Stop the Pebble Mine!

Foreign Companies Threaten an American Paradise with 10 Billion Tons of Mining Waste.

Global mining giants—including the Anglo American and Rio Tinto corporations—want to gouge one of the world’s largest open-pit gold and copper mines out of Alaska’s incomparable Bristol Bay wilderness.

Near my home in Utah, Rio Tinto's massive Bingham Canyon Mine is one of the biggest man-made excavations on Earth and has rendered a large area of local groundwater too polluted for human consumption. Now, the Rio Tinto and Anglo American companies want to build an even bigger mine — the Pebble Mine — at the headwaters of our planet's greatest wild salmon river systems. It's an environmental tragedy waiting to happen.

-Robert Redford, Conservationist and NRDC Board Member

Latest Email Alert

Read Letter

The EPA has once again confirmed that the Pebble Mine would be a disaster for Alaska’s Bristol Bay

Watch Our Videos

Robert Redford asks us to urge President Obama to save Bristol Bay.

Cook Inlet beluga whales are struggling to survive.

What's at Stake

The Pebble Mine would be gouged out of an American paradise — filled with salmon, bears, moose, caribou, wolverines and whales — that has sustained Native communities for thousands of years.

This gargantuan gold and copper operation would produce an estimated 10 billion tons of contaminated waste — 3,000 pounds for every person on Earth. All this in an active earthquake zone at the headwaters of the largest sockeye salmon runs in the world. The threat to Bristol Bay just below is undeniable.

Progress Report

Our worldwide campaign has already generated more than one million petitions against the Pebble Mine.

Here are a few recent developments:

January 2013

Robert Redford calls on President Obama to block Pebble Mine
Read More
May 2012

EPA says Pebble Mine would spell disaster for Bristol Bay
Read More
April 2012

NRDC turns up the heat at shareholder meetings
Read More
November 2011

Poll: 81% of Bristol Bay Native shareholders oppose mine
Read More
October 2011

Local voters reject Pebble Mine
Read More
June 2011

BioGems Defenders answer call to action to save belugas
Read More
April 2011

Robert Redford ad runs in New York Times
Read More
April 2011

NRDC delivers message to Rio Tinto
Read More
February 2011

Mitsubishi withdraws from Pebble Mine
Read More
October 2010

We tell Anglo: "No More Broken Promises!"
Read More