If you missed it on PBS, you can watch Frontline's Alaska Gold in full online. Frontline's website contains other resources of interest too. Go to
Alaska Gold. The documentary is about great salmon watersheds, how they work and people coming together to protect one of the world's greatest salmon runs. It equally presents the multinational mining company's arguments to develop a mega mine in the watershed. The footage is excellent. The film inspiring. Highly recommended.
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| Photo courtesy of Felt Soul's Red Gold website. See the Red Gold trailer below. |
This is how frontline describes the documentary:
The salmon or the mine?
That question divides Bristol Bay, Alaska, home to one of the world’s largest wild salmon fisheries – and an enormous deposit of copper and gold worth as much as half a trillion dollars.
In Alaska Gold, FRONTLINE examines proposals to extract the wealth in a mining operation that could threaten, and possibly destroy, the region’s salmon ecosystem — and the traditional way of life that depends on it.
Supporters of the mine project say it would generate tremendous wealth and opportunity for this depressed region. Opponents believe it would devastate one of the largest and best managed sustainable wild salmon fisheries on the planet.
Our team spent years investigating the situation on the ground in Alaska, examining the evidence on all sides, and listening to the people and communities with a stake in this high-stakes standoff.
So what did they learn? What’s really known about the mine’s potential impact on the region? Is there some middle ground in this fight? What’s the way forward for Bristol Bay?
Much of the Frontline footage is from Felt Soul Media's award winning Red Gold, a 2008 documentary about the struggle to preserve Bristol Bay. Here's the trailer .
