Following the enviros' money trail
A coalition of environmental organizations, one headed in Alaska by a former top aide to Gov. Tony Knowles, has targeted Alaska salmon for catch reductions. The Center for Biological Diversity, Turtle Island Restoration Network and Oceana Inc. filed suit in federal court in California Aug. 13, alleging that National Marine Fisheries (NMF) violated the law for not implementing fishing reductions to protect food sources for marine mammals.
The suit specifically targets salmon fishing in Bristol Bay, Cook Inlet, the Aleutian Islands, the Alaska Peninsula and Southeast Alaska. State control of salmon fishing already is overlapped by federal subsistence regulations. Now the environmentalists want to add restrictions by NMF. Oceana hired Jim Ayers in January as its Alaska representative after receiving more than $1 million in grants. Ayers was chief of staff for Gov. Knowles for seven years.
Environmental groups spent $10.1 million in Alaska from 1998-2001 combating logging, mining, oil and gas development, fisheries and tourism. That leaves them with $9.2 million in assets, $8.1 million of that in cash, to spend this election year supporting candidates who support their anti-development line.
According to the annual report of the Alaska Conservation Foundation, and its required state and federal filings, it received $19.3 million for environmental projects in those years. The money came primarily from eight big Outside foundations. The biggest grant was $2 million from the Pew Trusts. (Steve Kallick, former executive director of the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, hands out Pew environmental grants.)
The Alaska Conservation Foundation also lists 55 other Outside foundations which contributed between $10,000 and $100,000, for an added $2 million. Another 300 contributed between $500 and $10,000.
A majority of the foundation's 6,500 contributors gave less than $250 and allow the environmentalists to say the majority of their supporters are Alaskans. However most of the foundation's money comes from big donors outside the state. Even if its 6,500 contributors were Alaskans, they would total only 1.4 percent of Alaska's registered voters, a minor minority with an outsized purse bulging with Outside cash.
The Alaska Conservation Foundation is the umbrella organization that doles out the millions to environmental groups and programs in Alaska. It made more than 250 grants in 1998-2001. Significant is its political involvement. It allocated $228,500 to the Alaska Conservation Voters that has been active in campaigns to elect Anchorage Assembly members, who have since denied the Simonian Little League the use of 25 acres in a local 4,000-acre park.
Alaska Conservative Voters also allocated $100 or $200 to each of 23 Democratic candidates for the Legislature in the recent primary election. The organization spent $45,000 on that election, leaving plenty of the $8 million to invest in anti-development candidates in future elections.
Aside from influencing Alaska elections, where else did $10.1 million in Outside money go? To the usual suspects, such as $621,000 to the Alaska Center for the Environment, $1.2 million to the Alaska Defense Initiative that combats oil and gas, timber and mining projects, $537,000 to the Alaska Conservation Alliance, $760,000 to the Alaska Oceans Network, $963,000 to the Alaska Rainforest Campaign (Matt Zencey, editorial writer for the Anchorage Daily News, headed the Campaign for three years, which explains the anti-timber ADN editorials.), $287,000 to the Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund, $228,000 to the Natural Resources Defense Council, $316,000 to the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, $124,000 to the Trustees for Alaska. Lesser amounts went to the Northern Alaska Environmental Center, the Tongass Conservation Society, the Sitka Conservation Society and like-minded organizations.
Adding it up, $1.1 million went to battle mining projects, a similar amount to oppose timber harvests with lesser amounts targeting oil and gas, fishing, tourism and infrastructure (roads, bridges, dams, ports, docks and so forth). The environmental community is protesting every timber sale to force out the few timber operators remaining. The California lawsuit indicates their direction on fisheries.
Already, the environmentalists are targeting the trans-Alaska oil pipeline's permit renewal. They say they only want stricter pipeline oversight. They said that about Alaska's timber industry before they cheered when the Clinton Administration shut down the mills. Their strategy is to delay until a project is uneconomic.
The big question: Where, aside from battling Little League, will these Outside interests put their money in Alaska's coming municipal and state elections?
Williams is retired publisher of the Ketchikan Daily News and a former member of the University of Alaska Board of Regents.