Alaska

Hardtalk is on the road in Alaska. Stephen Sackur visits the Bristol Bay region of south-west Alaska where the fishing industry, the mining industry and the federal government are locked in a bitter argument over environmental sustainability and resource exploitation. Every year 40 million salmon swim in to Bristol Bay before beginning their journey up the rivers and streams of the region, it’s one of the world’s great fisheries, however, 120 miles inland there is plan to build North American’s largest copper mine. Hardtalk explores whether the two forms of resource exploitation can co-exist?

Picture: Alaskan shoreline, Credit: David McNew/Getty Images