00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is me eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten in my case, underwear listening podcast. You can't predict anything presented by on X Hunt creators are the most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters. Download the Hunt app from the iTunes or Google play store. Nor where you stand with on X everybody. I don't want to discourage you from listening to this episode. It's about Pebble Mind in Alaska, and everything you're gonna hear is pertinent and relevant. But here's here's the weird thing. While we were recording this episode with Tim Bristol about Pebble Mind in Bristol Bay, Alaska, a big news story broke. In this eisode you're gonna hear mention of a guy named Tim Collier who works on behalf of Pebble Mind. While we were recording the show, it came out that Tim Collier, who served as CEO role on the Pebble Mind project, was secretly recorded saying some things that are speculated about in this coming episode. This will make more sense after you listen. For instance, he acknowledges to some people who are posing as potential investors to the Mind we're going to be discussing today. He acknowledges not that this would be a twenty year project, but this that phase one of this project would be a one year project. And he discusses certain politicians by name who he says, sure they'll pay lip service, two opponents of the mind, and they'll act like they care about having this mind on right. But at the end of the day, I'm friends with him, I know him, and they'll just rubber stamp the thing. That's an essence I'm I'm paraphrasing them, that's an essence of what this guy says on these secretly recorded tapes. And Tim Collier, who were going to discuss quite a bit in this show, had to promptly resign. So understand that this episode happened in the minutes before this major twist in the story occurred. So dig in and you will walk away borderline expert on pebble Mind, and hopefully, like me, you'll come to the decision that this is the wrong mind in the wrong place and we need to fix this problem once and for all. All Right, we're joined by uh super special guests out of Homer Laste, Tim Bristol, how predictable? Is it that I bring up that? You know? You know what I'm gonna bring up? Look about your name? How that work out? Either chance or faith? You know, take your pick. So what I'm getting at here? His name is Tim Bristol. Yeah, you've dedicated how many years to fighting pebble mine on Bristol Bay? Did you change your name to Bristol? Did not know it's born with that name? At what point where you like, wow, huh, you know my name is the name of that place. I think the best thing about it was when I started going out to these communities, these native villages. You know a lot of us white people all the same, you know, kind of got out there in baseball hats and right and garret and you know I have some kind of you know, scruffy scruffy beard, and they remembered me because they're like Tim Bristol, we remember your last name. It's so good. It's great. So I worked out, you know, it worked out really well. It was that vantageous. Yes, can you uh man like, explain to people as though they're five years old, Yeah, as twenty years old. Explain to people like they're twenty years old. What when someone says pebble mind. Okay, what is pebble mind? Considering that it's at this point it's nothing, But what are we talking about when we talk about Pebble mine. Pebble Mine is a proposal to build either the second largest or the largest open pit golden copper mine in the world at the headwaters of the most productive wild salmon fishery left on the planet. And it's a choice for Alaska. You know, we're we're at a crossroads. We got to decide whether we're going to allow everything everywhere where? Are we just going to say some places are just too important for renewable resources, for thousands of American jobs, for America's you know, natural heritage, and we're not going to allow this to go forward. The superlative largest or second largest. What does that hinge on? Well, it's all about the habitat when you're talking about Sakai salmon production, right, So I'm talking about the mind size like it would be the largest, Like I mean, there's there's varying proposals or like it's unclear how to measure them. Well that there's there's This is where it gets really confusing for the public and incredibly irritating for us that are trying to you know, punch through and tell the truth on this thing. It is the largest known gold resource and the second largest known copper resource in North America. And when the head of the company Pebble Limited Partnership, this guy named Ron Theson, goes and talks to investors at you know World Gold Form and things like that, he talks in those terms, those superlatives, that this is a you know, world class resource that we may be able to mind it for a hundred years or more. But then when Pebble comes back to the public, when Pebble gives a proposal to the Army Corps of Engineers, they say, oh, we're gonna be there for twenty years and then we're gonna go away. And you know, there's really no way to sugarcoat it. It's a flat outline, and the government right now is swallowing it, hook line and sinker. It makes it incredibly frustrating because I just you know, if you talk to people that don't have a that don't have skin in the game, that are experts in the mining world, they'll tell you that they're not going to make any money in the first twenty years, and there's no way they're going to stop after twenty years. The shareholders wouldn't let them. Everybody was part of the company would get sued, and they would just put a whole new set of leadership in there and then apply for a little additional permit and just keep going. Would it somehow make it better if they did stop after twenty years? Yeah? Would that? Would that ease your mind? Not really now? And the other damage will be done as far as like the all the infrastructure and the what it takes to open the mind, right, Yeah, yeah, I I would. I would point I would try to find you know a place in the world where that's happened. Right, we spend billions on infrastructure, roads, a port, uh, getting a natural gas pipeline out there, and and then just quitting after twenty years, right when you you may have not turned to profit by that point, So I just you know that's not going to happen. And then you have a whole bunch of other mineral claims staked around the Pebble Prospect. The thing that people don't realize is you're looking at a thousand square miles and mining claims at the headwaters of Bristol Bay, and that would make it one of the largest mining districts, if not the largest mining district in the world. And you start thinking about the implications for wild salmon production, and you look at wild salmon runs all the all throughout the Pacific rim and you pretty much know all the story is gonna end. You know, have you ever heard this? That all of the gold that's ever that's in existence above ground, So all of the gold that's ever been hauled out of the earth since the Egyptians, there's only enough to fill three Olympic sized swimming pools all of that gold, Forbes estimate. Forbes estimates that that it's would take that all the gold since two thousand BC, including the Egyptians, that all of that gold would fill three point to seven Olympic swimming pools. That's what's ever been dragged out of the earth. Isn't that one die hard movie they had? Do you think pools? Swimming pools? Note joke though either Yeah, it's a lot of volume. The Okay, put your mining engineer head on for a minute about have one of those. But I'll try, Okay, I mean, shooting engineers are smart people. We should have brought one like explained because it's the process, right, part of what pisses people off about Pebble minds Like it's not like you're it's not like a bunch of old dudes dressed up like hatch Jack out there with gold pans pulland nuggets. Yeah, like explain leech you know, cyanide leech mining. Yeah, so you know with Pebble, to get back to the speaking to the twenty year old, it's size type location, right, it's the it's the size of the mind. We we've already talked about that. It would be one of the biggest excavations in the history of mankind really when you include the pit and the infrastructure. So Pebble Pebble, if if to go to full build out, would use more energy on a daily basis in the city of Anchorage. And you've been through there a bunch of times. It's not a small town. It's two sixty people that would suck up that amount of electricity, Yeah, and use fuel and water, use more than twice as much water that is used by a city a two d sixty people on a daily basis. And you know, I don't know if you've ever flown over the mindset area. There's nothing there. I mean, it's just it's just wilderness. Yeah, it's it's an amazing spot. And it drains two ways towards two river systems, up towards the New Segak Malchatna and then down down towards Lake Ilyamna and the the Quejack River. And those are the two major drivers of the of the salmon fishery that I think we'll probably talk about a little bit. But so from an engineering standpoint, you're talking something, you know, the biggest development project in Alaska since they discovered oil in the North Slope and built the Trans Alaska pipeline, and you know dead Horse and Prude Obey and all that kind of stuff. And then uh so, yes, size, and then you have the type of mind So there's a lot of gold and copper in the ground, but it's not a very rich or body. Um. It sits in a in a big sulfide deposit. And you're basically so a friend, a friend of virus who has worked for a long time with us, who has some background in mining, and he used to be the state Senate president. Guy named Rick Alford, lifelong Republican, UM Big Game Guide retired Big Game Guide. He uh, he calls it a sulfur mine with a golden copper component. You have to get through a whole bunch of waste rock to get to the gold and the copper. And then the big problem, the engineering problem, the one that's chased away Anglo American and Rio Tinto and Mitsubishi and Quantum Mineral, some of the heavy hitters has been what the hell are they going to do with all that waste? Because you have those are other mining companies, and those are like the contractors. There's like the developer and then the contractor. There's the analogy. Now there's a developer, the sort of the hype machine, which is Pebble Limited Partnership, the Snake Oil salesman, if I may, and then there's the the majors who actually design and operate minds. And we should get to the fact that that Pebble part like the sort of brain, the sort of brains behind this. I'd like to get to this because I don't understand as well. They're having a hard time sort of finding the contractor right like they're like, Hey, here's this crazy house we're gonna build, and contractors keep coming in and being like, yeah, that's not for us. So I like that analogy. Yeah, so you get Anglo American, Rio, Tinto, Mitsubishi, Quantum all walked away, Anglo walked away from a five seventy million dollar investment. And I think it's you know, it really comes down to and what we've heard through the grapevine and lots of experts that have just kind of been around the proposal throughout the years and said, we just don't know how you're going to manage that kind of waste over time. It would be like like a Berkeley pit, beyond comprehension. I think that's another piece from the twenty year old standpoint that needs to explained. When you're talking about that waste, about that sulfur, what what are we talking about specifically in terms of contained and the potential for if it gets out? Are we being condescending to two year olds? But I mean actually actually we are because my coworkers she's twenty two, and she's way smarter than me, so way smarter as though talking to a forty six year old. Um, yeah, I want to get it, Like why okay, let me just show us out real quick. We have the thing nearby to where we're sitting right now. I don't have to drive from here called Berkeley Pit, And at a time was the like golden copper mine. It's in Butte, Montana. You always I don't know what this means. You always here thrown out that like once upon time Beau had per capita more millionaires than anywhere in the country. But I was thinking