Why:
Founded in 1980, the Alaska Conservation Foundation is the only public foundation solely dedicated to conservation in Alaska, connecting thousands of committed donors and businesses worldwide with more than a hundred grassroots conservation organizations in Alaska.
Since the 1950s, Alaska’s economy has relied on boom and bust extractive industries. With industrial-scale logging, natural gas, and oil industries continuing to decline, Alaska is already beginning to invest heavily into a new era of boom and bust extraction in the form of industrial-scale mining for transition metals and minerals.
Mining and associated activities intersect with a variety of critical issues Alaskans are already facing. Most importantly, mining operations threaten critical subsistence resources and contribute to toxic air and water pollution that impact community health. Additionally, increased mining activity will expand the need for dirty energy to power mining operations and require the building of roads to access mining claims which would intersect critical salmon and other wildlife habitats.
Through many different mediums, we’ve heard from our partners that there is a need and desire for Alaska Conservation Foundation to continue to play a supporting role in state-wide mining work. Specifically, The feedback we received from our March 2022 Alaska Conference on Mining Impacts and Prevention was a testament to just how quickly the threat of industrial-scale mining is growing across Alaska. The overlap of shared experiences among communities affected by the various mining projects and the desire for community members to connect was clear.
This is why Alaska Conservation Foundation has introduced the Mining Impacts and Prevention Fund to support grassroots and tribal efforts to address industrial-scale mining and associated activities across Alaska. Raising funds will allow us to fund efforts to protect our clean water, wild salmon, and ways of life in Alaska from run-away industrial-scale mining.
What will the Mining Impacts and Prevention Fund do?
Alaska Conservation Foundation’s Mining Fund will provide organizations and communities support in a variety of ways:
- Convenings for strategy development, coalition fostering, and further relationship building
- Organizing, mobilization, and communications support
- Travel for trainings, lobbying, and agency meetings
- Technical support such as water monitoring and/or legal support
