00:00:00.240Hey, for the wild community, it's Ayanna here, and I'm speaking to you on the road to Alaska.
00:00:06.000Madison and I are headed north to do some on-the-ground advocacy work to support the protection of the land that encompasses the Tongass National Forest.
00:00:14.580So releasing this episode with Dune Lenkart is perfect timing to get our northern juices flowing.
00:00:20.200And we spent the last few days in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest for the reciprocity retreat, and it was so damn amazing.
00:00:27.060I mean, we climbed 200 feet into old growth dug fur canopies.
00:00:32.780We were schooled in fringe conservation theory by Courtney from Bark.
00:00:36.780And then she led us on this forest survey walk so we could learn how to defend our forest.
00:00:41.920And we also had the pleasure of a very heady mycological discussion with Peter McCoy.
00:00:46.840So it was quite a weekend, not to mention the food, the song circle led by Amy Ringel.
00:00:52.640I mean, I could go on, but wow, I'm just so grateful to the For the Wild team and Expedition
00:00:58.400Old Growth for making space for this magic to happen. So sign up for our newsletter on our
00:01:03.340website to find out about our next event. I'm already getting really excited. We're also looking
00:01:09.080for land partners for our One Million Redwoods project, and we're specifically at this time
00:01:14.020wanting to connect with people who tend land in the Redwoods region. So if you steward land that
00:01:19.040once had redwoods or still does, but you see space for more trees, please reach out to us at
00:01:24.280engage at forthewild.world. If you value this podcast, please become a member on DRIP.
00:01:30.140We are about to release a new batch of bonus material and other goodies.
00:01:33.880You can sign up at d.rip slash four dash the dash wild. Every member makes a difference.
00:01:40.780We couldn't do it without you. All right, now on to the show.
00:01:49.040We don't have to destroy everything in order to survive.
00:01:58.540There's different ways of thinking and doing and taking actions that prevent nonsense from
00:03:08.700Someone to lean on and someone to trust
00:03:13.360Who needs your assistance and finds your disguise?
00:03:27.600Hello and welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young.
00:03:32.960Today we are speaking with Doon Lankard.
00:03:35.960Doon works to address the most pressing threats facing Alaska,
00:03:39.360from climate change, ocean acidification, to habitat destruction.
00:03:45.340Dune, a lifelong subsistence and commercial fisherman, Alaskan EAC native, and caring conservationist,
00:03:52.620became a community activist and advocate for wildlife species, wild salmon habitat, and native cultural preservation for 30 years,
00:04:01.520since March 24, 1989, when the Exxon Valdez oil tanker spewed more than 30 million gallons
00:04:09.280of oil into his homeland and onto the beaches of Prince William Sound.
00:04:14.820Dune helped found numerous non-profits to take on the power that be the EAC Preservation Council,
00:04:21.640the Native Conservancy Land Trust, the Fire Fund Endowment, helped co-found Red Oil,
00:04:27.200a statewide native network, the Alaska Center, Prince William's Soundkeeper, now the Community
00:04:34.280Cold Storage and Kitchen Project, and working with Alaskan conservation groups, scientists,
00:04:40.400artists, musicians, lawyers, visionaries, and fishing groups to keep Alaska wild.
00:04:46.580I just want to begin by extending a deep bow of gratitude to you for your ferocious dedication and
00:04:54.800perseverance to protect water, land, salmon, and the cultural lifeways of First Peoples of the
00:05:02.760Northwest Coast. We are just beyond honored to join you on the show today. Well, thank you. I'm
00:05:10.140here in the northern end of the coastal temperate rainforest. It's raining, blowing. It was hailing
00:05:17.260the other day. I'm part of the same coastal temperate rainforest as everybody in between
00:05:23.620me and Santa Cruz. Happy to be here representing the sand today. Oh, I feel you. I feel you in the
00:05:31.160wind and the hail and our northern temperate rainforest. I feel them. They call me every day.