too, if you had a community of a hundred people and there happened to be a millionaire there, you would have more millionaires per capita. So I don't really that people like to throw that out there. Um, there's a great history of Butte in the Berkeley Pit. It's just an article. There's all these books, but there's an article called Pennies from Hell, and it gets into like what exactly happened there, and they tunnel mind it right, just like pulling out chunks. But over time technology is improved, the quality of the ore decrease in different areas, and they eventually got to this thing where they pull the ship out of the ground and the ore contains what you're after, copper and gold, silver, and you leach it out by you pour acid on it, cyanide, you pull it up, crush it up, dump a bunch of cyanide on it, and then it it dissolves, correct, and there's some way that you then harvest it, but then you wind up with all of this contaminated liquid that then has the gold live in a lake. And Berkeley Pit is a problem that will never go away. It's an enorm Once a hundred snow geese once landed there and died on the water in that pit, and it'll be a problem into you know, I don't want to over conflate work pit with this, but I do want to talk like, like what what they mean when they say because I think people think of mining and think you're gonna dig a hole and also all these goals starts flying out of the hole and then you load it on airplanes and fly it somewhere. Yeah, they're talking ten billion tons of waste associated with full build out of pebble um. A percentage of that would be highly reactive sulfide bearing rock. And when that sulfide bearing rock is exposed to air and water, it creates the loot sulfuric acid, which has a half life of never. It just has to sit and a pit and be treated in perpetuity. That's the part I didn't get. So that so it's like it's something that when you pull it up and allow it to oxidize or expose the water, then it creates the problem. And you put that ship into a lake that's right, and build a damn to keep it from going anywhere on Earth and dam in an area that's one of the more seismically active places in the world. You know, it's on the Pacific rim of Fire. They had an earthquake out there last year that really shook our house. Um, it was high sevens. So you know when they talk about, oh we got damns designing, nothing can ever go wrong. But you're seeing more and more of that of these these modern minds. You know that they have such huge amounts of waste that they have to contain that it becomes a real problem. And Pebble makes, you know, Berkeley Pitt look like you know, just a just a dot. It's way bigger. You know, you just mentioned a seven uh earthquake in the sevens. I was just reading this book about the what year did the big earthquake hit the Anchorage? I read a book about the John Muellen who's been on the show, just wrote a book called This is Chance and it's about the sixty four earthquake and Anchorage. And Richter at the time was just developing his scale, and it's an exponential scale, so a seven is ten times worse than the six. He he was a nudist. Richter, he was down in California, um listening to any he'd built the rick, he'd built the seismic graph that he installed in his living room and drove his wife crazy, this giant seismograph. And he was working on his scale, and he was sitting in his living room listening to a concert with his wife. Won the sixty four earthquake hit in Alaska, and he looked over at his seismograph and said that was a big one and low and behole, the biggest earthquake to ever strike the continent. Yeah, it could happen again. You know that's not that long ago. No, no, no, A lot of these people are still around swallowed streets, right, sixty ft tsunami hit Kodiak. Yeah. Yeah. When people point out the seismic part of the area, I think people are like, oh, you're just being alarms. But I mean it's like it's an actual thing, man, Right, I think you know, we have a tough time grasping these time frames, right. I mean, the the asset mind waste doesn't go away, someone's gonna have to store it, and you know, companies rise and fall, and someone's gonna have to pay for all that monitoring. If you were to, you know, take all these steps and actually build the thing and over time, you never know who's going to get stuck with the bill, Probably the people of Alaska, the people of the United States. Explain a little bit about what's to be what's to be lost, Like besides this the actual destruction or you can take it both ways, the actual destruction of the footprint, okay, which is not insignificant, but I think that that is something that people probably would become comfortable with maybe Like Okay, there's this there's this like part of the earth that will cease to function as it now. It will like not be wild byfe habitat anymore, it'll be the opposite. But then there's this sort of like ticking time bomb element, right that all this ship would just downstream, Like what's that look like? Like, like what is the resource that would be the resource resources that could be compromised if the worst in the worst case scenario, and when I want to know too, if in the best case scenario, are there still compromises to the wildlife habitat. Yes. So the third part size, type and then location. So the Pebble prospect sits in the saddle between the two largest salmon producing watersheds in Bristol Bay, which makes them two of the biggest salmon producing watersheds in the world. Because the Bristol Bay being the biggest salmon run, it's it's the biggest SOCCI salmon run in the world. It's probably gonna be closest in the world's global SOCCAI salmon supply this year because you shippn't me really. Yeah, So the total run this year was fifty seven million fish and the commercial fleet harvested about forty million ski go on hit me with that again. Fifty seven million was a total run and the harvest was forty million, And you know that's amazing that you can harvest that level and still get the return. Salmon are incredible if you take care of habitat and you're really on it management wise, you know, fishing game can turn the run on and off like a like a faucet. You know, they can they can take you know, hardcore gill netters and say you're done for the day and they all stop. Can imagine you did that kind of trim off on a deer population, Dude, did you take decades to recover? Yeah? They're incredible. Um. So it's that location sitting in the saddle between the two rivers and you know up to the that's them coming in. Yeah, that's the fish coming in. Yeah, that's the return and that's seventeen million then cranks out enough returners to pull another forty million fish out in the future for human consumption. Yeah, we're probably at peak abundance right now. Bristol Bay probably has more salmon coming back now than it ever has because they can go down in the bottom of these lakes and do these samples, you know, these of just where the layers of decayed matter have settled in the bottom of the settim of these lakes over time and kind of reconstruct runs from a hundred two hundred years ago, and they think, I think the researchers think that we're probably having productivity that is as strong or exceeds what you had before. Four white people showed up so successful just because the habitats in great shape. It's the theory overwhelmingly about super high quality habitat that hasn't been disturbed. And then you know, pretty pretty solid management by Alaska fishing game. So so yeah, so that's that's so even if even if the mind never had something go wrong, Um, you're still gonna have a destruction of wetlands. You're gonna have the elimination of you know, several dozen miles of salmon stream. And then Pebble will point out, well, that's the only like one small percentage of the overall you know, the area of productive salmon habitat in the region. What's the problem. Then you have to start looking at what happens if something does go wrong, if there's a catastrophic tailing dam failure. Let's visit that. Let's visit Yah's question for a minute. So best case scenario, as you lose several dozen miles of salmon stream. Yeah, it's it's more than that. That gets into weather. They're gonna operate for twenty years, they're gonna operate for a hundred. Right. That gets back to the thing that drives us crazy. Where it's there's a bait and switch going on right now. That's all there is to it. So if you read full build out, you you destroy hundreds of miles of salmon stream and you'd have this huge excavation. And then you got to remember the pit serves as a sump, so all the water in around there that's charging all these these systems that have these very complex um interchanges of surface and subsurface water, it all just sucks towards the pit that will be holding the the tailings. So how big is the pit we don't know as of yet because we don't know what the you know, the proposal that's going to possibly get approved by them federal government is. But it would be one thousand seventy ft deep and one thousand seventy ft deep, and it's gonna be a good episode of Deep Drop Boys. And then i'd have to you know, I can't remember exactly how many miles by how many miles, but we're talking miles. I've kind of lost some of this stuff. You couldn't drink no no like no amount a like stry pen. No huh, let's let's let's cover off our worst case. Yeah, So we hired an expert to look at what would happen if you had a tailing stam failure, because the Army Corps of Engineers did not require Pebble to do that during the e I S process, which seems that doesn't seem to be looking at all them things that could or could not happen, right, Um, So we hired an expert and he showed, if you know a tailing dam, let go, you would have waste that would reach Bristol Bay. So the Pebble prospect is a long way from Bristol Bay. It's about hundred miles up river and up the watershed. It's enormous watershed. It's like the size of Wisconsin, you know. So and you know, he just he said, based on what I know and what I've seen in other places, you would have mine waste that would reach all the way to the Pacific Ocean. The Bristol Bay itself salt wire and would essentially wipe out the whole system for a period of years. And we started going to the public with this presentation, We're going to the commercial fishing fleet because you know, you have to have the commercial fishing fleet on your side out there if you're going to if you could actually make up a difference politically and start to do a presentation for all these all these guys before the and women. A matter of fact, one of my co workers is a commercial fishing boat captain. So Um and Pebble hated the information so much that they suit us. So there's there's a bunch of details there, but yeah, they just wanted to kind of squelch public debate. They didn't want anybody covering this part of the issue because you know, it's really problematic. They didn't want to talk about the failure, right, they don't want and then they want us talk about it either, so because it'll just sit there for thousands and thousands of years fine or un earthing tailings damn collapses, you know that happened, and there they're arguing, would be like, no, it will just always be there, but it will always be fine. Yeah yeah, And then you know the evidence is starting to really come in. Right, So you had that catastrophe down in Brazil a couple of years ago, where and that was a modern mind run by a modern company, you know, a well capitalized company that really knew what they were doing, and tailing dam let go went to destroy the river and killed people. And then you had the case of the mom Polly um mine in British Columbian, a tributary of the Fraser, which is a sacay salmon producer in British Columbia, and they had a catastrophic tailings damn failure, and you know it's just it's a mess. Or five years later in productivity at question the lake which the waste went out into his way down, and you know, these things can fail. In the recent years, I've read about mass fish die offs from things ranging from a farmer putting a bunch of hog ship in a pile next to a trout stream, bourbon spilling out of a distillery during a fire, milk killing miles of fish out of a river. It's like, these things happen all the time, and we're talking about things that most of them sitting like regards