There’s gold in them thar…. swamps.

A lot of gold, in fact—up to $120 billion of it, lying within the Bristol Bay watershed in Alaska. Which is why a Canadian company, Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd., wants to dig one of the world’s largest open-pit mines to get it.

Naturally, there’s a fight. Mines are messy, and this one—the Pebble Mine—could threaten delicate salmon spawning grounds.

But this fight is different—because there are Republicans on both sides.

“I am a commercial fisherman; my daughter’s name is Bristol,” Sarah Palin said in 2006, while running for governor. “I could not support a project that risks one resource that we know is a given, and that is the world’s richest spawning grounds, over another resource.”

And there’s the rub: These aren’t just endangered fish that the Pebble Mine could threaten—they’re commercial fish. So, alongside the more typical coalitions of tribal groups and environmental organizations warning of a “three mile wide hole and 9 billion tons of waste...right in the heart of Bristol Bay” are a number of Alaskan conservatives concerned about the fishing industry and all it represents for Alaska.

Read the full story at the Daily Best>>

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