealed his stance on Pebble publicly in a July 2009 Anchor-age Daily News op-ed. gillam wrote: “When all the copper and gold is gone, we will be left with the largest earthen dam in the world holding back perhaps the largest toxic dump on earth. the mine developers will take our copper and gold, make their money and be gone. Alaska will be left with a dev-astated river drainage system, a toxic dump and no jobs.”

in person, gillam is a stern, gruff, bulk of a man—rotund but not soft. He’s hard to the core, adorned with a kind of weather-beaten and war-torn cloak of confidence, the living product of working-class roots, of days and nights working for his keep, of millions made and lost, of near-bankruptcy and fortune. Absent is the regal, haughty bearing of a man who has amassed an immense wealth. His stature is more fittingly low-brow, commensurate with his humble origins, nights spent cooking his catch in his old two-bedroom cabin, talent for fishing and facility with a shotgun, expert handling of a single-engine Cessna, and days traipsing the wild he now wants to protect.

since his involvement began, gillam has been the object of virulent attacks, public scorn, lawsuits, threats, and criminal allegations. northern Dynasty employees and other potential Pebble beneficiaries have painted him as a villain, and a site called “Bob gillam Can’t Buy Alaska” pilloried his character and charged that protection of his nine-bedroom, fourteen-thousand square-foot home was the self-interested motive for his opposition effort (the page has since been taken down).

The Pebble fight does not come cheap even to Gillam, report-edly among the richest men in Alaska. He has, in his own words, put his money where his mouth is. He was a pivotal player in the record-breaking political ad war over the 2008 ballot initiative. By his own admission, he contributed $2 mil-lion to Virginia-based Americans for Jobs security (AJs) and more than $850,000 directly to the pro-initiative campaign.

How the money was donated became a headache and a cam-paign-finance conundrum for Gillam starting in March 2009. in the aftermath of the vote, trench warfare continued as the

pro-Pebble conglomerate and the Resource Development Council filed campaign-finance complaints against Gillam and the anti-Pebble groups.

they squawked to the state of gillam’s alleged improprieties and asked for civil and criminal prosecution. At issue was the connection between gillam and the groups to which he contributed, organizations like AJs and the Renewable Re-sources Coalition (RRC). Both AJs and RRC in turn used the money to fund Alaskans for Clean Water (AFCW), a non-profit organization formed to raise money for and advocate in support of Prop 4.

the charge was that AJs and RRC used the money from gillam to support the ballot campaign while keeping the original source of the funds secret according to its internal policies—an illegal “pass through.” The Alaska Public Offices Commit-tee (APoC), the same watchdog who acquitted Palin of wrongdoing in the hat affair, dropped two out of eight charges, and they declined to recommend a criminal investi-gation. gillam, supported by RRC and AJs, continued to claim that the decisions to use the money to fund AFCW were made by those organi-zations alone—a claim still disputed by APoC staff, reportedly, due to the timing of the contributions and the relationships among the parties.

in late February of this year, the prosecutors and the defendants agreed to a settlement of $100,000, which was not a “fine” or a “penalty.” The defendants admit-ted no wrongdoing but promised not to make “pass through” donations in the future.

There are outstanding campaign-finance charges against the pro-Pebble groups as well. in an e-mail, gillam reminds: “there are new APoC complaints over the miners that now show that foreign mining companies spent over $15 million to defeat [the ballot measure]...and that much of it was not reported until six months after the election.” Byzantine fi-nancing aside, there is no doubt that the mine’s backers spent princely sums in an effort to buy the election.

gillam is quick to point out that he made contributions—at least $1 million to AJs, records show—before the initiative was even approved by the Alaska supreme Court on July 3, 2008. gillam pledged the funds after having surgery and while battling life-threatening blood clots—he contributed the money, he says in an admission of his own mortality,

“knowing i might not make it.”

gillam, whose health has since rebounded, believes the com-plaints were filed by the mining interests to intimidate him. But instead of running scared, he is emboldened. no longer press-shy, he wants to proclaim his position to the public. in addition to his op-ed, he was a willing subject of a lengthy profile published this spring in Alaska Magazine. He thinks he has been unfairly vilified and that his critics’ caricature of him as a well-endowed not-in-my-back-yarder belies his motive, protecting the interests of his home state. “i’m doing this,” he told his profiler, “because it’s the right thing to do.”

george Jacko, a resident of impact-ed community Pedro Bay, wrote in defense of gillam as early as 2007: “Bob gillam has given con-cerned local folks a voice; without his involvement and resources, we would be buried under hundreds of pages of northern Dynasty permit applications, dependant on state and local borough governments for understanding, protection and bal-ance.” Jacko continued: “Agree or disagree with the way Bob gillam wages war against the Pebble Mine, but agree and give thanks to him for being a good neighbor, willing to lend a hand, willing to engage us all in debate over the pros and cons of the mine.”

gillam cites three pillars of cons in opposing the mine: history and science—which he says shows that mines of this size built in environ-

ments of this kind are sure to see problems; business sense—which he draws on in supporting renewable resources over non-renewable resources and in siding with profits for the lo-cal fishing industry over profits for foreign corporations; and cultural heritage—of which, he says, vibrant local villages and peoples would be deprived by the mine’s incursion.