like fairly benign milk. Yeah you can, you can those things versus sulfuric acid. Yeah, I know. It's like it's like it's like, what's the big deal. It's like, well, i'll tell you the big deal. Ten miles of fish are dead. And when we're talking about where this is right, like going towards Alamna. And this is one thing just having guided in that area for years, primarily as as a trout guy, but also for salmon, that is one of there's a reason why people spend tens of thousands of dollars to go there just fish for a week or two there. I don't know of a trout fishery like that Iliamna system that produces just massive, massive, super healthy rainbows and all based on the salmon bringing the energy back up through that. Everything about that, everything about that whole area, flora, fauna, everything is based on the nutrient return from the salmon coming from the ocean and dragging a hundred some odd miles upstream. None of that stuff would exist without that nutrient return. And so if you're if you're talking about losing this particular place, and and you know when I was up there, I have to admit I hated sak guiding. Sak guiding is probably the most boring type of fishing you could imagine. But so there's like the two levels of of of reasons why I opposed this. One is the super personal level, which is that I love the place and I love those trout, probably as much as any fish I've ever fished for. But then the bigger picture of what the saki represent to the economy into the whole area, Like I may not have wanted to fish for impersonally, but what they do for Alaska and what they do for the planet is massive, and to lose all that, it's just it's it's not the same as like your backyard creek. Not to say you shouldn't love your background backyard creek, but lake only I'm in that whole system and then gat those places are incredible. Yeah, Miles brings up a good point that people need to think about. And you talk about Sam and is that um Well, first off, so when sok I gets born, walk me through this to him, like a ski gets hatched, he goes down and spend that they dropped down to a lake. Correct, They usually spawn an inlet inlet streams coming into lakes. But there's all these different genetic subgroups out in Bristol Bay. This this really diverse portfolio of different salmon stocks. So it's really amazing at beach spawners and you have some lake spawners, but usually it's a it's a it's a smaller stream coming into a big lake, and then those juveniles hang out for how long in that couple of years year, a year, two years, and they're roughly how big when they finally go and hit the hill like a finger right, and then there how big when they come back, probably averaging around five six seven pounds. So when when Miles mentions this, like this sort of like exchange, you have an area where you have an extraordinarily rich marine environment in a somewhat sterile land environment and just in terms of like in terms of biodiversity, like it's it's stunning in the marine environment and and stunning but like limited in the land environment, meaning you don't have like you have like a great wealth of like large land mammals that are very inspiring and stuff. But when you get down like just like the species count relative to the marine environment, it's kind of low. So if you have fifty seven million sacks that are gonna go up this river, and even if humans then consume forty million of them, seventeen million five to six pound fish basically transport marine resource back up and to feed the land, millions and millions of pounds of like carbon based life go up and it gets eaten by everything and shout out by everything everywhere and decomposes and feeds the plants, feeds the fish, feeds the bears, the birds. It's like that's where it's kind of like life comes from, right from catisflies to brown bears. So if you want to, like you talk, if you talk about oh yeah, so the salmon are gone. You know. My kids always like to ask, like, why do we have mosquitoes? Oh my, I don't know, man, but I bet you in a weird way if we didn't things that go to ship, you know, and you remove that, it's like you're removing more than It's not like, oh, forty million people have to find a different thing for supper. This is different than that. Yeah. I mean they've even done studies in British Columbia now where where you know, the salmon runs have been greatly diminished and the the ecosystem is just not the same. There isn't as much wildlife, there aren't as many insects. I mean, these these systems are just completely dependent on salmon. There wouldn't be anything in these rivers really, maybe some growling, some small grawling, right, but you wouldn't have you wouldn't have the rainbow trout either, which we haven't talked about. You wouldn't have this incredibly huge, vicious rainbow trout fishery either. You know, everything's just keyed in on on the salmon lifecycle. My boy, Jimmy, I went to my first pebble mine event when he was an infant. He's ten years old, but he was a baby. He's now ten. It was an event in New York and it was being put on by It was partially being put on by Tiffany's, the jewelry company, and Tiffany was was saying and even at that time, Uh, sure we sell all kinds of golden ship, but we're making a promise that we will not carry these people's gold. How could Why were we talking about it ten years ago and we're still talking about it now? Like what was happening then? Like how did it even come up to something like what I'm not asking very clear question. Let's start with this question. When did someone first say, holy ship, we should mind some gold out there on Tholds Rivers, probably probably twenty years ago. And the pe the name pebble comes from a geologist flew over the mind site and it reminded him of the Pebble Beach golf course. So because all the water holes. You know, So the history is really is that really what it goes from? Yeah, yeah, I didn't know that. It's like sometimes the names you think, na, yeah, yeah, the history is a little bit like to smack that guy in the it looks like golf course. That the opposite of a golf course. But the history is a little bit tragic. Right. So you had all these lands that were set aside by the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, and there were all these lands that we all from selection and then they whittled it down, explain that I never heard of that you never heard of in oh yeah, so Anoka and there was a there was a huge selection pool. And then I got win that was that was around like the Native Claim Settlement Act, and there was a Settlement Act and then they decided something needs to be done to set aside a bunch of Alaska's lands for the National Interest for created Wrangle SA National Park. I didn't know that that was. I didn't know that that that that component of that era had a name. Yeah. So I added a hundred million acres to the conservation system in the United States so it's unbelieved all now as part of this is elaborate deal brokered around, like what we're gonna do with this new state, and then how we're gonna get away from the reservation system that we used in the US, and how we're gonna settle with natives. That was the first piece of legislation. Then there was sort of lands conservation legislation, and there were more lands that were part of the selection pool that ended up in passing in the legislation, and one piece was called the Ilianda Game Refuge, and it's the area that now includes a Pebble Prospect. And if you look at the rest of the land use patterns, management panterns out there, they're all set aside for salmon production and conservation. Right you got Lake Clark National Park, you have cat My National Park, and then you have the biggest state park in the United States, would tick Chick. That's two million acre state park, and all of them have huge salmon production, all these you know, low gradient streams and these big lakes that are really productive. And then this Alianda Game Refuge would have been the last piece of the wild salmon puzzled right out there. You would have the great salmon production zone in the world, and it would all be safeguarded and perpetuity, And I mean, I think that's something to be really proud of as an American citizen. And you know, the state actually managed that area for a long time for fishing game, mostly for salmon production, but also for cariboo. There's some mild Chatton heard out there and and moose and and the two thousand five we had a governor and a chief of staff who decided that they wanted to take Alaska in a different direction. There had been all these rumors that there was a huge golden copper deposit out there. There was all this breathless talk of one of the world's great claims. And they took a management plan that was based on you know, renewable resources and have been deeply vetted with the local people out there, and they almost overnight turned it into this area that was going to be open in mineral claim staking. And that's when you start to see, you know, big mining companies and junior mining companies all start to take a hard look at you know, can we make a ton of money out here? And we've been fighting it ever since. So you know, I I was working for Trout Unlimited and we were working on some watershed restoration projects and some forest conservation work in Southeast Alaska and Pacific's Amon Treaty. And I got a call from this lodge owner guy named Brian Kraft, who has uh two lodges out there, and he said, hey, you're the You're the Trout Sky and I'm like, yeah, because I gotta I got an issue for you, and that the rest has been history. That's that was seriously. Yeah, it's been two thousand five. And he had to uh two uh guys at his lodge from Newmont Cold and he showed them the preliminary um propaganda from from Pebble and Brian was like, hey, there's gonna be more people out here. You know, it'll be good for my lodge, you know, would be more customers. And these new Mont guys, there are two experts that were getting close to retirement. They said, flies over the mindset, and so he did. And they came back and they looked at what was proposed and they said, you can't let this happen. There's so much water here, there's so much habitat that's going to be destroyed. There's no way you can do that us and have it be successful, you know with you know, from a from a balance standpoint, yeah you could, you could do it, but you're going to destroy this place if you allowed to happen. And that put the fear of God and Brian, and Brian started calling me. And I've been lucky enough to have a whole bunch of great people I've worked with throughout the years. And you know, we spent a lot of time out in the region with the people who live there who hate the idea of the mind at a tune up about opposition. So it's been it's been a long grind. We're still in it. Get back to your question from a long time ago. We're still in it because of politics, right, the pendulum keeps swinging back and forth as to what we're gonna do with her with our you know, best wild places, and here we are. You mentioned the locals there, it's predominly Native Alaska, Alaska Native and what's that? What's their take off? I mean, just for full clarity here, we had arranged to have a colleague a year, a Native Alaskan colleague years come down. But just because of the landscape with COVID and everything. She wasn't able to come down. But what's um, what's what has been that communities and in the history of the things its two thousand five, what has been that community's just asking you to step in and articulative, you know, as much as you're comfortable articulating their viewpoint on it. Uh. What has been that community's response to this? Yeah, I mean they've led the effort from the beginning. You know, even before Brian called me. There are a lot of local people, some of the elders out there, Uh, and so some of the younger people that just said, this is we don't want this, you know, this is this goes contrary to everything we believe in and everything that we've you know, our entire culture. Um. So there's been a bunch of polling done by the Regional Native Corporation out there, and about eight of their shareholders opposed development of the mind and that's pretty exceptional Alaska. Used Really, the closer you get to a development project, the more support you have for it. You know, it's still