Dr. Karen Hebert, an assistant professor at Yale University, presented her latest research on salmon and environmental politics in Alaska to Carleton students and faculty March 9.
The research details how resource development conflicts in coastal Alaska have affected salmon production.
The talk focused on two projects in Alaska.
The first was the proposed Pebble Mine development in Bristol Bay, in southwestern Alaska. The mine will mainly produce copper and gold, Herbert said.
Bristol Bay is also the home of the world’s largest salmon run and the proposed mine is likely to cause environmental damage that salmon’s development.
In particular, Herbert said Pebble Mine is generating controversy because of its size and the large amount of land needed for the project. Bristol Bay sits on a fault line and is full of wetlands, meaning containing the “tailings ponds”—where chemical runoff ends up—would be difficult.
Because of these factors, the United States Environmental Protection Agency decided to conduct a more detailed investigation, Herbert said. Those against the Pebble Mine are now petitioning to stop the mine development from going forward.
“As groups once competed to use salmon, they now compete to protect the salmon,” Hebert said, during the presentation.
The second project her research focused on was in Sitka, a region in southeastern Alaska, where salmon are being used as political leverage to stop large scale logging development.
In old environmental politics, it was often the pro-business groups, such as the commercial fisheries, versus the environmentalists. However, these two salmon debates are sparking a shift into new environmental politics, Herbet said, where pro-business and pro-environmentalists come together as one.
“It’s been great to travel across two different regions of coastal Alaska,” Hebert said. “[We get to] see the similarities and differences that are evident as people debate different resource development plans such as large scale mining and the continuation of logging.”
The large commercial fisheries in Bristol Bay are selling to higher-end consumers and these companies can afford to implement training practices that treat the salmon more gently, Herbert said.
One example of this is when the fishermen are taught to put a foam layer down on the bottom of the boat to soften the salmon’s fall into the boat, keeping it from being bruised and mishandled.
Hebert noted in her presentation that the key to these new environmental policies could be linked to the presence of a Greenpeace ship in Bristol Bay. The residents thought Greenpeace was there to protest against the Pebble Mine, but was in fact there to monitor the commercial fisheries.
Hebert said the people of Bristol Bay told Greenpeace the mining was a bigger issue, as the fisheries were sustainable, and within a few months Greenpeace had a page detailing the Pebble Mine on its website.
Daniel Rosenblatt, an assistant professor of anthropology at Carleton, attended Hebert’s talk.
“I thought it was wonderful,” he said. “I think it’s just taking this moment where people are having this particular kind of environmental fight and showing what sort of larger scale things are going into that, but also coming out of this particular struggle and showing how it can have other influences.”
Hebert has been conducting research in Bristol Bay, Alaska since 2003, but her research has since brought her to other parts in Alaska. A book on her research is slated to be published by Yale University Press in early 2016.