When he talks about Pebble, his measured, cocksure voice becomes rushed with a frenzy of thoughts and words—the flavor of marked urgency, almost anger, reveals that he’s driven both by love for what he thinks is at stake and by con-tempt for those he feels are slighting Alaska, underestimating and denigrating him, abusing the public trust, and betraying treasures of unrivalled, if perhaps unexplainable, import.

At summer’s dusk, gillam is composed before a group of guests at his lodge. He sits on his spacious wooden deck with views of lake Clark, an aquamarine pool in a faraway para-dise, where he is prone to rock peaceably in his chair, tell a

BOB GILLAm, an Anchorage-based business-man, believes the Pebble mine would mean the destruction of the last great salmon run on earth.

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good story, and argue the finer points of Bourbon and Scotch. As he rocks, the successes and accomplishments of his life seem the bedrocks of his ease. But for all the spoils of past victories, he is now embroiled in a fight for a victory that could prove Phyrric. He does not say it, but there is a sense that a loss here would be costlier than any prize he has failed to capture in life, more pivotal than any bravado or ego he might have forfeited before.

Listening to him talk about Pebble, fluctuations of sentiment are apparent, and gillam tempers bouts of near-manic opti-mism and upswings of gusto with cautious pessimism and doubt, as he laments the power of his foe.

indeed, Bob gillam is still David to the pro-Pebble goliath, which altogether wields more power, more money, and more motive than gillam ever will. they are a multi-billion-dollar mining behemoth vying for the flagship jewel in their fleet. For 2009 alone, the Pebble Partnership—the joint venture between northern Dynasty and Anglo American—allocated $70 million to advance the project. the companies announced that they would spend $72.9 million in 2010.

The eight- and nine-figure sums purchase influence even Alaska’s wealthiest cannot afford, but in Bob gillam’s case, votes might help trump dollars. last year, the Anchorage Daily News’ gossip section suggested that gillam’s anti-Peb-ble editorial in July 2009 was the strongest indication yet that a rumored run for governor was in the works. gillam admits that he has considered a run for the office, from which he might wield voter-backed power and squash the Pebble proj-ect. Alaska’s political climate often looks like a lawless fron-tier. given the state’s history of political mavericks and ruth-less, moneyed power-brokers, Bob gillam might be uniquely suited to the task of navigating its terrain—one not dissimilar to that of the multinational business he already knows.

if he decides to run and wins, gillam will have an advan-tage against the enemy mercenaries, so many of whom are lining up to back the Pebble Partnership. Charles Hawley, a geologist-geochemist and board member of the pro-Pebble non-profit group Truth About Pebble, loudly disagreed with gillam, whose opinion he derided as “cynical” coming from a man made by investing capital. in his own op-ed this sum-mer, Hawley argued that the money from the mine would stay in Alaska in the form of payment for labor, utilities, and equipment, all while providing royalties and taxes. As far as the environmental concerns, he asserted: “Fugitive dust from surface facilities is controllable and always subject to per-mit.”

the trouble is, the fugitive dust must be kept from the water not for the mine’s lifetime, or even for a decade or a cen-tury after its retirement, but for perpetuity. Controlling seven billion tons of anything is a shaky proposition in a region

fraught with torrential rains, titanic gusts of wind, and winter temperatures dropping to seventy below. An active volcano spews its steam nearby. there is also a fault line thirty miles away, a geologic menace credited with several medium-sized earthquakes each year—and one capable of producing a cata-strophic shock sure to crumble the constructs of men.

