April 12, 2021 — Salmon advocates, including members of the Congressional Wild Salmon Caucus, held a briefing Thursday laying out a number of strategies governments can take to incentivize mining companies to make environmental impacts a higher priority.
“We can’t say we’re anti-mining, we are for safe mining,” said U.S. Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, co-chair of the salmon caucus.
Thursday’s briefing focused on ways the provincial government of British Columbia can improve financial assurance laws and make companies take the risk of environmental impact more seriously.
The caucus co-chaired the briefing with Salmon Beyond Borders, a salmon advocacy group working for better protections of salmon habitats. Advocates said one of the major issues impacting salmon habitats is mining pollution in waters that flow from one country into another, in this case from Canada into the U.S. Many of these transboundary rivers are home to salmon habitats that play a critical role in the culture and economy of the Pacific Northwest, advocates said, and companies need to be held responsible for the impacts their industry creates.