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Sam Lungren

Sam Lungren
Sam Lungren is MeatEater's Fishing Editor and a former freelance writer/photographer, commercial fisherman, and editor of BHA's Backcountry Journal. Though originally from Whidbey Island, Washington, he's been in Montana for almost a decade and probably isn't leaving—except during steelhead season. Send him an email sam@themeateater.com or follow him @samlungrenmedia.

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Environmental Issues

Pebble Mine Permit Denied, Conservationists Seek to Bury it Forever
The fiercely contested Pebble Mine will not receive a critical federal permit, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced on Wednesday. This action likely strikes a death blow to the contentious copper and gold project proposed for the Bristol Bay region of Southwest Alaska, but conservationists have vowed to make sure it never rises again.
“USACE determined that the applicant’s plan for the discharge of fill material does not comply with Clean...

Environmental Issues

Breaking: Secret Recordings Show Developers Lied About Pebble Mine
Update on Sept. 23, 5:26 p.m.: Pebble Partnership CEO Tom Collier has resigned in the wake of these explosive revelations.

Audio and video released yesterday by the nonprofit Environmental Investigations Agency (EIA) show chief executives of the Canadian Pebble Partnership and its parent Northern Dynasty Minerals bragging about their backdoor connections to high-ranking politicians and directly contradicting public statements and official...

Environmental Issues

Patagonia Will Sue Trump Admin. Over Clean Water Act
Outdoors clothing giant and activist business Patagonia has thrown their weight behind a lawsuit against the Trump Administration over changes it made this year to the enforcement of the Clean Water Act. Their complaint alleges that the EPA’s rollback of previous standards about which streams and wetlands qualify for protection from pollution—and subsequent replacement standards—violate the landmark, 1972 Act and put Americas health, watersheds...

Environmental Issues

Pebble Mine Falls Short on Critical Permit. Is It Dead?
Under pressure from hunters, anglers, conservationists, and even the Trump family, the Trump Administration announced today that it would not issue critical Clean Water Act permits for the contentious Pebble Mine. While this action does not outright kill the Canadian firm Northern Dynasty Mineral’s long-running effort to mine gold, copper, and molybdenum in Alaska’s pristine Bristol Bay region, it is a major setback that drastically narrows their...

Environmental Issues

Donald Trump Jr. Declares Opposition to Pebble Mine as It Nears Final Permits
On July 24 the Trump Administration’s Army Corps of Engineers released its final environmental impact statement regarding the Pebble Mine, setting the massive Southwest Alaska copper and gold project on track to receive the most important permits needed to break ground, perhaps within the month. Hunters, anglers, commercial fishermen, and area tribes have fiercely opposed the project for decades, but yesterday that chorus gained a loud and...

Environmental Issues

Washington State Advances New Aquaculture Despite Recent Escapes
Remember a couple years ago when a quarter million Atlantic salmon broke free from net pens into Washington’s Puget Sound? The estimated 263,000 non-native farmed fish escaped from a dilapidated Cooke Aquaculture facility on August 19, 2017, near Cypress Island after the pens collapsed under the weight of millions of pounds of unmitigated mussels, barnacles, and fish waste.
Two-hundred thousand Atlantic salmon were never recovered, even after...

Environmental Issues

Florida Water Crisis: Is New Leadership Finally Turning the Tide?
Captain Daniel Andrews stands on the skiff’s bow, staring intently across the sunrise-pink waters of Pine Island Sound, remembering aloud when the tide flowed the wrong way.
“In the summer of 2013 we had really bad discharges,” Andrews said. “It was like a full-time outgoing tide at Redfish Pass. There were days where the tide was supposed to be slack and it was just dumping. It would have to be like a really strong incoming to be able to fight...

Environmental Issues

Cartooning Conservation: Ding Darling, Ed Anderson, and Saving South Florida
Wandering around ICAST, the big fishing industry tradeshow in Florida a few years ago, I came around a corner and saw a burly man in front of an easel. I watched as he set down his paintbrush, slung a ukulele off his back, and absentmindedly began strumming a tune toward the six-foot wide, half-finished painting of a tarpon.
Though early in the composition, the creator’s identity stood out in bold brushstrokes, loud colors, and the slightly comic...

Environmental Issues

A Day for Bristol Bay: The Issue We’re All Sick of Hearing About
We are all sick of hearing about the Pebble Mine. I imagine you might be, too.
I’ve been hearing and reading about this project for my whole life. From growing up fishing salmon in the Pacific Northwest, to commercial fishing in Alaska to pay for college, to a career in the conservation field, it has perpetually hung in the background, pervasive and opaque as an Alaskan fog bank.
The claim was first staked on the Pebble deposit at the headwaters...