There are few icons of wilderness as powerful as the bears of southwest Alaska. With thousands of them living wild on the Alaska Peninsula, they play crucial roles as ecosystem curators and economic drivers, drawing wildlife lovers from all over the world who support the region’s lucrative sustainable bear viewing industry.
Once regarded as untouchable, the best brown bear habitat in the world faces the risk of becoming a mining district, causing indelible harm to the pristine ecosystem at the headwaters of Bristol Bay. The enormous open-pit mine and transportation infrastructure would affect vast tracts of protected land: Katmai National Park, McNeil River State Game Sanctuary, and Lake Clark National Park protect habitat that supports the world’s largest sockeye salmon run, the largest congregation of bears in the world, and the incalculable riches of untouched wilderness. Those protections now hang in the balance.
Our new short film Pebble Redux: The Bears of Amakdedori brings us to the shores of Pebble’s proposed “Southern Route” transportation corridor. Last month, the Army Corps of Engineers changed which transportation corridor it recommends, highlighting it’s “Northern Route” that cuts through land owned by several Bristol Bay entities that refuse to grant Pebble access to their properties. In either case, the world’s best habitat for Brown Bears is threatened, and Wildlife Photographer and Bear Expert, Drew Hamilton, will show you exactly why.
via: Cook Inletkeeper
