New Film About the Fight Over Bristol Bay: "Red Gold"

Joining forces with Trout Unlimited Alaska, Felt Soul Media - an award winning producer of fly fishing films – will reveal the beauty and bounty of the pristine Bristol Bay watershed and give a voice to the commercial, sport and subsistence fishermen together in the face of mining development and the proposed Pebble mine in their film "Red Gold."  Check out a preview of the film above.
»See "Red Gold" mentioned in the September 2008 issue of Outside magazine. Download the PDF (1.7 MB).

Save Bristol Bay: Learn more about TU's efforts to create a fish refuge in this amazing place. Check out TU's website devoted to Bristol Bay.

TU ALASKA: Our Mission

The goal of the Trout Unlimited Alaska Program is to preserve, protect and restore wild salmon and trout populations throughout Alaska. The Alaska program will focus its work in three areas: habitat protection, watershed restoration and Pacific Salmon Treaty reauthorization.

I. Habitat Protection

In Southeast Alaska's Tongass National Forest TU will work to organize sportsmen, guides, lodge owners and fishing related businesses to support stronger administrative and/or legislative protections for critical wild salmon watersheds and key hunting areas of the America's largest and wildest national forest and other adjacent lands. We will accomplish this in part by developing information that makes clear to hunters and anglers the links among habitat protection, hunting and fishing opportunities, and intact roadless areas though reports such as TU's "Where the Wildlands Are: Alaska," report.

In Southwest Alaska, TU has merged forces with the Bristol Bay Alliance in an effort to organize sportsmen, lodge-owners, guides, visitors, commercial fishermen, Alaska Natives and others, to oppose the massive Pebble open pit mine proposal and the creation of a Bristol Bay Mining District. The Bristol Bay Mining District would be the largest in North America, and would be situated directly upstream of one of the worlds most prolific salmon fisheries. TU will also work with key allies in an effort to reinstate the moratorium on oil and gas development in the Bay. Throughout the next two years TU's Southwest Alaska Project Director, Brian Kraft, will continue to inform Bristol Bay Area residents of the huge potential negative social and environmental impacts of large scale mining development in the region. Rather than simply advocate for opposition to a mine, TU will work with others in the State to build a diverse constituency in support of durable, lasting protection for this incomparable wild salmon fishery.

The Alaska program will also work hard to reach out to and reinvigorate TU's Alaska membership by focusing on important, local, get your hands dirty projects.

II. Habitat Restoration

TU Alaska will expand on a recent Memorandum of Understanding signed with the US Forest Service to create a restoration campaign in conjunction with private land owners (Native Corporations and tribes), the US Forest Service, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, and others to begin on the ground work of fixing culverts and repairing roads that are degrading streams in the Cobble Area of Prince of Wales Island. This project is part of an effort to "change the politics" of the Tongass from annual fights over road building budgets to a focus on job creation and economic opportunity associated with watershed restoration.

III. International Cooperation

TU will conduct an assessment of the US-Canada Pacific Salmon Treaty to guide the renewal of the Treaty in 2008-2009. The Pacific Salmon Treaty emphasizes salmon production and harvest issues. TU will work to ensure that the renewal focuses far more on habitat and restoration. Negotiations on treaty renewal will begin next year. We will focus on what is working, what is not, and why? In conjunction with this work, we will monitor development proposals and examine changes in land use patterns associated with Transboundary Rivers such as Stikine and Taku.

Tim Bristol, Director
419 Sixth Street, Ste. 200
Juneau, AK 99801
(907) 321-3291

Contact Tim Bristol

Date: