Nowhere is the disconnect between energy policy and climate impacts more evident than in Cook Inlet. In the same waters covered in last month’s federal Oil & Gas Lease Sale 258, federal fisheries managers closed the highly-lucrative Pacific cod fishery in 2019-2020, and they cited – for the first time ever – climate change as the reason. Like...
This has been a frustrating year! Yet another Pebble mine comment period. Oil & Gas Lease Sale 258 in Lower Cook Inlet is happening tomorrow despite being canceled in May. The Cook Inlet beluga whale population is not improving. Our carbon emissions continue to go up, not down as is desperately needed. The best part of this past year...
As Alaskans pay over $4/gallon at the pump, Exxon Mobil Corp. made record-breaking 3rdquarter profits. With rising demand and an undersupplied energy market amplified byWestern sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, the planet-warming dirty money isrolling in fast. If corporations really were people, this one and its cousins would...
It’s easy to feel alone in the conviction that now is the time to stop developingnew oil & gas leases in Alaska. In 2022, we’ve seen Congress mandate that Lease Sale 258 in the federal watersof Lower Cook Inlet move forward before the end of the year; and the BidenAdministration expressing support for the Alaska LNG project and proposing...
This month the National Fish Habitat Partnership announced its list of 10 “Waters to Watch” for 2022. Cook Inlet’s Deshka River was listed as #1. Cook Inletkeeper and partners have invested years of research into better understanding the Deshka River. Management actions to minimize the effects of warming on Deshka River salmon have been limited...
On Monday, I saw a helicopter pilot I hadn’t seen in 14 years. Stan piloted my first trip in Bristol Bay to sample small headwater streams near the Pebble deposit. Seeing Stan brought up a flood of memories and names of people who have contributed to the decades of work to protect Bristol Bay, each in their own way. Stream and geology...
The blue lines on topographic maps necessarily under-represent the complex movement of freshwater across floodplains, through wetlands and gravel bars. For a juvenile fish, the blue lines are experienced as a maze of currents, temperature, food and hiding places, while a migrating adult salmon wends its way along the blue lines of riffles and...
Cook Inletkeeper has been keeping a watchful eye on the west side of the Susitna River for years. When the state of Alaska permitted a 315-mile right-of-way for a gas pipeline to fuel the proposed Donlin Gold Mine, cutting a massive swath from Cook Inlet, over the Alaska Range to the mine site, we joined the sovereign nations of Orutsararmiut...
Salmon are no canaries. They have robust life-history strategies and diverse habitat needs. If we keep their freshwater habitat cold, clean and intact and their marine food web stable without large blobs of warm water, wild Pacific salmon will persist and continue to contribute to global and local food security. Their greatest vulnerability is...
You look at seed catalogs in December. You buy snow blowers in June. You mend nets in August. You prepare for your future guided by your hopes for the future. So let’s all brush aside the fog of uncertainty clouding our vision over these last 18 months and prepare for the future we want in Cook Inlet. After 26 years of working with you and...
