Rivers Without Borders was pleased to be part of the Alaska Conference On Mining Impacts And Prevention organized and facilitated by the Alaska Conservation Foundation and held in Girdwood Alaska last month. Indigenous community members were well represented at the conference, and the event was a great chance to make connections with colleague NGOs and take the pulse of mining issues across Alaska.
While RWB is for sure biased about the importance of our organization’s work, the conference underscored for us the massive threat posed by potential mining in the headwaters of the Alaska – British Columbia transboundary region’s river systems on which we focus. It was also a reminder of the opportunity still before us to chart a course toward keeping these ecologically rich world class salmon watersheds intact and thriving as opposed to letting their future be defined with a mining boom.
RWB’s Guy Archibald is shown discussing the ongoing mineral exploration in Chilkat headwaters in the accompanying photo . We were honored to share in that discussion with Jones Hotch, Vice President of the Chilkat Indian Village. His community, Klukwan, is not far downstream from ongoing exploration.
RWB thanks Alaska Conservation Foundation and True North Foundation for making this conference happen as we come away inspired and get back to the work at hand with a renewed sense of purpose .
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