a rural place. We're still heavily dependent on natural resource development for for incommon you know, wealth and paying for state government and the locals hate the idea, and they've been the leaders since the beginning. You know. I think one of the things that's been unique is we showed up. We had a lot of ideas and a lot of opinions as to how a campaign should work, and we realized pretty quickly that we needed to go to these communities. We needed to go um talk to locals and kind of let them display leadership. And I think that's why we've been so successful of holding back mind development for so long. You know, you're talking one of the richest golden copper deposits in the world, and you've had politics that, to a certain degree, have been in favor of doing that that kind of stuff, but having that local opposition has just been amazing. Yeah, it's too bad. It's too bad. Alana her you who couldn't come down and join us. She's been she's been working on Pebble or entire adult life. She started working on when she was in Hoist, before she was like grade school. So, and that's coming from the perspective of someone whose family and community members live a subsistence lifestyle. Yeah, it's kind of a based on the resource. Yeah, it's kind of a blend out there. You know, you have you have a lot of Alaska Natives who are commercial fishermen as well. So they the gill Net and Trout unlimiteds had this amazing program for the last ten years now where they're trying to build up a stable of of local guides, getting more Alaska Native kids from the region to become sport fishing guides. And the regional Native corporation out there, Bristol Bay Native Corporation just bought one of the big lodge concessions and they run three lodges. Now, They've got capt my Land and they have they have a mission lodge, and they're trying to get more their their people working at the lodgest. So I think, you know, I think you're going to see more local ownership and operation of the sport fishing industry as well. Yeah, so, which is good. I mean in terms of like the diversified revenue, you know what, what has been some of the I think there's like an issue fatigue that takes place. Yeah, with pebble about it, because like I was saying, I haven't mapped every twist and turn, but um, I'm be here about this thing all the time. And I've been alarmed about it and concerned about it all along, and we're always, you know, off of being invited to talk about it, and it's always like, this is the turning point. But it was a turning point a decade ago. Like why why are there so many? You know, I remember the thing, you know, remember Paul Wolf, what's remember someone saying like you could put a wooden steak in Paul Wolf, what's his heart? And he would turn up in the next administration being like, uh, why is it that it won't go away? But it always seems like this is the turning point. How many turning points are there? Or like, tell me about some turning I mean I don't know. I mean, you know, I stopped trying to politics. You can't predict it anymore, right, So big turning points? Give me a turning point from a decade? So when when? When? So when Rio Tinto and Anglo American, two of the largest mining companies in the world, decided to walk away from the pebble prospect that was huge And honestly, I wish you would have had a little bigger party. You know, we kind of we knew that the saga wasn't over. But to see two of the major mining companies in the world walk away from a you know, half a billion dollar investment, that was really significant. I don't for those of us that were just kind of working day in and day out, I think we we didn't really totally understand the significance of that, right, I mean, you know, And what did they publicly say, and what is the rumor mill about why they walked publicly? I think they said that they were it was during you know, they were coming we were coming up on the on the big you know, global economic downturn, and they just decided to focus their their work on on minds that were closer to operation, closer to coming to fruition. You know, you need to still knew they had a big permitting process and huge infrastructure costs. They were like, we're gonna we're gonna shrink a little bit here and focus on a few other prospects in other places around the world. Um. That's what they said publicly, And then we heard internally that there was a there's a real tug of war between the two companies that you know, one wanted to try to do it in a way that wouldn't have the huge negative impacts that we've been talking about, and the other one said, there's no way you can make any money doing that because the or grade, the or body is a low grade and you need a massive excavation to get to the point where you're gonna make any money. So that tug of war, you know, they just they walked away, and then UM then first Quantum was the next big operator that came in, and they walked away. And those are really significant events. UM. The other really big significant event was when at the talent of the Obama administration, they used Clean Water Act Authority to say, UM, essentially that we're not going to grant you the Dredge and phil permit, the four Old four permit, UM, because we have looked at the proposed mind and it's going to have negative, serious negative impacts on wetlands and waterways of the United States. And we got really close to uh to it a victory, I think. UM. Through that process, it was in the you know, it went into the courts. Probable challenged it in the courts, and it kind of languished in the courts for a couple of years, and then UM, the Trump administration came in and they settled the outstanding lawsuits with Pebble Limited Partnership to the favor of Pebble Limited Partnership and started kind of restarted the permanent clock again. So that's where we're at. Who who actually owns the land? Where the whose land is? Where the actual thing is gonna stay of Alaska, but it becomes federal because there's just implications for all the stuff. So yeah, because there's federal waters. So the Clean Water Act comes into play in the Army Corps of Engineers, is the Permittee of record? What is uh? What's the state's general groove about this? The governor, the current governor, he's going home. He likes it. Yeah, what's you like about it? I? You know, I think he sees it as the next big thing, right you Now, we're we're getting a lot less money for oil. There's less oil going through the Alaska Pipeline. There's lots of people talking about how we're gonna be using less oil in the future. I'm not sure I believe that yet, but um so, I think that the governor is looking for that next big resource development play that's going to you know, fill the Alaskan coffers again. Because we don't pay any state income tax or any state sales tax, and we're heavily dependent on oil revenue for all our budget. Yeah, you also heavily. There's some interesting things about Alaska's economy that I think people should understand is that, uh one, it's a federal spending a little bit of a sink federal wise, yeah, meaning the federal government spends far more in Alaska then they get in tax revenue. Yeah, way more. It's the states that people love to hate. I think New Jersey pays in better than any like, Like the Feds pull more money out of New Jersey than they put in, and I think that's the strongest performing state. Alaska is one of the weakest. Yeah yeah, yeah, I want to change our license plate from last frontier to give me my money and leave me alone. So then instead of paying state taxes in Alaska, the state pays you. Right. So they have a thing called the Permanent Fund, and they take the state has all these lucrative oil leases on state land. Um, they generate so much money that they cut you a check and this and the check that you get caught as a citizen of Alaska and your members of your household uh, isn't tied directly to the price of oil. It's tied to the health of the fund. But the health of the fund is definitely influenced by the price of oil. So you could go up there, Let's say you're particularly fecunned individual, you and your wife could move up there and produce six kids and make quite a tidy little sum. What was what was the fund? What was the fun play? What did the fun pay last year? You know, it's only like a thousand bucks last year, So it's actually, you know, we're coming to the end of the road of you know, but it's it's it highs. It's like three grand. Yeah, So you could go up there and have like two people go up there, have six kids and pull twenty four k just in uh. It's been known to happen and for a year. Yeah, I got friends with you with his blood money. I got one body who he every year takes his check and puts it into his kids college fund because he thinks he thinks it's blood money. I mean, it's actually a really cool concept. But it gets to the fact that you know, oil is not going to happen again. You know, the amount we get per barrel produced is way higher than you get from minerals. It's like you know, on each on each barrel of oil, and for minerals, our royalties regime is the same as on federal lands. Right, it's like less than one return. So it's not gonna do what our governor done Levy wants it to do. Yeah, let me, I forgot finish. The point about the economy there is that when oil goes south, everything goes south, everything goes soun school education goes so like university spending, public school spending. Like they get hit man, and they're kind of living in a separate like just because there's a something could happen in the lower forty eight like whatever, housing thing, whatever, like different blips, they're living a different reality. Like their ship is driven by a completely different set of factors. So you could see, like if oil is going the way you're saying, you can see that someone who's charged by voters with looking at the long term financial prospects for his state could be excused for thinking like we gotta do something, yeah yeah, and we have other minds, you know, and you don't you don't see the big, huge controversy around some of these other minds, whether it's Fort Knox or Red Dog, you know, some of the some of the bigger operating minds in the United States. And it's definitely a part of the economy. And we all, you know, use all these materials that are coming out of the ground for you know, our modern lifestyle. So we're not saying that this is an anti mining campaign, but size type location again, and then you look at what's at stake, and you know, you have about ten thousand American jobs that are depending on depending on that fishery. So you know, in a good year, this was not a good year because of COVID, salmon prices were in the toilet, and you know, the export market was non existent. But if you know you're a good gillnet captain, in a good year, you can make a hundred thousand bucks in six weeks, and you have a whole the whole host of sport fishing lodges out there that are charging upwards the twelve grand a week, and you have guides and you have pilots and all kinds of you know, different segments of that economy are based on on that fishery and the things renewable salmon prices were little this year. Yeah, they were way down this yeah, attributed to COVID. Demand was down, you know. And then there was the trade stuff with China, because the Chinese buy a lot of Bristol based ok So yeah, yeah, I know that that Chinese stuff is messing with some of the logging projects. I think that that point you bring up is one that I've dealt with, having written in the past a lot about mining issues and pebble, among others, primarily for fishing focus publications. I've I've definitely taken some scrutiny saying, well, you just anti mining and and you know, to be fair to some of those points, my interests lie in the fish, right. I don't make my living off of minds, but I don't. I try to be as I look at these issues as as objective as I can be. And when you talk about pebble mind you talk about some of the other sulfide type minds. And as I learned more about this in doing some of that reporting and understood like the process by which these byproducts come about in these minds and how toxic they can be, and when they're located right next to a waterway, that I personally think it's important. I think that you have to. I personally think you should be drawing lines on