00:05:39.480I'm so grateful knowing that you are there leading so many charges. And I want to begin by
00:05:48.120talking about a huge devastating atrocity that happened years ago and believe is still on many
00:05:56.080people's mind that nearly 30 years have actually passed since over 30 million gallons of crude oil
00:06:02.740were spilled into Alaska's Prince William Sound oiling over 3,000 miles of shoreline and I've
00:06:10.380heard you call the Exxon Valdez spill quote the day the water died end quote and at that time it
00:06:17.840was the largest oil spill in U.S. history, only to be surpassed by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill
00:06:23.740in the Gulf of Mexico. And these spills and the quickness with which people who are not viscerally
00:06:30.840impacted by them have forgotten them, it really speaks to the cannibalistic willingness of this
00:06:37.220civilization to inflict violence and sickness upon the fabric of life in the name of its addiction
00:06:43.480to oil. And oil development has not hindered since then or the Deepwater Horizon spill. In 2015,
00:06:52.320bans on exporting crude oil from the US were lifted. And the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, one of
00:06:58.320the largest pipeline systems in the world, snaking from Prudhoe Bay in the Arctic to just north of
00:07:04.960Cordova in your home region, is now filling tankers headed to Asia. So I'm wondering,
00:07:11.340How has it been for you and your community to heal from Exxon Valdez while simultaneously having to resist compounding threats of more extraction and development?
00:07:24.180That's a really tough question to answer because the fabric of our community was eroded and we were disconnected.
00:07:37.740A lot of people, they have an American dream or an Alaskan dream or a fishing dream, native dream.
00:07:47.500A lot of those threads and intrinsic relationships that we have with the land and the sea,
00:07:55.080and in our case, being a commercial fisherman and somebody who's lived from the sea for the last 50 plus years,
00:08:02.200it was absolutely devastating to our psyche to our personal health mental economic health i mean
00:08:11.720everything we believed in was shattered and there was a another side to the story where you know we
00:08:19.660thought that exxon would come and clean up their mess they said we're exxon we do it right they
00:08:26.060came up right away said they'd make everything right with us pay us all off make our lives whole
00:08:30.620again. But they just put a big hole in our lives and our hearts. And they never did clean up their
00:08:36.900mess. And they appealed the $5 billion verdict that we won in 1994 for punitive damages. They
00:08:45.640appealed that decision 17 times until they got the US Supremes of their dreams. And then they
00:08:53.740immediately took the case to reduce the verdict size from $5 billion down to $500 million,
00:09:01.260which was the equivalent of one good day of fishing for 30,000 plaintiffs in the spill zone.
00:09:06.620The thing about that is about 6,000 to 7,000 original plaintiffs that filed in 1989 had
00:09:15.980already deceased by the time there was a settlement. So their families didn't get the money.
00:09:21.000Exxon just wanted to hold out as long as they possibly could.
00:09:25.580And fisheries still haven't fully recovered out of the 27 most heavily impacted species.
00:09:31.440Probably a dozen of those species are recovered.
00:09:35.280The herring, which used to be 50% of our annual income, we fished three seasons out of the
00:09:49.080And the thing about herring is they're like little torpedoes of energy that provide a meal source and high protein, high omegos for every species impacted in the spill.
00:10:01.400And so when those herring recover, we'll recover.
00:10:05.020I can only imagine the devastation and just to think that super tankers still navigate the deep waters of your territory every day.
00:10:15.480And I think it's important to make people aware of the realities of the oil spill response that you've begun to explain.
00:10:23.540But I'm wondering how exactly has Exxon addressed the irreparable long-term damages they wrought upon the ecosystems and the lifeways of Prince Williamstown and the Copper River Delta?
00:10:35.180you know as long as there's oil industry and government will continue to pump oil into our
00:10:41.420veins and into our cars idling energy there will always be this rampant waste because of
00:10:49.600our philosophies and our perspectives and how we believe we should live in the world
00:10:55.320so i think that profits over people and profits over society some people are starting to wise up
00:11:04.220but a lot of people are still in denial. They think that everything is going to be okay and
00:11:08.620things are going to work themselves out. That unfortunately doesn't happen very often,
00:11:14.520and it's a myth. The other thing is that communities need to empower themselves and
00:11:20.800find the courage to take on the powers that be, like we've had to here. And one of the things
00:11:26.120that we started is we helped form the RCAC, which is the Regional Citizens Advisory Council.
