As climate change raises global temperatures, glaciers are retreating in Alaska and Canada. That’s leading to a number of new lakes, rivers and streams that could become prime fish habitat. But it’s also exposing land that mining companies say could hold minerals worth as much as $1 trillion.
In his latest story for the nonprofit news outlet Grist, reporter Max Graham looked at the competing interests in both Canada and Alaska, as both hope to take advantage of what’s left behind when glaciers retreat. Graham says the glacial melt isn’t just creating new streams, it’s enhancing old ones.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Max Graham: So these are streams that maybe have been too cold and murky with glaciers right above them, and then as those glaciers pull back and contribute less to their flows, they're kind of warming and clearing up and turning into sort of havens, or just more productive salmon streams. And so you can kind of see both of these evolutions of the ecosystem there in the Coast Mountains playing out, you know, just depending on the topography and the geography.
Wesley Early: What's the scope of this? How many new waterways are we talking about here?
MG: It's quite a lot. I should preface this by saying that the research is quite early. There have only been a couple of published studies on it. It's just a handful of researchers who are looking at this. They published a figure that in Alaska and Western Canada — not just along the border between Southeast and [British Columbia], but all the way up into Southcentral even — there could be 4,000 miles of new salmon streams created by the end of the century, and that doesn't include new lakes or some of those enhanced waterways that I had mentioned. And so, it's pretty early to kind of say exactly what the magnitude will be, but the research so far really suggests it's going to be significant.
WE: There's a lot of concern over climate change and how it's diminishing fish habitats by making the water warmer. But you write that, somewhat ironically, it's also creating new fish habitat. How exactly does that work?
MG: Because this research is so new, the scientists actually aren't sure at this point exactly whether the magnitude of gains will sort of offset or outweigh the sort of degraded or lost habitat as streams dry up or as streams get too warm for salmon. Salmon streams will be disappearing at the same time that they're being created in these same mountains. And so I think that's just sort of an outstanding question, overall for these particular populations of salmon, will the gains from glacial retreat outweigh the losses, whether it's due to warming seas or due to actual freshwater habitat loss? I don't have a great answer about that. I mean, this is something the researchers are keenly, sort of thinking about. I think we can say that there will be some… there are negative impacts, but also, as this research shows, there actually will be some buffering against those impacts.
WE: It's not just fishing advocates that are eyeing this region. Can you talk about how mining companies are looking to stake claim at newly exposed regions?
MG: Yeah, that's sort of this new tension that's emerging in these areas. The same kind of watersheds that salmon are moving into are also of interest to mining companies. And pretty much, as ice melts, new rock, new outcrops are being exposed, and there's interest in the new discoveries. Geologists are finding minerals that no one had ever seen before because they were buried beneath ice not long ago. And so I, in my reporting, identified at least 20 companies, mostly Canadian companies, mostly small, sort of junior mineral exploration companies, that actually are advertising snow and ice melt and receding glaciers in these mountains in their marketing materials and in their financial disclosures, or security disclosures, to investors saying, ‘We're discovering gold and copper in rocks that no one had seen, like three, four, five years ago.’
WE: It sounds like a lot of these potential mining projects stand to benefit Canadian-based companies and First Nations. Why do U.S. officials care?
MG: I think the short answer is that, on the Alaska side, there's not… if you're proposing a mine in Alaska, presumably Alaskan jobs will be created, and there'll sort of be this discussion around, well, you know, do the economic benefits, how do those weigh against other impacts? The discussion around Canadian mines upstream of Alaska and Alaska communities is that the mines, some Alaskans are concerned, could impact Alaskans negatively, but the benefits for Alaskans are either non-existent or not clear. It's like, if you build a mine on the Canadian side, likely no Alaskan jobs are going to be created. But if there's a tailings dam failure, that could really end up messing things up downstream. So I think it's mainly just that there could be impacts on Alaskans, and the benefits don't really exist. So I think that's, you know, for officials on the Alaska side, I think that's the concern.