well, this is a place we shouldn't have this type of mind. And this not to say we can't have sulified minds elsewhere where there will still be risk, but it's not located right next to a place that I really want to go fishing and a lot of other people want to make their living off of. I don't think it's bad necessarily to come out and claim like your personal steak on something. No, it's like it's better than the opposite, and it's better than you know, it's better than when people um don't lay out they're they're sort of like personal investment in an issue and act like they're just acting like completely altruistically. That drives me not. I would rather be like, I support these policies, and I'll be frank with you, it's good for me financially, I like I like it. I like it aesthetically, I like it financially or whatever. So to be like, you know, I just try to like clear up that all the time by saying my view in terms of when I pursue like my sort of like professional work and the media products that I produced, and things like I try to be that I won't belabor you with my opinions about things that don't impact like the world of like sort of like what's good for hunters and anglers? Right, And I think this is just really shitty for hunters and anglers. I think people minds like shitty for hunters and anglers. So I'll come out and say like where I'm coming from on it, And I also just think it's I also think that it's uh. I don't like the country to make big mistakes where you confuse short term where where like you pursue short term gain and and do things that later we will sit and look like that in a hundred years when we're being analyzed by that generation, that it will be like what idiots. Yeah, well, I mean we talk about a sulfide mind much smaller, but some of this in the third episode of Dots Boat, right, and and it's the same principle, and it's about deciding like this particular kind of mind right next to this watershed could be problematic for those of us who really these fish and maybe depend on them. I do think though, like when again going back to the writing that I was doing. I felt like I had a responsibility not just to be honest about my inclinations, but also to say, like, I don't think I'm just anti mining. I'm not. I don't have this pie in the sky vision where we can survive in modern society without mining for minerals. It's just deciding which places we can do that and then figuring out how to price them accordingly. Yeah, that's good, that's a good point. And so that's gonna cost you more. It's gonna cost you more if we if we mind less of it, things are going to be more expensive. And and I recognize that that that is a sacrifice that I am able to make, him willing to make, and other people don't agree on. But to me, losing these fisheries it just isn't worth it. Can we get a new minute? Like who who are these dudes? Like? Who are the constant dudes here? I know that we have sort of the big mining companies that actually like come in and that coming and like do the work right? They come in and do the work, They got the capital. Like who who's the constant presence through this idea? Uh, Northern dynasty minerals they're out of Vancouver, and the Pebble Limited Partnership is the subsidiary from from Northern Dynasty. And what's their story. They're they're they're a minor, you know they are. They're a non major. So they're kind of the set up people, right. They go out and they do the exploration, They provide all the background on on the geology and the and the and the mineralization, and then they try to attract a major that would come in and invest billions of dollars and actually operate the mind How many people we talked about this outfit, you know, I don't know at this point. Maybe yeah, I wouldn't know. There's been a couple of figures that have been prominent throughout the years. There was a guy named Bruce Jenkins, you know, that was profiled by Travis Rummel and Ben Knight and Red Gold. And that guy was great. He was like right out of Central Casting. I mean, everybody hated him immediately. And then uh, and then there's a guy named John Shiveley. He used to work for the Alaska Department and Natural Resources and he had to resign and during a vail of disgrace years ago, and you know, he's just kind of like old Alaska, and it's like trust me, you know, I would never do anything that wouldn't be for the benefit of the public. And he sold a couple hundred thousand dollars of pebble stock just a couple of months ago and then um like dumped or sold he he sold it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was you know, it was in a moment when it you know, probably looked like their stock was gonna go down. I should I should explain the reverence you just dropped for folks. Red Gold was a film was two thousand seven, I believe, Yeah, that was profiled. Yeah. I was guiding when it came out, and and it's worth if you want to get some historical perspective on how this has looked and how long has been going on, you should check that one out. Seven. Oh so I went to my first pebble event way before my kid was born, because I had already been to a pebble event way before Red Gold. Yeah, I mean it was it was two five was when I first heard of But I was guiding up there then and that was like everybody was talking about this proposal sort of lines were getting drawn at that point. Um, someone told me recently, is it someone at the Northern Is it Northern Dynasties? That what it's called. Yeah, it sounds like a name that you picked to be Like, it's like a name you picked to be an asshole, to be the bad guy, the Villainy. I've dealt with these guys for too long. I heard he remember recently that someone involved. There someone if they can get this thing across the finish line, they get some absurd amount of one. Yeah, guy named Tom Collier, and he worked for the Department of Interior under Clinton H and he took this on. And he's good at what he does. You know, he's Yeah, he's a Washington d C insider and what's the carrot in front of his nose? Well, you know, if this thing gets to gets to operation, he gets twelve and a half million bucks. I'll get the guy out in the morning. Yeah. Yeah, if they if they get a record of decision signed, it's four and a half million bucks. So yeah. We actually ran a little website for a while. They're called cash Grab Collier and it was pretty fun. So that's what he's gotta do. Like he's he's motivated, like he gets like, yeah yeah. And if you look at look at some of the some of the handicappers out there that really understand the mining industry in that world, you know, they think that this is there's a lot of incentive for the executives a puble limited partnership to just continue to hype this thing for as long as they possibly can, right because as long as people are willing to give them money, willing to invest in their company, they can skim off profits for themselves. Whether they get any closer to a mine or not doesn't really matter, I think to some of them, m hm, there's incentivized along the way to keep bumping. Yeah. Yeah. And they've spent so much money on lobbyists for the last few years there. They have actually spent more money on lobbyists in Washington, d c. Than any other mining company, and that includes you know, mining companies that are actually running mines five years ago, five or six years ago. I bet my sister in law a thousand dollars a year bet she doesn't Alaska. There's a ten year bet where if they hadn't we framed it this way, if a decade went by and they hadn't begun to pull minerals out of the ground. In production. We framed it up in some way like it's more than just you know, testing and stuff like in full production. Like Megan Gold, She's gotta give me a thousand bucks. When did you make the bet five or six years ago? You're gonna win? Sweet. That's the one. That's one is I'm into that. That's the long reason we're sitting here right now. I don't care what your motivations. It takes an army. What is going Okay, we just hit like a new there was a new Let's get let's get real detailed. Now, let's get real granular about what's happened over the last month. There was some Army core ship, there was some e p A ship like what was happening over the last month or two. So we saw the final environmental impact statement for the Pebble Mind made by who, the Army Corps of Engineers. Why is it their deal? They are the they are the they are the permit agency. They are the agency that issues the permit and then they go into a consultation with the Environmental Protection Agency about anything that has to do with UH excavating wetlands and impacting water. So it makes it the Army Corps of Engineers business because it involves digging stuff and making damns and whatnot. Because you always your Army Corp of Engineers around like the big damns. Then ye okay, so it's it's their deal because it's engineering. So they did a final environmental impact statement which we thought was terrible. You know, it was just filled with holes or all these scientific gaps there's you know, we spent a huge amount of time and energy just to analyzing what they put out there, and it was it's terrible. Well, but were you motivated to think it was terrible because it didn't come up with the answer you wanted? Or is it like legitimately poorly done. Well, we hired a bunch of people way smarter than me, and that would stake their reputations on the fact that it was one of the worst, if not the worst environmental impact statement they've ever seen. So why was it shoddy? It is done really quickly one and it didn't look at all these you know, projected impacts out over out over the time horizon, like didn't look at catastrophic tailing, damp failure, UM and the e I s. They they were talking about a wastewater treat and facility that had never been operated before. Um. They they we're trying to figure out how to build the port out there on the west side of cook Inlet, which is not a not an easy place to build a port, and they were just huge gaps asked. You know, it was just like we're gonna we say, we're gonna do this, and then there would just be a big gap as to how they were going to actually achieve that and then build a port. Yeah, right, because you's got to land all this equipment and build roads to get it there. And yeah, yeah, yeah, And you know you're dealing with cook Inlet, which is the second highest tide fluctuation in the world, and starting about now, the weather really gets bad on a very consistent basis. So we lots of gaps, lots of holes, lots of technical details. So we think needed to be figured out with someone leaning on them to get it done in a hurry because they're just driving towards resolution. Yeah, so massive development project. You know, scaling scope has unprecedented in Alaska since they discovered a while in the our slope. And you're gonna get an eis done in two years. So we're the final environmental impact statement came out and then they have to wait thirty days before they can issue a record of decision. Who does the Army Corps. So there's like this thirty day waiting period after the environmental impact statement comes out and we were expecting to see it pretty quickly, and then uh, we started to see concern expressed by Donald Trump Jr. And Nick Ayers, who was the chief of staff to back up, come confused. The Army Corps of Engineers does like the assessment, like here's what's gonna look like, here's risks, and then they deliver the final environmental Impact Statement to the public, and then there's a thirty day period between the issuance of that final and what's called the record of decision. That's the minimum. The record of decision is made by the Corp of Engineers. So they make the report, the they wait thirty days and pretend to not know what the decision is. Yeah, but I don't get like, because they're making room for public input, there's no more public input. I don't really know what that thirty day period is about. You'd have to ask a lawyer, is it like you lay out all the pages, then you got one that you don't flip, and you're like, and I'll flip this one in thirty days. Yeah, sort of like that. At least that's what it felt like to us. You know, this thing seemed rigged, is it? The part of the Core is doing putting together that that report, and then there are other oversight committees or bodies within the Core that