Stakeholders
in Alaska’s salmon fisheries, including the Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development
Association, were in London for the annual general meeting of a major Pebble prospect
developer and also to meet privately with two mining giants.
Bob
Waldrop, director of the BBRSDA, said the talks with Anglo American PLC, of London,
a partner in the mine with Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. of British Columbia, was
of enormous importance because of the frank private discussions they had.
Waldrop
was accompanied by leaders of the Bristol Bay Native Corp. and Nunamta Aulukestai
(Caretakers of the Land), which represents nine Alaska Native villages in the Bristol
Bay opposed to the mine. The group also met privately with executives from Rio Tinto,
a London-based mining giant that is a minority shareholder in both Anglo American
and Northern Dynasty.
The
Alaskans also attended the annual general meeting of Rio Tinto, where Tom Albanese,
that company’s chief executive officer, told shareholders his company has no interest
in seeing the Pebble prospect developed as an open pit mine, because of questions
about environmental impact.
“I’m
interested in looking at it from an underground perspective,” Albanese told shareholders.
I have no interest in looking at it from an over ground perspective. An open pit
mine is not the way to go… in my opinion.”
Waldrop
said that to a person, those whom the Alaskans met with from Anglo American “were
very tolerant of our dissent to their investment in the Pebble prospect, but I don’t
believe we changed anybody’s mind.”
Alaska
groups opposed to development of the mine, out of concern for potential adverse
affects on the region’s renown wild salmon runs, have been joined in their protest
by an increasing number of businesses and organizations, most recently a contingent
of national sport anglers and hunters who converged on Washington D.C. earlier this
month to meet with members of the Obama Administration and Congress.
The
Pebble Partnership has maintained that the mine can be developed and operated in
harmony with the fisheries.