00:11:32.340And it's basically a watchdog of community activists throughout the spill zone that sits on these boards and the industry pays us to watchdog them.
00:11:43.240And what it does is allows for better tanker safety when they come through Valdez Narrows, better radar system so they can actually find out and know exactly where Bly Reef is, which everyone should know because it's well marked.
00:12:02.260It gives you increased tug supervision. So you have these super tugs. Unfortunately, Crowley has stepped down and it's going to go to a new company that has a lot of problems with their vessels and research and monitoring. We're concerned about that.
00:12:19.060And then you have helicopter surveillance and better accountability from the various tankers that come in and leave Prince William Sound.
00:12:28.500So there has been a lot of improvements on that end.
00:12:31.720But that doesn't stop human error and tankers from losing power and possibility of another spill happening.
00:12:40.560I think we've been fortunate. There's been two or three incidents in storms where tankers have lost power and we're lucky enough that the wind changed or the weather changed and another spill didn't happen.
00:12:54.880So I think as long as we as humans feel that oil is infinite and that we will continue to allow industry and government to pump it into our veins, we'll have problems like this.
00:13:08.060But communities really have to organize themselves.
00:13:11.500And there should be regional citizens advisory councils everywhere industry goes on the land and the ocean.
00:13:19.120And the other thing is establishing restoration funds, which we'll go into in a bit.
00:13:24.860So the Exxon Valdez was a catalyst for you.
00:13:28.500And what incredible change-bringing work has transpired since.
00:13:33.260the initiatives that you've spearheaded have successfully stopped many an extractive development
00:13:39.260project. And with that, there is so much I'm called to ask you. But I'd like to invite you
00:13:46.060to storytell a bit about the precedent-setting legal actions that followed the 1989 spill.
00:13:53.480And as a voice for people too fearful to speak out, you sued your own EAC corporation seeking
00:14:00.540a right to vote on conservation over development, leading to over 700,000 forested acres in
00:14:07.880the spill zone being spared of clear-cut logging.
00:14:11.440So I want to ask you, why was the outcome of this decision so groundbreaking for the
00:14:17.560conservation of native lands in Alaska and beyond?
00:14:21.600And I guess also, if you could let us know why so much land was slated to be logged
00:18:11.700and I said well we need to sue our people and they'll like it we'll create an economic alternative
00:18:16.960to get paid to leave our tree standing therefore protecting our subsistence and commercial fishing
00:18:22.160way of life and they're going to like it they're going to get paid millions and millions of dollars
00:18:26.580in dividends for life to leave their tree standing because those trees have a right to life just like
00:18:31.880we do and they happen to be the cathedral to our wild salmon and so we need to do everything we can
00:18:37.900And so Pamela and I and my mother and my auntie and a cousin, Faye, got the ravens and the eagles together and we entered the courts and we became a voice for the salmon and a voice for the delta and the sound.
00:18:53.900And we went all the way to the Alaska Supreme Court and we won a decision that gave us a standing in the best interest of the public to have our voices heard in the courts.
00:19:06.340And all we were doing was trying to allow the shareholders to decide their own fate, give us the chance to vote on how our lands and our assets and our money would be managed.
00:19:18.660And prior to that, no native corporation allowed any shareholder in the state of Alaska to vote on how their corporation's assets were to be managed, other than who got elected to the board of directors.
00:19:31.260And so we went all the way to the Supremes and basically said Alaska Supreme Court and demanded that we have a shareholder vote and that our case should be in the best interest of the public because the EI Corporation at the time decided that because we were taking on their logging operations and their logging dreams, that we needed to post a $50 million bond and pay $500,000 in attorney fees to have our case heard.
00:19:57.380And we said, absolutely not. Everything that we are doing is in the best interest of the public. Are you kidding me? And so it went to the justices and Justice Rabinowitz wrote that these people have a right to have their case heard and they don't have to be forced to pay these crazy bonds and attorney fees to have their cases heard.
00:20:20.380So it went to a vote, and 87% of the shareholders voted in favor of conservation, and we duplicated it 13 times in the spill zone and saved 765,000 acres of habitat.
00:20:33.840And the other 150,000 that was scheduled, it was actually a little more than that.