are looking at that. Yeah, well, there's usually probably a little bit, a little bit of a paperwork exercise between that that final and the record of decision. There's probably something they have to craft that justifies the record of decision, right, And then then it would go to the Army Corps for this consultation about whether they were going to issue or whether the whether the Army Corps was gonna give a thumbs up or thumbs down to that Dredge and Phil permit. And we thought it felt like a fad, a complete that the record of decision was going to hit the streets, that the that the Environmental Protection Agency was just gonna you know, not really weigh in one way or another, or they would say it was fine, and then we're going to be going into court um, because that's that's the thing is like whatever the Army Corps. Now we're getting into future alternate reality. But the Army Corps does this, They do the record of decision and they say like we're not We're on this is good, no problem. Um. At that point, if no one challenged it, at that point, were they like, it's off to the races we're making. Of mind if no one said, if there was no one around to say no, yeah, yeah, that would be like that that that's the last hurdle. If the Environmental Protection Agency decided not to weigh in via the Clean Water Act, no one sued challenging the record of decision, Yeah, that would be a it's not like the other person. You gotta go ask permission from right because the state's on board. Well then the state there there are a bunch of state permits. But perfectly honest, they're pretty that that those gears are greased. I mean, it's the it's the it's the four or four Dredge and Phil permit, which is the permit, and that's the one that's been the source of this tug a war for you know, back to the last presidential administration. Like that's the big win. That's that's that's that's the prize. So so they finished the report, and the issue the report. You look at the report like this report is kind of shoddy. And then also everywhere in the news is people weighing in, Um, yeah, including you know folks we didn't expect to weigh in, you know, Donald Trump Jr. And Nick Arris who was chief of staff too, Vice President Pence, and TALMR. Carlson on his show, and what's these guys great with it? Well, I think you know, from what I understand, Um, both Trump Junior and Heiress have been out there quite a few times, and you know, it's it's it's a one of a kind place. They're just like, yeah, yeah, that's my sense was like, you know, the kind of the slogan of wrong mind, wrong place. Yeah, it seems to have been like it was just as clean as that, I think, So, you know, and I think for them, they've probably heard about it years because it does attract a lot of hunters and anglers and you know, people that don't self identify as you know, lefty environmentalists. You know, it's it's it's a source of a bunch of jobs and it's this great hunting and fishing destination. It's it's it's one of those things that actually brings people together. And I think they just identified it one. I think they actually really care and too they saw it as you know, good politics. And so then what so then what happened? I mean now we're talking like within the last few weeks. Yeah, So then the Army Corps of Engineers came back and said, you know what, we're not going to sign the record of decision right now because we need Pebble to go back and provide some more detail about how they're going to mitigate the destruction of wetlands associated with the development. So that's where we're at right now. They are saying that they will have that mitigation plan done within a month, and that's okay. Sorry, well I was gonna say that. I think that's where I personally got sucked into thinking we had another one of those moments of like turning point. I did a whole thing on on bent about this, saying like, hey, look at this great decision that came through, and I got flooded with emails from folks who know more than me and said like no, no, no, no, hold on the permit as written was kicked back. This is this is gonna keep going. There will be a revision and another process. This is this is not at all over. And I think a lot of a lot folks had a moment like, hey, we got it. Oh. I had one of those about thirty seconds and then I saw that people like, it's just another punt, and I got sucked into it and had to then make a slight retraction on the next episode, say I didn't get all the all the facts straight on this one. Does the president have authority to just kill it? Yeah? By what mechanism? Because they know you don't just run around like ending things, and I mean it's like you do. You do things through processes, right, It would be telling the head off the e P a region that's in charge of Alaska, saying like, here, allowed to use your authority under the Clean Water Act to reject the dredging phil permit to use your veto authority. And that's what the last administrator did under Obama. So yeah, because you see how things work like that, Like I was in me used recently to see that um that like Attorney General bar right, like in a call with attorneys general gives kind of like guidance like we would like to see, you know, we would like to see action taken in these areas. And then people are like, Okay, so cool, Yeah I can do that. So I can imagine there could be presidential sort of you know, even him just saying it's not gonna happen. It will never let it happen. Right, if you were to say that, it would require like steps. You know, It's not like he can't just like you know, say that on Twitter and have that be the end of it. It would have to be that it would flow that way. Yeah, and and and you know, and then some some of our cohorts think that short of using that e p A veto the the Army Corps could just reject the permit. That doesn't reject it forever, right, and it it kind of kicks the can down the road. But it would be significant, there's no doubt. But now there's been another tweet that came from the president, uh where he very hard, very hard to interpret, where yeah, he borrowed directly from an ad that was running on television that evening that had been put up by the Pebble Limited Partnership saying keep politics out of this, and then they flashed to a picture of Barack Obama in a tan suit, which just like Obama didn't like the mind Obama Obama's e p A. You know, I said, we won't, we won't permit it. I mean Obama went to he went to Dillingham, he went to Bristol bay Um near the end of his his term. So so they're keeping politics out of it, um. But I don't know. I read like I read and analyze that tweet, but I don't know what that tweet meant. No, that's the thing is, no one knows now, right, and for those of us have been working on it for so long, and I seeing all these twisting he said, like, don't Alaska is a beautiful place, great place. We'll keep politics out of it. I guess it depends on who's politics, right. I don't know how I can keep I don't know how anyone could promise to keep politics? Like what politics is the means by which the public's voices her Like, I don't know when people say that, like keep politics, it's like it's annoying. Is when people say following the science, Yeah, I was like, who's hey, who's science. Right. The ones that say it's a sweet damn are the ones that this greatest damn ever made. We're the ones that say your damn won't work. It's like like it's like a non people say that keep politics. It's like a nonstatement. It's like it's like it's empty air. I never understand what that means. I know, yep, does that include my opinion in that I vote? Like I don't know? Yeah, so I didn't know what the hell that man I mean into To your point from earlier, Steve, if you like were to plot out of timeline on this right, there was the some major moments of the big big minding company pulling out and say it's not worth it. Oh, it looked like it was gone, okay, great, And then there was the moment when the e p A under last administration said we're not gonna permit this. Okay, it's done, and it just it's like the zombie issue, right. And then there was that a couple of weeks ago when when people like me who got sucked in momentary and thought, oh, I think we made another No, no, we haven't made another step forward. We're just stuck in the same limbo. I thought the watershed moment was when you had a rare circumstance where hippies, Native Alaskans, commercial fish hereman in brown bear guides, I'll agreed on something. Yeah, I was like, dude, no way, that doesn't happen. Letn't make a bet. I bet you a thousand dollars. Well that's still going on, right, you know. The opposition is as high as it's ever been. We actually did a poll not that long ago and on a development issue, and I'll ask a six of the population opposes pebble, and like I don't remember, like a quarter of the population supports it. That never happens, you know, whether you're talking about drilling for oil and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and I don't know where we are, and like logging in the tongas anymore. You know, I think that that's kind of moved more towards opposition than support. But pebble Alaskans don't want pebble. And the closer you can get to the pebble prospect other than a couple of small communities that have a huge pebble presence, they don't want it. Yeah, when you got guys like I would like to have permission to kill any marine mammal that comes near my salmon. Oh and stop pebble mind. Yeah, Like that's it feels like, you know, to me, feels like they'll they'll never be able to do this. I want to shoot sea lions, but I hate pebble. So what is there any there's no real death for this, Like there's no way, like you can't in Yeah, because they tried the state referendum and that didn't work. You remember this one. There was a state vote to to like basically took it to the voters through something that kind of would have been deathly to pebble. Mind. But it was too far reaching, right, and it was because you couldn't get on People couldn't get on board with it because it was had uncertain implications for the future. There's two things. So there was a referendum that passed and it passed into every precinct in Alaska, and that was bankrolled by the late Great Bob Gillham, who was the rich guy who actually went to Wharton with Donald Trump. And it essentially said that the state legislature would have final say over the permitting of pebble. It if it ever got to the point where they got to the final state permit, then the legislature would have to vote up or down on it. Pebble claims that it's unconstitutional, and they said they'll sue it a later date if need be. But that doesn't stop it because under our state constitution, the public can't appropriate land. So you had to do this like bureaucratic thing. Then there was another initiative that would have updated safeguards for you know, development and salmon habitat, and I was a big part of that, and we just got outspent and like ten or twelve and one, and you know, it was it was not an easy read for the public, and we went down to defeat um. What could happen as the right thing is done through the federal government via the Clean Water Act? Pebble decides to walk away UM and then the state of Alaska does not allow another mining company to come in, and you know, top file on those claims, and then you know, ultimately you would have to get a governor and a legislature and public will and Alaska to say that we're going to take this land and we're gonna put it into a protected status and we could we could do that. Actually that's the way you'd steal the coffin and then you know, probably gonna be another fifteen years. But if that's what it is. X. Yeah. You ever hear this thing called the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge? Yeah, I know, given something a cool name doesn't necessarily no now, you know. But but you know, I have a lot of friends people have known for a long time worked on that issue. But pebble is different because so many people use it, so many people depend upon it for their livelihood, and you know, even by Alaska standards, it's not a pedestal, right, very few people are lucky enough to go to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, But a lot of people go to Bristol Bay, like where I live in Homer, there's a whole fleet, you know, every