For a grain of fugitive dust, it is tough to stay contained. the waterways surrounding the site are less like lines on a map and more like a spider’s web, the strands of the ecosystem similar to the overlapping and twisted streets of a poorly planned city. organs of marshy tan tundras sit between the coronaries of mountain brooks and the veins of fledgling streams. Haphazard conduits of complex hydrology flow and stagnate—each responding to rain and ice-melt and tree cover in unique ways according to an invisible mayor, the arbiter of their biocomplexity. they house life in millions of minute, fragile microcosms like scattered walk-up lofts and dilapidated row homes, the mammals and fish and insects and floral fauna dwelling in undetectable, severed pockets, like miniature Manhattans.

the list of threatening menaces is long: cyanide leakage, acid drainage, mercury pollution, dam failures, volcanic events, torrential rains, and earthquakes. And the menacing forces are permanent forces, there to remain as long as the fusion of the sun. “Perpetuity,” gillam says, asking with a sardonic smirk: “Do you know how long perpetuity is?”

tiFFAny & CoMPAny CHAiRMAn and Chief executive Officer Michael Kowalski seemed to echo Gillam in lending his support: “[the waste] will require containment and per-petual treatment—forever.” two years ago, tiffany became the most powerful voice in its $3.7 billion industry to oppose the precious-metal proposition in Alaska. since then, tiffany has aired its opinion, running a full-page, cyan-colored ad in the october 2009 trade magazine National Jeweler, which stated that the mine’s threat to Bristol Bay superseded “all…immediate financial self-interests.”

tiffany has helped recruit a bevy of other major jewelers to the preemptive boycott. the growing coalition of leading u.s. and u.K. jewelers is refusing to buy any gold mined from Pebble in light of the environmental risks. the play-ers range from small, family-owned boutiques to publicly-traded juggernauts, from prestigious jewelers like Helzberg Diamonds and Zale Corporation to department store chains like sears and Wal-Mart. Kowalski asked: “is the price of developing the Pebble mine simply too high to pay for the jewelry industry, for tiffany jewelry?”

the debate spread south in november 2009. Controversy erupted in seattle after thirteen area restaurants featured wild Alaska salmon on their menus and warned their habitués

about the future of Bristol Bay’s salmon should Pebble pro-ceed as planned. Pebble supporters called for a boycott of the restaurants in their “save Bristol Bay” campaign.

Closer to home, the contentious campaign continues as civil lawsuits fly. In July of last year, a coalition of eight Bris-tol Bay Native village corporations, former Alaska first lady Bella Hammond, and state constitutional convention delegate Victor Fischer alleged that state regulators violated the state constitution when they initially approved exploration permits for Pebble without public knowledge. The group filed suit in the Anchorage superior Court, asking the court to halt explo-ration at Pebble until a judge could issue a ruling.

More recently, letters are being sent and petitions are being filed on both sides. In February of this year, the Alaska Board of Fisheries asked for a review of the permitting system. Days later, several prominent conservation and business groups filed a petition with state regulators to designate a river near the site a protected resource.

William Ahrens, in a December 2009 letter to the editor pub-lished in the Anchorage Daily news, wrote in support of Pebble, lobbing a thinly veiled potshot at gillam: “those op-posing the development of Pebble strike me as myopic or ig-norant or perhaps they’re the wealthy wanting to protect their overpriced luxury fishing lodges where they’re pampered.” Ahrens argued that the mine’s cleanliness would be ensured by “state of the art checks and balances.”

Another reader, Ken Green, fired back at Ahrens, scoffing at the charges of myopia and ignorance. He cited the exx-on Valdez spill and the Summit County mining fiasco near leadville, Colorado as disasters impervious to any check or balance—and as messes taxpayer dollars had to clean up. green warned ominously: a screw up in Bristol Bay would dwarf, in cost and long-term damage, the disasters at Valdez and leadville.

Pebble opponents released a poll in september 2009, con-ducted several months before, that found seventy-nine per-cent of local residents surveyed believed the mine would damage Bristol Bay’s wild salmon fishery. Another survey sponsored by nunamta Aulukestai, an organization repre-senting thousands of Alaska native shareholders in the Bris-tol Bay region, found that eighty-eight percent of Bristol Bay residents do not want Pebble built.

scott Hawkins, a board member of truth About Pebble, denounced the polling techniques of the opposition as ex-tremely biased and unprofessional. He wrote that “phony” polls were “one more well-funded attempt to bias the public against a project that has not even completed its development plan yet.”

Polling legitimacy notwithstanding, a recent schism shows that Pebble opposition support among native Alaskans is far from unified. Early in December 2009, the board of the Bris-tol Bay native Corporation (BBnC) broke its neutrality on the Pebble project with a vote against its development, citing

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“the unquantifiable impacts the project could have on the natural resources of the Bristol Bay region.” the BBnC, as the combined voice of thousands of Alaska native shareholders residing in the region, was an important addition to the opposition. the mining companies expressed disappointment.

