photo by Nic Callero

• Port St. Helens, Oregon - Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, in partnership with Pacific Transloading, plan a facility to export up to 30 million tons of coal.
• Port of Morrow, Oregon - Ambre Energy plans an expansion, a transfer station to off-load coal from rail cars and take them down the Columbia River to St. Helens, to handle 8 million tons of coal a year.
• Coos Bay, Oregon - Port of Coos Bay officials have disclosed they are in “discussions” with coal companies, a plan known as “Project Mainstay.”
• Longview, Washington - The Millennium Bulk Logistics Longview Terminal on the Columbia River Estuary could balloon into a “mega-terminal,” the largest West Coast export facility in the nation, to ship up to 60 million tons of coal a year.
• Cherry Point, Washington - The Gateway Pacific Terminal, proposed by Peabody Energy and SSA Marine, could ship up to 48 million tons of coal per year. Peabody Energy is the country’s largest coal company.
• Gray’s Harbor, Washington - An expansion of the Port of Grays Harbor near the Gray’s Harbor National Wildlife Refuge could threaten one of the largest staging areas for migrating birds in the lower 48.

photo by Nic Callero

The new report makes a strong case that these port proposals will have a negative impact on fish and wildlife and that the Army Corps of Engineers should conduct a programmatic EIS on all projects to gather hard science on potential fish impacts.

Some of these concerns include:

• In the lone biological assessment prepared for any of these proposals to date, numerous ill effects were cataloged for the Morrow Pacific project in Boardman. For example, “The proposed construction at the Port of Morrow will involve piling installation using vibratory and impact hammers, which produce sound levels above the thresholds for fish disturbance and injury.
  

  (Photo: Paulv2c/flickr.com)

• The report cites studies from British Columbia in watersheds supporting similar salmon species indicate that coal dust can have negative impacts on fish. A study of juvenile Chinook in British Columbia found that exposure to the hydrocarbons found in coal dust increased the expression of certain genes that play “crucial roles in cellular metabolism,” one of which can convert cancer causing substances found in coal dust hydrocarbons into active carcinogens.
• In the marine sediments adjacent to the Westshore Terminals coal facility on Roberts Bank, British Columbia, the concentration of coal residues doubled between 1977 and 1999- the concern is that sediments with high levels of coal will become devoid of the oxygen that bottom dwelling plants and animals need to breathe.

The report, “The True Cost of Coal” represents some of the very first vocal concerns from the sportsmen community regarding the proposed coal export terminals.

The Association of NW Steelheaders is one of Oregon and Washington’s most well respected sportsmen voices with a mission dedicated to enhancing and protecting fisheries and their habitats for today and into the future.

Urge the Army Corps of Engineers to thoroughly review the risks to Northwest fish and wildlife from proposed coal export terminals.

National Wildlife Federation’s Oregon affiliate, the Association of Northwest Steelheaders (ANWS), is preparing to launch an exciting and innovative program that aims to help returning war veterans develop new skills and ways of responding to stress while learning to preserve wildlife and the natural habitats that support them.

River Ambassadors

The River Ambassador Program is designed with two goals in mind: to teach the value of preserving wildlife and natural habitats and to assist veterans in developing new skill sets that allow them to better respond to the stress and challenges that inevitably accompanies the return to civilian life.

The program’s initial three-day course, scheduled for September 13-16 near Madras, Oregon, is the brainchild of ANWS’s Executive Director Russell Bassett. A recent Iraq veteran himself, Bassett can speak personally to the great therapeutic healing properties found in the sport of angling and in experiencing the great outdoors. “Angling helps develop coping skills that help alleviate stress and helps find inner peace and a sense of serenity,” said Bassett. “Although the course speaks of life found in rivers and streams through the eyes of the angler, the connection is intentionally to get the participants to integrate successfully back into civilian life and to be life-long stewards of the environment. Respect for nature and its inhabitants are our core focus. The program will foster respect for our differences yet simultaneously celebrate what we have in common as war veterans, a high regard for natural habitats, the sport of fishing and our human bond.”

Participants in the program will have the opportunity to learn the skills of river and nautical reading, and will learn about salmonid life history and conservation, entomology, and different fishing techniques, including fly fishing for trout and steelhead and gear fishing for salmon and steelhead. A guided drift-fishing trip completes the program on the last day. Each participant will receive a full set of fishing gear (rod, reel, lines, flies, lures) for their use during the program and to keep and continue their process on the river wherever life takes them.