every June they getting their gill netters and had a cross cooking let and chake the road over to like Ilama and out the queen Jack to go fish and then see him eight weeks later and tell me how shit either season was. But they all seem to have nice houses and nice trucks and things like that. So when I made my bet with my sister in law. I also told her that there would be um resistance. There would be what's it called um, you know, like like not not vigilanti, but social disobedience. Is that the term that fits The people go out and chain themselves the bulldozers and ship like that. I'm gonna chaine my daughter to something or another landing strip or something. Civil disobedience, civil disobedience. I was like, they're probably civil disobedience because it means so much to people. You know, you gotta handful of people that like, you gotta handle people, They're gonna make them bunch money. But then you got a bunch of people spend a decade, in a decade of a decade's worth of emotion being like you can't just there's some things you can't shut up, Like there's some things that are too precious and beautiful and you just have to be comfortable leaving it. And I feel like that some people are so impassionate about that that in the end, when all the legal stuff was done, there'd be like one last push where people got nasty monkey wrench gang. Yeah. I would never advocate for something like that, but but I'm not saying that you need to advocate for. You don't need to imagine, you know. I I have heard you know, people kind of looking at this issue from not you know, the perspective, the narrow, too close perspective, too close to the screen perspective of me saying like, yeah, this, you can see how this if everything went wrong from the regulatory and legal framework, you know, you could see this being like Keystone XL. You know, where you have people laying down in front of things, and you know, you start thinking about the people in that region, how long they've been fighting against this thing. They can trace their history back there ten thousand years, and they really don't want it. That's what I'm getting at. Man. Yeah, there's that whole concept of social license and the and develop and they know the development industry and mining in particular, and there's pebble does not have social license. I don't think they'll ever ever get it, no matter how much money they spend, how much propaganda they put out there, it's just never gonna happen. Where is it gonna sit with? If if let's say old Biden wins, still don't see anybody's find a Biden flag. If Biden wins, I don't imagine it's gonna Pebble is gonna move for four years now he did, he didn't if you know he was elected president, Pebble doesn't move forward. That's four that's four years. Yeah, that doesn't That doesn't kill anything. That just means it would probably just stall out. Right. Then you get into future administration, do you think that they would actually like do you think the Biden's team would just be like not cooperative and it would just be quiet, or do you think Biden's team would come in and like try to like wrap it up. We would, we would, you know, we would try to convince them to do that, to do some things that would make it extra hard for the next people try to fire. Honestly, you know we're gonna try, and some of our courthorts are gonna try no matter who's the president. So but Biden Biden did tweet uh saying that Pebble is a non starter if he's president. I was having a conversation one time with some people close to the current administration, and I was like, man, I don't see, like why not just take a why not just take a conservation win? That is it going to cost you? You guys are gonna lose. You're not gonna lose Alaska. How many how many delicates is Alaska have? Well, we've got one rep. You know, and our or electoral votes don't matter. Yeah, that's what. Sorry, not delicate, you're the electoral the electoral college. Like, you're not gonna lose Alaska. If you did lose Alaska. It's like you're not gonna lose it anyway. They won't lose it, like Trump's I canna lose Alaska if you didn't lose Alaska. It's not that main electoral votes. It's like you're gonna piss off Alaska's governor who's under recall. Recall, Okay, you're gonna off that got kicked down the road, but you're gonna piss off their governor, but you're still going to carry the state. It's like, I don't see the mining company isn't even a US company. I don't see why not just like, why not just take the conservation win. Yeah, it's a big, high profile thing. You can then go and you know that certainly they'll do all the things. They're gonna piss off hunters and angers in other places, and it's just like part of life. They might even do it. A cynic might be like, oh yeah, they could kill pebble and it'll be it'll provide air cover to be able to do more work in anoir. There's all these like you know, there's all these like cynical perspectives, but why not just take the wind and and then whatever you do down the in the future. You can look and be like, but but we helped you guys out on pebbles to shut up. What was the response that you got to that they weren't like, okay, we're on it like that. This is a conversation. I agree with you. It seems like just a way to if nothing else, man just accepted as cover for cover for what you got to do down the road. No one's gonna punish. No one's gonna punish you. Now, no one's gonna punish you. You know, maybe like the American Mining Association, But they'll get over it. I mean, there's there's all kinds of talking even in the mining industry that this is you know, this drags us all down, you know, the optics around it, the human rights issue, the fishery, the economics. It makes us all look bad. Yeah, they'd be like, next time we do something, just keep your mouth shut, you know, I just keep coming I keep yeah, exactly, I just keep coming back to the quality of the environmental impact statement. Right, it's so bad that it's just gonna it's just gonna make people take a harder look at every other environmental impact statement for every other mind elsewhere in the United States. It's like, is this a new standard? If this is new standard, just gonna be in court forever. And that's what I just keep trying to, you know, pound away. It's like, this is a the set the size, type, and location of pebble, and the diversity of opinion against it, the economic concerns that are you know, pushing you know back, just do the right thing. It's one place you would be an interesting activity in the future would be to come in and and and take a look at, uh, how how much money was spent on lawyers through this process. Lawyers like that industry has to be like, I don't care what they decide in the end, but this has been quite good for us. Yeah, I mean lawyers, uh, you know, public relations firms advertising things like that. I don't know. I was like an economic it's like like debating pebble as an economic driver. Yeah, you know it's funny because you hear that. It's like, well, you know you ain't work on this, tim because you know it makes you money, like you can I would get rich, No, I would. I would love if tomorrow do you get four million dollars when they get rejected. I am not getting a four and a half million dollar nor a twelve and a half million dollar bonus. It's not happening. I would love to have no other role of playing this then to go visit some friends and go catch some trout. You know, we haven't we haven't talked about what you're like, what what banner you fly under. So the name of the outfit I am sort of in control of, in charge of is It's called Salmon State. Um. The the whole idea of we want to make sure that Alaska remains a place where salmon thrive, and you know, Alaska is kind of last remaining salmon state and where we promote laws and policies and and practices at in Sherre. Alaska remains the home of the greatest wild salmon resource on the planet and the source of food and income and culture. For people across the political spectrum. My brother had a good point. We're talking about we're talking about the conservation movement in the Lower forty eight, and what I was saying to him is I was complaining to him about um Alaskan's and their conservation battles are always coming to the Lower forty eight right through. I was like, you like people down there and need to hear about this issue we have now, right, but it's a one way flow. I'm like, how can I never get how can people in Alaska? I never fired up about the conservation asan battles that are being waged down here. Like I know all kinds of people that live in Michigan, Utah, Montana, right, Yeah, and we're fired up about your guys issues. We're fired up about Pebble mind. We'd like to protect Annoir. But I never hear from your sons of bitches on anything we're doing down here. Yeah, I think you know within well with like you know, say like Tongas National Forest or the Arctic National Wilife Reft future, those are federal lands, so they're owned by every American, So there's always that you know, that concept of you know, you're just as important to the debate as somebody who lives in Fairbanks. And that's true. This conversation brought up an observation though that it led to an observation where we were trying to say, like why is it different? And he was saying that conservation in the lower forty eight is a lot about recovery, and it's a lot about land management conservation and um in Alaska is a lot of is more about wildlife management, meaning that they're not trying to repair habitat like down here, wh's trying to fix everything? How do we fix the Columbia River? Right? How do we fix the Meadal Lands in New Jersey? Like? What could ever be? Like it's it's ruined or mostly ruined, Like what could we do to hang on to some vestige and make things a little better. The conversation there is like dude, sitting pretty, things look solid and it's just kind of like it's a different fight. Yeah, it's different. So it's like holding onto perfect things. Can we just keep the perfect things perfect? It's not like these elaborate plans to try to fix some massive mistake we made a hundred years ago, and those things are really hard to do and they're really expensive. I mean, that's salmon in a nutshell, right, And that's sort of the premise for why why we're doing what we're what we're doing at salmon stay it is. You just look at recovery efforts all around the Pacific Northwest and in British Columbia when it comes to wild salmon, and they're that's not working, you know what, because it's too it's too complicated. There's no way like even if you had all the money and all the willpower, right, it's still be like it's there's still like a sort of component to recovering salmon in the Columbia or whatever. There's still like a component of just like brain power and thought that isn't there, or like engineering that's you know, I mean, it's too hard, even with all kinds of money. It's hard. There's too many parts to it. Something like pebbly like it's already perfect, it's so easy, just don't ruin it. And I think else you'd be sitting there talking about in a hundred years how we're gonna fix it, and people be like you can't, you know, and lower for you a lot of us, there's still the mythology of Alaska, and I think that there's an investment for for us down here just knowing that it's there right, Like there's there's a different relationship that we have with the idea of Alaska and wanted to get there. I know that was the case for me as a kid, having read all the stories that I read in magazine articles and everything else, like that was the place I wanted to go. That was my goal. And just just the value of knowing that it exists in the form that it does brings I think those of us in lower Ford significant positive feelings. Yeah, I would sign a deal. I would sign a deal if someone said, Okay, we'll kill pebble mine, but here's the deal. You can't step ever again in your life within two hundred miles of the epicenter of that mine or anything that that water flows into, or any of the streams. You can't go there. Okay, that's fine, I signed that. Be bummed about it, but I'd take that deal. It's like, it's not like I need to, you know, like never go back again, but I know it it stays protected. Yeah, that's cool. I'd even sign away with my kids ability to go children. Yeah, no, seriously, not