00:20:39.260They couldn't access it, so we ended up saving that too.
00:20:42.720and so here we are having to take on our relatives and our family and friends and
00:20:50.460but now they they're getting dividends for life for protecting their forest wow dune
00:20:57.100it's just incredible how much you and the others you were working with took on on so many complex
00:21:06.340levels. And I just want to thank you and just have a moment of gratitude for the immensity
00:21:13.780of what this must have taken to do. And yeah, you know what I would like to share with you
00:21:20.540about the five settlements from Exxon, just so you're clear on what happened, what Exxon did do.
00:21:27.420Originally, they paid a $286 million compensatory damage, which was for loss of immediate fishing
00:21:36.300income. When we won the $5 billion verdict in 1994, Exxon didn't want that precedent set. And
00:21:45.380that's why they appealed it 17 times, because they didn't want to be in a situation where they
00:21:50.540created a precedent where industry actually had to pay for messes and cleanups of spills of this
00:21:56.560magnitude, not only in Alaska, but around the world. And so when the justices decided to take
00:22:02.340that punitive damage case. They didn't do it to see that justice prevailed. They wanted to see
00:22:08.780that just us prevailed. And so it allowed the corporations and these developers to continue to
00:22:16.720have oil spills and do damage to different people's way of life without fair compensation.
00:22:23.000Exxon did spend $2 billion on the cleanup. It was basically a dog and pony show where they
00:22:28.320did bioremediation. They cleaned up the rocks with cloth and rags. They used this dispersant
00:22:37.160to sink the oil so no one would see it anymore. It'd go into the water column. They used lasers
00:22:42.820to catch the water on fire to burn off some of the oil. They just did everything. We were a
00:22:48.780guinea pig, an experiment for them and the oil industry. Then we were able to receive a billion
00:22:54.700dollar settlement for restoration in the spill zone it was loaded with state and federal trustees
00:23:00.820no native trustees and the goal was to buy native land as cheap as you possibly could
00:23:06.760and they decided what was in the best interest of public interest in restoration in the spill zone
00:23:12.600and so we were able to lobby and get about 400 450 maybe even 500 million if you go all the way to
00:23:21.360today of those funds to be used for acquisition so we can prevent further degradation to the
00:23:28.760environment. So we felt that the best restoration was to preserve what you already have and restore
00:23:34.720what's been destroyed. That was our goal. And then finally, the last $100 million that was
00:23:39.960supposed to be paid in the Exxon Reopener, the Reopener was set up so any signs from 1989 to
00:23:47.080the present that showed more restoration was needed in the spill zone, then Exxon would have
00:23:51.840to pay that last $100 million. We didn't have the trustees council, the state and federal trustees
00:23:56.920council, who had enough courage, backbone, and wisdom to stand up to the largest oil company in
00:24:03.860the world and force them to pay what they owed. And so Exxon was able to open bottles of champagne
00:24:11.300instead of paying that last $100 million for restoration. And it's really sad because all of
00:24:16.060the science that has been accomplished since 89 to the present show that not only has the area
00:24:23.360not recovered, but more restoration was in fact needed in the spill zone. And if you just look
00:24:28.280at our herring alone, if you only have a vibrant herring fishery that used to be 50% of our annual
00:24:34.020income, and you're only able to fish three out of the last 29 years, something's wrong in the
00:24:40.380neighborhood. And so money could have gone towards that. There's a lot of studies that show that
00:24:45.780oil and water don't mix. And we already know that. What they need to be doing is taking that
00:24:50.460400 million in science that was paid for and put that damn science to work in the communities. Let0.97
00:24:56.520the communities work that science because they're the ones who knows what's best and what can be
00:25:01.340restored and what can be recovered, what can be preserved. More empowerment needs to come from
00:25:06.640the people and more leadership needs to come from the people in the communities. And that
00:25:10.580it should be the way it is all around the world.
00:27:38.580So we also controlled our land. We had rights that were inalienable. So in order to deal with
00:27:46.060this Indian problem, federal government teamed up with the oil companies and they paid about
00:27:53.860$500 million for oil gas leases that would go towards the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act
00:28:00.920and the other $472 million would come from the federal government. And they realized that in
00:28:07.460order to have a better handle or to be able to control the Indians or their resources that they0.95
00:28:15.720didn't want to do what they did in America where they put the Indian people on reservations where0.87
00:28:21.040it's land reserved for Indian people and give them Indian country status but no actual rights
00:28:27.960to their land and their resources because all of that is held in trust by the American government.
