Claims that an industrial operation of this scale will not despoil the environment defy belief -- and there is good reason to question whether the corporations involved can even be trusted. The international mining consortium Anglo American, which has a 50 percent interest in Pebble, has an abysmal environmental and civil rights record. The company has been accused of abusing local people in the developing countries in which it works, and numerous worker safety, public health and environmental problems have been reported at its mining operations in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Mali, Ireland and Nevada.
Mitsubishi, another company with an interest in the Pebble Mine, has tangled with NRDC before -- and lost. In 2000, NRDC and our BioGems Defenders helped turn back Mitsubishi's plans to build a massive salt mine on the pristine shores of a gray whale nursery in Mexico's Laguna San Ignacio. Once again, the company is threatening critical whale habitat, and once again, NRDC activists will be on the front lines of the battle. "The price of gold may be high, but whales may end up paying the ultimate price if this mining plan goes through," says attorney Joel Reynolds, head of NRDC's Marine Mammal Project. "We need to protect the true gold of this region: its fish and wildlife."
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