December 4, 2014 — Good stewardship of the whole watershed matters — from the pristine network of rivers, streams, and lakes where salmon life begins, to the deep ocean waters where they mature and roam until their great migration home again.
For the last 35 years, those dependent upon Bristol Bay have been frustrated by the uncertainty created by federal administrations’ ever-changing positions regarding whether or not to lease Bristol Bay’s rich fishing grounds and adjacent marine waters for offshore oil and gas development. Gov. Jay Hammond first fended off the U.S. Department of the Interior, but by 1988, after Govs. Bill Sheffield and Steve Cowper took up the fight to safeguard the fisheries, all legal recourse was exhausted and the North Aleutian Basin Lease Sale 92 was held, allowing oil and gas development in Bristol Bay to occur.
Exploration would have soon followed, but the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound, spewing oil and fouling waters and coastlines for hundreds of miles, changing the course of events.
Congress intervened to postpone exploration on active leases to allow more time to address the risks to Bristol Bay. Fishermen, seafood companies, and conservation groups, with support from Govs. Wally Hickel and Tony Knowles, descended on Washington, D.C., to press the Interior Department to buy back the leases. In 1995, the leases were canceled, the oil companies went away, and fishermen breathed a collective sigh of relief.
But by 2007, the exact same area that had been bought back was once again being considered for development, only to be canceled again a few years later by the current administration.
Read the full opinion piece at Alaska Dispatch News