Welcome to the latest installment of the Wednesday Wake-Up Call, a weekly roundup of the most pressing conservation issues important to anglers. With both Christmas and New Year’s Day falling on Wednesdays, it’s been a few weeks. Working with our friends at Trout Unlimited, Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, The Everglades Foundation, Captains for Clean Water, Bullsugar.org, and Conservation Hawks (among others), we’ll make sure you’ve got the information you need to understand the issues and form solid opinions.
If you know of an important issue–whether it’s national or local–that anglers should be paying attention to, comment below, and we’ll check it out!
1. Corps of Engineers Completes Pebble Mine Preliminary Final Environmental Impact Statement
Yesterday, the deputy chief of the Army Corps’ Alaska District Regulatory Division announced that the preliminary Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) has been completed. While the document is not for public release, it has been distributed to governmental agencies and Bristol Bay Tribes. As expected, the EIS does little to address concerns raised during the comment period on the original draft. A statement from United Tribes of Bristol Bay argues,
The preliminary Final EIS provided to cooperating agencies and Tribes makes it clear that the agency is intent on a rushed process with a politically-determined outcome and will not conduct the comprehensive analysis of the mine that is expected, and legally required, in the permitting process. The near final review has not addressed myriad issues and data gaps cited by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, the Environmental Protection Agency, and other cooperating agencies.
Click here for the full story from KTUU.
More Pebble News:
- Pebble Releases Draft Mitigation Plan on alaskajournal.com.
- The Gibralter is Special yet Pebble wants to build a bridge over it, on tu.org
- Pebble, Gov. Dunleavy and the Clean Water Act on adn.com.
- Should we trust a process that’s failing us? on adn.com
- Army Corps trades Alaska habitat for sewage system fixes on eenews.net
2. Lack of Fresh Water Threatens Florida Bay
Orvis partners The Everglades Foundation and Captains for Clean Water hosted a media event three days before the Super Bowl in Miami. At Worldwide Sportsman in Islamorada, Florida, EF Senior Ecologist Dr. Stephen Davis gave a brief presentation about how the flow of fresh water to the bay has been interrupted over the past century, creating periodic hyper salinity and seas-grass die-offs. Members of the media then climbed aboard the boats of local fishing guides for on-the-water demonstrations in the bay itself.
Click here for a report on the event via keysnews.com
More Everglades News:
- Trump’s 2021 budget proposes $250 million for Everglades restoration projects on miamiherald.com.
- Study establishes airborne exposure to harmful algal blooms’ toxins on sciencecodex.com.
- An aerial tour: St. Lucie River to Kissimmee on jacquithurlowlippisch.com shows recovery of the bay after no water releases from Okeechobee.
- A tour through the Everglades in 17 gorgeous photos on naplesnews.com
2. TU Taking Applications for the Jeremy Brooks Memorial Internship
Photo via Instagram
Jeremy Brooks was a passionate fly angler en route to his dream job as a fly-fishing guide on the Ponoi River in Russia when he died in a plane crash last May. The Trout Unlimited Jeremy Brooks Memorial Internship was established in Jeremy’s honor, and it’s open to any student enrolled in an undergraduate or graduate degree program, who displays a passion for fly-fishing, a strong conservation ethic, and a desire to give back to their community. The two-to three-month paid internship