Where: Southwestern Alaska, United States

What's at stake: Huge salmon runs supporting bears, whales and other wildlife in largely untouched wilderness

Threatened by: Hard-rock mining

Animals include: Grizzlies, sockeye salmon, chinook salmon, wolves, eagles, beluga whales, killer whales, harbor seals

• The Kvichak and Nushagak rivers, both of which feed Bristol Bay, are home to the world’s largest sockeye salmon run and Alaska’s largest Chinook salmon run. Record sockeye salmon runs have exceeded 50 million fish annually.
• Bristol Bay’s headwaters are sandwiched between two large national parks, Katmai and Lake Clark.
• An unusual, little-studied population of freshwater harbor seals lives year-round at Lake Iliamna, Alaska’s largest freshwater lake, which drains into Bristol Bay via the Kvichak River. Only one other population of freshwater harbor seals is known, in northern Quebec, and has been classified as a unique subspecies. Salmon are a key part of the Lake Iliamna seals’ diet.
• The Pebble mining project includes a proposed port in Cook Inlet, which could disrupt the endangered Cook Inlet beluga whales with chemical and noise pollution.
• Bristol Bay's pristine wetlands, lagoons and the upper reaches of its watershed support millions of migratory waterfowl and terrestrial birds, including bald eagles, Steller's eiders, rock ptarmigans, Arctic terns, sandhill cranes, swans and emperor geese.
• Eight Bristol Bay Native Corporations have formed an association called Nunumta Aulukestai (Caretakers of Our Land), which is opposed to mining in the area. Bristol Bay’s native peoples rely heavily on fishing, hunting, trapping and gathering to feed themselves and their families.
• Bristol Bay’s commercial fisheries generate $300 million in revenue each year – that’s one-third of Alaska’s commercial fishing revenue. More than 75 percent of summer-time jobs are based on the area’s fish and wildlife.
• Even minute increases of copper dust above natural levels in water (two to ten parts per billion) have been shown to damage the navigational ability of a salmon to return to its spawning stream.
• One of the artificial lakes proposed to hold waste from Pebble Mine would cover 10 square miles.