00:28:33.320In Alaska, they decided to force us into multinational corporations, that we became shareholders instead of stakeholders.0.87
00:28:42.540In our elder circle, our women's circle, the women grandmothers who made the decisions for our villages and our future were displaced by corporate Indians.
00:28:53.840They were displaced by people who didn't have that tie to the land and the people and the culture.0.70
00:29:00.400It was all about politics and money and jobs and how they could develop our resources and put our shareholders to work.
00:29:09.120Well, we were already working out there in the field, you know, in subsistence and commercial fishing and hunting, gathering berries, living from the land, following the seasons of animals.
00:29:20.220And then all of a sudden we became shareholders.
00:29:22.580And the major difference between a stakeholder and a shareholder is a shareholder can sit back and just collect a check, where a stakeholder is somebody who actually goes out there and works the land, works the field.
00:29:37.000And so there was a major change in mentality and beliefs and relationships to the land and the sea.
00:29:46.100and the angst of corporations are set up so it's all about making money if you don't make money
00:29:53.780you go bankrupt and you lose your land and you give it back to the federal government it was a
00:29:58.700brilliant form of legalized cultural and human genocide what it is it separated the people from
00:30:04.520their land it was a way to alienate the people and isolate them and strip them of their land and put
00:30:11.740into these corporations where the boards of directors made decisions on what assets were
00:30:16.460to be developed and how much was paid to the shareholders. And so trees started falling,
00:30:21.720mines started happening, oil started being drilled out of Prudhoe Bay, and they decided that they
00:30:27.140would build a pipeline from Prudhoe Bay all the way down to Prince William Sound, where it came
00:30:31.660right down to a 50-50 tie in the Senate, and Spiro Agnew had to step in and become the deciding vote.
00:30:38.640And Nixon said, there's not going to be any problems up there, right, boys?
00:42:30.740You make those decisions for yourself and your people and your communities
00:42:35.140And you build these restoration funds, you demand that government and industry pay these restoration funds, because it's the only way that we're going to restore what has been lost and preserve what we still have.0.85
00:42:47.440And right now, the majority of land that has fossil fuels under it just happens to have Native people standing on it. And so if we were to protect Native rights around the world, we would protect some of the last wild green spaces we have on planet Earth.0.63
00:43:04.660but it's going to take the people to believe in themselves and to believe in the planet.1.00
00:45:04.660dune i feel you i feel this deep emotional passion that you carry for so many of us as
00:45:18.140a leader and the fact that this is how you're leading you're leading with this
00:45:25.480deep love of land and deep love of people and i think being able to allow ourselves to feel
00:45:34.500the immensity, so that we can stand and fight and demand from the government. I think that's
00:45:41.040so important how you phrase these things, that we cannot sit back while the last incredible
00:45:49.680cradles of wildlife and biodiversity are ripped from our hands. We have to demand
00:45:55.880that this be stopped, that there are restoration funds, that the community who is living on these
00:46:02.640lands the native people have a say have power in the way things are being handled so thank you
00:46:11.160thank you so much for sharing this way of seeing and way of being in this time it's hard work
00:46:20.460uh it has been very rewarding i've met some of the most amazing people on the planet
00:46:26.480like yourself i've been able to talk to the highest levels of government i've been able to
00:46:32.500work with celebrities and musicians and artists and scientists on the good side. I've been able to
00:46:39.460find a silver lining in one of the worst nightmares you could ever have. Unfortunately,
00:46:45.200it took one of the nation's worst oil spills to wake me up. And I hope that it doesn't take that
00:46:51.140for other people to see that we really should be planning a funeral for our planet. If we decide
00:47:00.820to live in fear and denial because it's inevitable what is changing with the economy and the
00:47:07.520environment and climate change, ocean acidification, all of the changes in Alaska. It's all clear.