Free to Qualified Members of the Military

ANWS’s River Ambassador Program is offered free of charge to qualified members of the military who have recently returned from deployment. With the success of September’s pilot program, plans call for expanding to at least two programs a year in coming years. But that depends on securing adequate program funding and support. Donations of funds or of guiding, rods or equipment to support this terrific program can be made by contacting ANWS via www.nwsteelheaders.org, office@anws.org, or 503-653-4176.

Learn more about the River Ambassador Program here: www.nwsteelheaders.org/conservation/river-ambassador-program

An Alaska brown bear with a trio of cubs. Proposed mining in Alaska's Bristol Bay watershed jeopardizes the habitat of such animals.

The 40,000-square-mile Bristol Bay region of southwest Alaska stretches across pristine tundra and wetlands crisscrossed with rivers that flow into the bay. Up to 40 million sockeye salmon return to this watershed each year—the world’s largest salmon run. In addition to sockeye, there are stunning runs of king salmon plus trophy rainbow trout and the full array of Alaskan wildlife, including grizzly bears, wolves, moose, caribou and waterfowl.

Here are eight things you probably don’t know about Bristol Bay:

1. Native People

For thousands of years, the Native people of Bristol Bay (Yup’ik-Eskimo, Aleut and Athabaskan) have subsisted on the bay’s natural resources. Salmon is the lifeblood of Native village economies and ways of life. In addition to salmon, Native communities in the bay area rely on berries, caribou, moose, marine mammals, ptarmigan, ducks, geese and many plants as their main sources of food. About 7,500 people live in the region, 66 percent of them Alaska Natives.

2. Visitor Attractions

Five national parks, wildlife refuges and designated wilderness areas lie within the Bristol Bay region along with a number of state parks and state wildlife protection areas. From hub communities, visitors can enjoy wildlife viewing, boating, rafting, fishing, hunting, traditional subsistence activities, air tours, hiking, camping, cannery tours, museum tours and historic sites.

3. The Importance of Fish

Commercial fishing and associated canneries have been the major industries in the area for years, accounting for nearly 75 percent of local jobs. Nearly a third of all Alaska’s salmon earnings come from Bristol Bay, which is home to rivers and streams that are as productive today as they were thousands of years ago. Sport anglers come from all over the world for that once-in-a-lifetime experience. In total, an estimated 37,000 fishing trips are taken yearly to Bristol Bay freshwater fisheries, contributing $60 million annually to the state.

4. Wildlife and Bristol Bay

The pristine lakes and rivers that empty into Bristol Bay support all five species of Pacific salmon—king, sockeye, silver, chum and pink—as well as rainbow trout, arctic char, grayling, northern pike, lake trout and Dolly Varden. The region also supports healthy populations of moose, sea otters, grizzly bears, black bears, seals, walruses, porcupines, river otters, beluga whales, orcas, caribou, wolves, bald eagles and one of only two known populations in the world of freshwater seals.

5. The Bad News

Plans for large-scale mineral development in the headwaters of the bay’s best wild salmon rivers—such as the proposed gold- and copper-mining development called Pebble Mine—jeopardize Bristol Bay’s wilderness qualities.

6. How Pebble Mine Threatens Wildlife

Foreign mining companies are eyeing gold and copper deposits under Bristol Bay’s unique watershed. If built, Pebble Mine, located in an unstable seismic zone prone to frequent earthquakes, would be the largest open-pit mine in North America, up to 2 miles wide. It would require:

• massive earthen dams to contain lakes of toxic mine waste t that could leak into surface waters and groundwater;
• a 100-mile-long road into wilderness habitat;
• a major new fossil-fuel power plant that would generate enough power to supply the city of Anchorage;
• and nearly 35 billion gallons of water each year, critically reducing flow to multiple salmon rivers.

Toxic by-products are an inevitable result of such open pit mines, putting salmon, which are highly sensitive to the slightest increases in certain metals such as copper, at great risk.

7. More Development on Public Lands in Bristol Bay

The proposed Pebble Mine is not the only threat to Bristol Bay wilderness, wildlife, and economics. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which administers federal public land in the area, has recommended opening more than 1 million acres of vital fish and wildlife habitat in the Bristol Bay watershed to future hard-rock mines like Pebble. These public, wild lands are integral to the health of Bristol Bay’s salmon-supporting waters. BLM must be persuaded to pursue a future for the region that supports the renewable natural resources of Bristol Bay over the short-term gains of mineral extraction.

