One Day For Bristol Bay

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One Day For Bristol Bay
Sage, Redington & RIO donate $60,000 to Trout-Unlimited Alaska


BAINBRIDGE ISLAND, WA ? Friday, April 18th was a very special day for the employees of Sage Manufacturing, Redington Tackle and Apparel & RIO. The companies celebrated One Day For Bristol Bay, a fundraising initiative announced this winter to raise money for Trout Unlimited?s campaign to protect the Bristol Bay watershed from open-pit mining interests.

In addition to over 170 employees in attendance, Tim Bristol, Director of Trout Unlimited Alaska, and Travis Rummel, Filmmaker from Felt Soul Media, made a special visit to Bainbridge Island as honored guests at the event.

Travis Rummel brought a sneak peak of Felt Soul?s documentary Red Gold, a 40-minute film about how the looming Pebble Mine will effect the people and characteristics of Alaska?s Bristol Bay region. Sage, Redington and RIO previously donated more than $10,000 to Felt Soul Media for the development of the documentary.

Another highlight of the afternoon was the surprise presentation of the initial $60,000 donation to Tim Bristol and TU-Alaska. The donation is earmarked for conservation activities efforts dealing with the proposed Bristol Bay mining district as well as production, marketing and distribution of the film Red Gold. A large portion of the money will go toward scientific studies and research concerning water quality and fish health in the watershed, which started to take place this summer.

The donation money came from a fundraiser Sage, Redington and RIO developed this winter, when the companies launched One Day For Bristol Bay. The three companies teamed up on 300 limited edition More Precious Than Gold ready to fish outfit that includes a Sage 890-4 Z-Axis fly rod, and a Redington 7/8 CD reel that?s prespooled with RIO Gold fly line. From each outfit sold to either dealers or consumers, the companies donated $200 to Trout Unlimited Alaska?s Save Bristol Bay campaign efforts. The outfit is valued at over $875, but is being offered for to customers for only $600.

?Our customers and dealers have helped us make this significant donation to TU-Alaska and we want to thank them for that. We set up a matching program, where dealers and consumers can choose to make an additional donation, up to a matched $200 donation, for the campaign.? States Karen Curry, Redington?s Marketing Manager. ?We have a few outfits still available. Our goal is to make an additional donation of $40,000 by the end of the year, bringing the total donation to $100,000, which is, in our eyes, a small price to pay for the health and vitality of this precious watershed.?

I am torn here... After spending significant chunks of my own money fighting outside money interests in various anti-hunting and anti-fishing initiatives I am saddened we have to fight again. Lots of money is being spent on things without permanence or value. And the out-of-state money is what caused us to lose a tremendous amount in earlier battles...

I am further saddened by the reality they have done an end-around and saving BB may not be possible.

To achieve this they are building a coal-slurry fired generation plant on the West side of Cook Inlet. This plant steps in at a time when our energy prices have gone through the roof for a bunch of bad reasons. Government and industry put a time value on the gas under Cook Inlet and sold it off quickly to a plant making fertilizer from the gas. They wasted our gas to make fertilizer to grow more corn to produce more ethanol... And lost BTUs in the deal.

At the same time huge quantities of fish waste were barged out to open ocean and dumped because drying it would cost too much to allow it to compete with the cheap natural gas based fertilizer. Disregarding the fact the fish wate fertilizer would be far better than the bare amonium nitrate...

Now they have us over abarrel and the slurry plant will promise us the fuel we need... and incidentally require the capacity afforded by selling energy to Pebble to make the numbers work better for us. They are hitting us in the wallet and I am afraid it will work...
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