But days after news of the vote was released, two Bristol Bay village corporations said they were outraged by the BBnC’s deci-sion to oppose the mine. Alaska Peninsula Corporation and Pe-dro Bay Corporation condemned the opposition by the BBnC, which they said is endangering their development and growth by hampering the mine’s progress. the BBnC release was “an out-rageous and dictatorial act,” and was “…based on irrational fear mongering, [threatening] our very ability to survive,” said Pedro Bay Chairman John Adcox and Alaska Peninsula President Ralph Angasan, respectively.

the pro-Pebble Angasan sung a tale of woe—of the highest un-employment rates and living costs in the nation, of declining pop-ulations in villages, of closing schools and withering communi-ties. He argued that wise development of the area resources was the cure.

less clear is what hidden motive Adcox and Angasan might have in defending Pebble. When exploration began, lawmakers raised concerns that mining officials were trying to buy the loyalty of na-tive leaders, paying ludicrous sums to house workers in the homes of influential locals and showering them with gifts.

ethel and John Adcox were reportedly receiving $25,000 per month in rent money for their modest guesthouse in tiny iliamna. Pebble was feeding their entire village—literally—with weekly steak and lobster dinners. ethel Adcox cooed: “it leaves a good taste in your mouth.”

tHe neW Money taste is foreign to a people who have thrived on Alaska’s salmon for thousands of years—a bare-bones exis-tence sustained by the red gold of nature.

And in the Bristol Bay region of Alaska, the two precious re-sources remain. the salmon is a lavish renewable resource, the lifeline of rural Alaska and the darling of the state’s lucrative fish-ing industry. the salmon is forever. And so far it has been—from the time their ancient ancestors crossed the Bering strait up until now, red salmon have been the benevolent beings by which the natives have survived. The precious metals are a finite discovery that could yield riches now.

though the prize is from nature, the war over Pebble is a war among men. it is one of now versus later, instant wealth versus delayed gratification, lust versus prudence. At issue is man’s use of the natural world in which he lives; man’s power to harness the pearls of the planet for his own needs and his own desires; and the treatment of the gift bestowed upon man and his transformation of it, for better or poorer, for the re-wrapping, and re-bestowment, of that gift upon the generations of men who will follow.

The war over Pebble involves sacrifice. Sacrifice, in its noblest manifestations, involves man giving up something he values—a possession or a pastime or a lifestyle or a resource—for something he deems greater. The sacrificial exchange: something ephemeral for something eternal; an object of desire for an object of neces-sity; the finite for the infinite; less for more.

in the coming months and years, the men—from governors and state senators and state representatives to business tycoons to av-erage citizens—will make a sacrifice.

Governor Parnell, while remaining officially neutral, supports the permit process and has recently ordered an independent review of the project to aid its progress. John shively, head of the Pebble Partnership, anticipates that the mine project could proceed to the permitting stage as early as next year. shively is hopeful that the man in the seat of power, the Commissioner of natural Resources, currently thomas irwin, approves the mine and that, some day, he can glimpse the glimmer of gold and copper in the light of the Alaskan day.

other men fear the day that a gust of wind or a shift in the earth’s tectonic plates or a careless mine worker or the force of gravity starts a process of environmental decay and destruction that can-not be stopped or reversed. they fear a wound that no taxpayer surcharge or out-of-court settlement or municipal bond or syn-thetic swap agreement can heal.

shively framed the issue well: “Perhaps it was god who put these two great resources right next to each other…just to see what people would do with them.” Perhaps he is right—men are en-dowed with this absolute gift, but it is a black-and-white pie that is subject to rationing according to endless shades of grey, over which men haggle like street vendors in suits and ties, apparently unaware that life and death are absolutes—and that a drop of the latter spoils a sea of the former.

For now, the water flows pure, and the gold and copper sits se-cure, waiting to be mined and processed and carted off in diesel trucks. or left alone. the mining process, opponents say, would likely destroy the infinite wealth renewed each year by the silently churning cogs of the ecosystem’s eternal engine.

this engine churns far from the bustle of commerce and civiliza-tion. Far from the busy nations and great enterprises of modern-day man, who dwells among strip malls and galleries and crowded avenues, in places where money changes hands with the clink and clash of changing cultures, where blindness and confusion reign. upheaval and disorder, a chaos of gluttony and slaughter ruled by chance and movement—endless, tireless movement.

today, the moose and lynx and caribou roam still, splay hoofs and palmated antlers passing quietly through the shadowy ravines and hump-like hills. the cub hunts for his salmon—his voracious appetite just one of a multitude of appetites, pursuing and being pursued, hunting and being hunted, eating and being eaten, all according to a kind of cosmic justice by which the Wild lives on, forever.