only your children and your children's children cannot fish those rivers, you know. But that's the thing about that pebble is a little bit different than say the Arctic National Wilife Refuge we were talking about. You know, that is like that is out there and you're either going to develop it or it's just gonna be left alone for caribou and mosquitoes and a few intrepid people, right. I mean, Bristol Bay is highly utilized. It just works. You know, you have tens of thousands of people make their make their living off that resource, and it's proven that it's sustainable and it's renewable. So it's been that weird. It's a good it's a good distinction. Yeah. I don't think you trying on't think you're trying to sell I don't think you're trying to sell anwar short. But it's a reason distinction definitely not. I'm you know, it's not like it's not elitist. Yeah, yeah, whether it's it's not a museum. You know, it's not a park. I mean there are parks, but those get heavily heal well by the lodges. You know, it's a place that works. It shows that there's actually something between. You can't go there at all and you have to destroy it. That there's something in between. And I think that's kind of what you know, your stuff is all about, right, I mean, getting out there and doing things. Just don't ruin it. That's why I well that. You know, I came to Alaska and worked in on a same boat and in a canary, and yeah it was miserable, Um, but I just was captivated, you know, I just like I gotta go back because of what it represented. You know, lived I lived in southeast for a long time and you worked on a canary and catch I got all my fingers. You must not stayed long. Yeah, so but you know, that whole idea of just being able to, you know, go out and all these public lands and essentially do whatever you want except screw it up. No, it's amazing how how well it works and how heavily it's utilized like that. That is still mind blow. And I mean you think talking about the number of salmon that are taking out of that system and it's still self perpetuating the number of lodges and boats and planes. You know, you feel like you're out in the middle of nowhere, but when you're on those rivers, you're not by yourself. They're people fishing all around you. And yet it's still maintains that character of wilderness incredibly well. It's it's like a really resilient space too, as long as you don't do anything overtly terrible. Those fish keep coming back, those nutrients work, the bears are there, the motion there, it's holding on. It's a good point I had considered. Man, I think there are are there, There are those places, but it's a working landscape. Yeah, myle is good. I have one other one that maybe maybe if it's does my own personal desire, And I know you're not a saki expert, but maybe you have the answers. Maybe you don't. I was told when I was working up there, and I took this as gospel without digging into it. Soak I only reproducing systems with lakes correct pretty much? Yeah? Yeah? Is it true that they are therefore like micro invertebrate feeders only and they do not eat other fish or creatures as far as I know, they do not. Okay, but you're not you're not coming out as like the solid definitive expert on this because I I know it's a weird thing too, but yeah, my brow would be on asked that one. But the other day we're floating the river up there and and uh, they were well colored fish, but my god, they just aggressively chased down spoons and spinners. Only when they're there though, Like, so, here's the thing, and that's why I hated guiding for them, because you wanted to get them when they're fresh, and they don't unlike the other species of Pacific salm, and they do not attack generally you're offerings. They just swim right by it. So ninety soccer that you catch the air fresh. If you're doing on Roden reel, you're snagging them in the face. You're just floss them, right. And I was always told that the reason they don't attack lures or spinners, are flies or anything is because they're not accustomed hunting down prey like krill and like like feel like open mouth feeding through. Yeah, exactly, that was my understanding. The old played out, half spawned out fish weird. They're like pissed, yeah, like a big angry male. Yeah. Yeah, you catch predominantly mails, but man, they're pissed. Yeah, defending the spawning reds. Let's put Yeah, we got some some of the guys that we work, some of our crew guys that just can't fish. It's like, now a chance to shine. There you go, I bet you catch one one of these guys. He caught five. And when he cast Johnny that the he'd cast and his cast and he goes like far overhead and kind on his toes. I was like, well, like, I understand what you're doing. But he casting, like point the rod skyword. The thing is to sort of go up and kind of land by his feet. But the sock had swim over and grab It doesn't matter where you put it, they're gonna find it. It's like, dude, it's your time. He wanted a picture to show his kids. They're cool looking fish when they get a colored pretty cool. They're real pretty all right. Well that I'm kind of exactly ended that where I started thinking that was the case. But I'd love to like get definitive answer if I was. If I'm right about what I'll find out it's in Thanks for making the trip down. Yeah, it's my pleasure to go back where you came from. Now appreciate it. Yeah, yes, keep slugging away, man, we will. Well, we should ask a question, what can people do if they if they're interested in help and continue to stop the I got two more questions though. For that one, do you get death threats and stuff like that? I haven't in a long time, you know. I think I think other people have, you know, taken on leadership roles and I'm kind of kind of faded into the background a little bit. So that's that's nice. You know, Like like a Lana who would have been great to get down here, she just can't, you know, with with everything going on in her community. But you know she's She's people are in her face all the time. I mean, the people in like those communities, the askanted people in those communities there, they're super tough and really brave. Um. But you know, we've all had our moments where we've been harassed by the by the powers that be. Yeah, and then for Yanni's question, right now, it's just sit and wait or is the stuff people should be doing? Well? You know, you can always weigh in with your elected officials, right you know, because I think there could be a congressional play at some point you know, there's there's been talk of well, the House of Representatives actually passed a spending bill Jared Huffman out of California that no money can be spent on the processing of the Pebble Project Environmental impact statement in fiscal year, and the Senate will take up a you know, a companion spending bill and then they'll do some sausage making in theory before the years out and you know, right into the right and your senators asking them to, you know, support efforts not to fund the e I S. Look, no matter where you are on the issue, you know, there's a lot of debate out there about the quality of this thing. And maybe we just take a time out for you. So that's one thing you could do in the the immediate term. And then and then we've got a we've got a website that's a consortium of a lot of different groups now stop Pebble mind now dot org and uh, it's got a ton of good information and the way she can win in I'm working on a philosophy, a political philosophy. It's called environmental nationalism. Um. Part of this would be this, if it really is the biggest pile of gold in the world. Isn't it sweet that we own it and it's just sitting there and waiting for us. Right, let everybody else copper, Let everybody else screw their area. It's not going anywhere. It's been there for millions of years, maybe billions of years. Um, just leave it there. It's not like is that like strike now or we'll never be able to get it. Well, that's a real It comes down to something where like America will end, Like America will end, will all die, and the American dream will be over, the American experiment will collapse if we can't get some gold there. It is, Yeah, and there's nothing to say that in fifty year, a hundred years we won't have the mining technology to take it out of there without scarring the surface and possibly killing Yeah, probably not the crazy witch and rod and just I mean that's the problem with right. There's a lot of it there, but it's low grade. It's a huge excavation. You're saying that we're not smart enough to eventually figure out how to get it out. I'm hoping that we're smart enough that we realize we don't really need gold for anything, you know, like the majority of it goes to jewelry at Walmart and to dowries and you know, for like marriages and other cultures and countries. It's not like it's not like it's a critical mineral copper. It's a totally different story. But who knows what we'll figure out as far as renewables go in the future and as far as there's some rare earth minerals there too, right, and they talk about that and we're gonna need that for the for the renewable economy. Um. But you know, the thing that always stops these guys dead in their tracks, it's kind of just the exact opposite of that. It's like, okay, well this is in the national interest because you know, the Chinese have all these rare earth minerals. Are you telling me you're never gonna sell any of the material that comes out of pebble on the international market? And that just stops the conversation right there. It's just like oil. You know, there is no there is no like national market for oil. It's it's all traded on the on the global market. That's how commodities work. Yeah, but I like that, you know, and I've heard that from a lot of people. It's like, why wouldn't we just you know, invest against the fact that we actually have this resource in the ground, you know, to speculate on it. It's a different kind of speculation, but it's one that you have to get. You have your cake and eat it too. You have a wild salmon run and you get to, you know, do weird ship with the stock market that most people don't understand. When I first one on a date with my wife, I bet my body hunter Bucks that I'd end up marriing her after our first date, and he's like bullshit. We bet a hundred dollars and I had two years to do it, and he sent me my hunter Bocks. And we also wrote our beat up in a little contract when we were drinking, and so I framed the hunter Bucks in the contract. Right, It's not lost on me that there could be a situation in which I would bust that glass and get that hunter Bucks out. It would take a lot. We're not there yet. We haven't been there in the last ten years. Is there a way in which, some way I would break the glass and get the hunter Bucks out? No rivers so long that is not a bend, right, Like, I don't know, but right now I like it where it is. I don't want to break the glass people, and that's the thing and they all depend on it hopefully never. But I'm just saying, think about it's like it's not going anywhere. There's not like a thing where like it's like if you is that, like, get it now where it's gone. We can afford not to. Like we're rich enough and lucky enough as a country. I won't say rich and lucky because it might be like we're fortunate enough and we've done enough things right as a country that we can have pristine places. It is a tremendous not a look, not like a luxury like we just fell onto it. We've people have done things, We have made sacrifices to have places that we can afford to leave and and have cities and have a great economy and do all this and have perfect places, perfect places like like God put them there. So we should be jumping up and down with joy. We can pull it off. We can have a hundred bucks in a picture frame hanging on our wall. Well, I'm I'm gonna work really hard to make sure you get your thousand bucks. Please. Other I want you to be two for two. You have a frame up, tenadent. I'm not framing this thousand man. This thouse is going into the family pile. But thank you, all right, thanks for coming down, man, my pleasure. Good luck. Thanks, you know, not for your own sake, but for our good, for everybody. It's like when I say a good luck to someone in Star Wars, right for the Force, that's right, all right, thank you, thank you,