8. What NWF Is Doing to Protect Bristol Bay

As wild salmon runs disappear across the planet, Bristol Bay remains a place of international significance, providing a refuge for salmon and the people and wildlife that depend on them. NWF is working with a growing coalition to stop the Pebble Mine and safeguard the irreplaceable resources of Bristol Bay. Native communities, sport and commercial anglers, conservation groups, and NWF’s Alaska affiliate—the Renewable Resources Coalition—are all working together toward this common vision:

• Prevent mining on Bristol Bay’s pristine federal lands and waters.
• Close loopholes in the Clean Water Act to ensure hardrock mines like Pebble are not permitted unless they can protect clean water.
• Support NWF’s Alaska affiliate, Renewable Resources Coalition, in the campaign to stop Pebble Mine and other hardrock-mining development on state lands.

How You Can Help

The pure waters and healthy habitats on which the grizzly bears of Alaska’s Bristol Bay depend could be devastated if mining interests get their way. Please donate today to protect wildlife in Bristol Bay and across America.

TAKE ACTION: Urge the Environmental Protection Agency to protect the wildlife of Bristol Bay against toxic mining.>>

More information

• Alaska Department of Fish and Game
• Our Bristol Bay
• Masterworks of Yupik Science and Survival
• Economic Significance of Sport Fishing in Alaska

A Bear and a Fisherman Both Enjoy Bristol Bay Fishing - photo credit Jim Wagner

Yesterday, 363 sport groups and businesses sent a letter to Lisa Jackson, the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, asking her to protect Alaska’s Bristol Bay region and its world class fishing and hunting from the proposed Pebble Mine. National Wildlife Federation and some of its state affiliates were a part of that letter.

We thanked Administrator Jackson for beginning a scientific assessment of the area’s watershed to determine if large-scale mining is compatible with the fish and wildlife of the region.  But the evidence is already clear–putting a mine that will generate billions of tons of toxic waste rock in the headwaters of the Bristol Bay region will put the entire region’s ecosystem at risk.  So the letter urges Adminstrator Jackson to veto the project NOW!

More than 150 people showed up at the hearing. In the crowd were politicians in suits, anglers in  blue jeans, old men, young women, Native Americans and other people of color, middle school students, urban dwellers and country folk.

Over and over, people who spoke at the meeting urged the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to move faster and do more to keep Asian carp in the Mississippi River system from invading Lake Michigan via the Chicago Waterway System.

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette told federal officials it would be “nuts” for the Corps to take another four years, until 2015, to complete its Great Lakes and Mississippi River Interbasin Study, known as GLMRIS.

“Asian carp are knock, knock, knocking on Lake Michigan’s door,” Schuette said. “Asian carp pose a clear and present danger to the state of Michigan … waiting until 2015 to complete this study is unacceptable.”

The newly elected Schuette has vowed to continue Michigan’s legal fight to force the closure of locks in the Chicago Shipping Canal, a measure that could keep Asian carp from swimming into Lake Michigan.

National Wildlife Federation has urged the Corps to complete the GLMRIS study by mid-2011. NWF and other groups believe the long-term solution to stopping the northern migration of Asian carp is to create a hydrologic barrier between Lake Michigan and the Chicago Waterway System.

Marc Smith, senior policy manager at NWF’s Great Lakes Regional Center, said the Corps can move quickly when it wants to. He said Corps officials needed just three months to identify 18 possible sites where artificial links, such as canal and drainage ditches, could allow Asian carp and other invasive species to move between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River basins.

“That was great — that’s an example that the Corps can move fast,” Smith said.

He urged the Corps to get involved with a privately funded of study of how to create a hydrologic barrier between Lake Michigan and the Chicago Waterway System. That study, commissioned by the Great Lakes Commission and the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative, will cost $2 million and be completed by January 2012.

The Chicago portion of the Corps study will cost $15 million and take at least four more years to complete. Implementing a solution could take several years after that.

“I represent the Grand Traverse Sportfishing Association and our group of more than 500 members has no faith in you,” Ryan Matuzak, a charter boat captain in Frankfort, told Corps officials. “We don’t believe that you care and we don’t believe you are doing enough.”

John Goss, who is President Obama’s Asian carp czar, said federal agencies are doing a good job of “managing” the spread of Asian carp in the Mississippi River basin.

“We are putting the best and brightest (people) in the Great Lakes region into this fight and I believe we are going to be successful,” Goss said.

Matuzak said the Corps should treat efforts to keep Asian carp out of the Great Lakes as a type of war.

“This country has put people on the moon and we can’t stop an invasion in our own country when we know the pathway?” Matuzak said. “We’d like to see some aggressive action. I want to see some fight.”