00:47:13.660There's clear messages that things are not right. And so communities, if they want to
00:47:21.240be successful and build sustainable or regenerative economies and communities,
00:47:30.160then they need to do that for themselves. And they have to overcome these fears of politics and BS
00:47:39.080and progress and development is inevitable. That's all BS. What it comes down to is how we
00:47:45.800develop things. And, you know, we should be looking at the last of the finite oil and figuring out
00:47:52.880how we're going to make products that are going to last 100 years not be burned and pumped into
00:47:58.420our atmosphere within seconds after starting our vehicles. We really need to change the way that
00:48:05.160we think and what we believe and what's important to us as human beings. Do we really want to leave
00:48:11.500a planet in chaos to our children in the future? I mean, come on. At least my mother and father
00:48:17.820did everything they could to pass on their knowledge and their wisdom and their resources
00:48:23.980to me. So I would have a chance in the world. What choices and chances are we leaving the
00:48:29.060children in the future? We're not. We all have to look into the mirror every single day and decide,
00:48:34.820Are we for life or not? Are we willing to step up and be heard and be louder than everything else
00:48:41.580and work together? If we network with people, we support people who are actually doing the work,
00:48:47.580then it gets a little bit easier. The problems will keep adding up. We still have a dozen
00:48:53.380major environmental campaigns that we've been fighting. Over the last 30 years,
00:48:58.320we've taken on 37 major environmental battles and 135 of them. We've been able to save over
00:49:04.120a million acres of habitat right now. We're working on a deal on a Bering River coal field
00:49:07.760on the eastern delta to preserve the last 11,000 acres of this coal field from ever being mined
00:49:15.120and spewed into the air, into the atmosphere. If we're able to preserve that, we'll preserve all
00:49:20.260three million acres of the lower Copper River watershed for the rest of time. No roads, no
00:49:24.980development, no oil drilling, no gas drilling, no coal mining, no clear cutting, only wild salmon
00:49:32.480habitat. And because as long as you protect the home where those salmon come to, then you will
00:49:37.660always have a renewable economy. It's not rocket science. I'm not talking about things that
00:49:42.740are too far out of people's heads to understand or grasp. What I'm talking about is let's be
00:49:48.820sensible. Where's our spirit of compromise in behalf of the environment that supports our way
00:49:56.120of life and provides for our way of life? We don't have to destroy everything in order to survive.
00:50:01.380there's different ways of thinking and doing and taking actions that prevent nonsense from
00:50:07.200continuing to happen in the world but if it's truly about profit and greed and corporations
00:50:11.580then we will all lose but i don't feel that this is the way it ends i feel this is the way it begins
00:50:18.800yes yes dune oh my goodness i'm so with you and i love how you just speak to the future
00:50:28.420speak to the powers that be and are so courageous in that. And I think talking about how we get out
00:50:37.740of our fear and out of our denial to stand for a future that we actually believe in. It's so
00:50:43.860important to keep reminding us to look in the mirror. Every day we wake up, how do we choose
00:50:50.100to live our lives? We have choice. We have autonomy of how to move forward and to work together and
00:50:56.860to build coalition. This is, oh my goodness, it's just music to my ears. And I want to talk about
00:51:02.660also some of the silver linings that you've mentioned that you have fought and you've won.
00:51:08.080And one of the recent victories in your realm was within the Bering River watershed,
00:51:14.500whose surface lands and waters are now conserved as part of the carbon offset trade as of 2017,
00:51:20.640with the Native Conservancy Land Trust now holding an easement to a 62,000-acre Chuga Alaska Corporation coal title.
00:51:31.540So to be honest, I've held some skepticism and hesitancy towards the cap-and-trade system.
00:51:40.060And as I understand, to allow corporations to continue polluting as long as they would pay for it,
00:51:46.180But it also invokes a different feeling to hear the stories of people whose land have been preserved through carbon credits.
00:51:53.380Here in California, the Yurok have acquired around 40,000 acres of their traditional territory this way.
00:52:00.580From your experience, what is your opinion on the benefits and the downsides of carbon offsets and credits?
00:52:08.920That is a controversial form of conservation, absolutely.
00:52:13.560but like every situation not only do you have to look for that silver lining you have to figure
00:52:19.820out how to do the most good while doing the least harm no matter what if you can do that then the
00:52:27.900chances of restoration or preservation prevailing is much greater whether it's with a tribe or the
00:52:34.540land or the salmon or the air whatever you have to figure out how to cut your losses this situation
00:52:43.340presented itself. It was actually California who had set up these carbon trading banking system.
00:52:51.740And I knew that one day it was going to come to Alaska. I just didn't know how or when. But I knew
00:52:57.820that when it did, I wanted to be one of the first in line because it was a way that we could leave
00:53:03.960fossil fuels in the ground. It was a way that we could get paid to leave our trees standing.
00:53:09.300There would be ways to preserve our subsistence and commercial fishing way of life that currently you don't have enough money to do in this lifetime.
00:53:19.220But if it's factored over many lifetimes, then the chances become much greater for success.
00:53:24.720In this case, what we had spoken with New Forest, Inc., based out of California, doing the studying on the various carbon trades, we realized that most Native people and most sensible people didn't support this vision because, like you said, it does and could lead to more pollution elsewhere.
00:53:45.920But at the time, California was trying to figure out how they were going to continue this program, and also there was a certain amount of carbon that was going to be released no matter what, and there was a finite number of dollars available for creative conservation ideas.
00:54:09.400And so Chugash Alaska Corporation, my regional native corporation, lobbied to get Alaska included in this carbon trading.
00:54:33.520And I realized that it was a way that in some places you could curb the number of offsets at the same time you could protect current carbon offsets like living trees that filter the air and protect habitat in a creative way that currently didn't exist.
00:54:57.720And so we started working with the Nature Conservancy, the Chugash Corporation, New Forest, Inc., and we'd already formed the Native Conservancy Land Trust, which is the sister organization to the EAC Preservation Council that we started here in Cordova.
00:55:12.360We formed the Native Conservancy to actually be a holder of conservation easements in the event that we could ever find a way to preserve the Bering River coalfield.
00:55:23.920And so after several years of negotiations, we were able to preserve 62,000 acres of coal and 115,000 acres of surface tree rights.
00:55:38.100That was not only trees from Prince William Sound, but about 10,000 acres of old growth trees in the Copper River Delta, eastern Copper River Delta, Catella region near the Bering River Coal Field.
00:55:51.200And so we felt that two precedent things happened. One, we were able to use a net operating loss sale to be able to preserve the subsurface coal rights and a visionary 115,000 acre carbon offset to protect all of the trees that could have been clear cut more in the spill zone.
00:56:15.120And since the area is still recovering from the Exxon Valley's wolf spell, we felt that preservation of the remaining habitat was critical and important to our existence as not only a native people, but as a fishing culture that is intrinsically tied to the land and the sea.
00:56:35.640And so we did have to make a compromise for Mother Earth. We had to look at the losses and figure out, okay, how could we do this and what exactly are we going to be able to accomplish by doing this?
00:56:53.340And so after the deal was done, a lot of environmental groups, a lot of Native groups have come to me and said, how did this work for you?
00:57:15.860If you can figure out how to get government and industry to pay for restoration and preservation of habitat in the areas that they are developing it, what you try to do is see that it's developed as responsibly as possible.
00:57:32.380And at the same time, you're the watchdog.
00:57:35.640You know what you can live with and what you can't live with.
00:57:39.000At the same time, you have to also make sure that you're helping other communities preserve their habitats as well, because it's not just about me protecting the north and saving 5.5% of Alaska's entire land base and our eight nonprofits doing all that amazing work like we've been talking about here for this last hour.
00:58:01.140but it's about us networking and working with these other communities to duplicate what we've
00:58:06.880done and the successes is that we've had so other trees other fossil fuels are protected and left in
00:58:14.780the ground this doesn't end here on our end of the coastal temperate rainforest this is a
00:58:20.640incredible networking opportunity where we can duplicate this in these efforts around the world
00:58:26.080this was medicine to me dune i needed this i needed to hear these things so much right now
00:58:34.240and i am so with you with focusing and organizing and supporting each other it's been
00:58:42.240the bird song that has been singing through my ears while doing this conservation work down here
00:58:50.120and the lower Pacific temperate rainforest region.