Copper River

The Copper River Delta has the largest concentration of nesting shorebirds in North America, is an important nursery for prized salmon and other fisheries, and is a relatively unspoiled wilderness area with keystone predators including wolves and grizzlies.

The Copper River Delta, ancestral home of the Eyak people, is one of America's premier wetlands - an enormous sanctuary for migratory birds, salmon and countless other wildlife. The Delta forms a sort of yin-yang ecosystem with adjacent Prince William Sound (of Exxon Valdez fame), and the little fishing village of Cordova sits between the two. The Delta and the Sound are ringed by majestic mountains, glaciers, and rainforests of Sitka spruce and western hemlock - this is the northernmost part of the 2,500-mile coastal temperate rainforest that spans from Kodiak to the redwoods of California.

The wild, pristine and visually stunning Copper River Delta - the largest continuous wetlands on the Pacific Coast - is perhaps the most important habitat in the Western hemisphere for shorebirds. Every year twenty million shorebirds and waterfowl of the Pacific flyway migrate through or nest on the Delta, and the air is filled with their song. The Delta is also home to the largest concentrations in the world of sea otters, beaver and nesting trumpeter swans, and virtually the entire population of dusky Canada geese, along with moose, wolves, brown bear and a host of marine mammals.

The headwaters of the Copper River are in the highest coastal mountains in the world, and the river carries the melted ice water down to the fertile Delta. This Eyak homeland is partly within the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve and the Chugach National Forest. So extraordinary is the natural abundance of the Copper River Delta that it is virtually the only part of the entire US National Forest system that must be managed first and foremost for "the conservation of fish and wildlife and their habitat."

Rivers Foundation of the Americas provides fundraising assistance along with organizational, policy, and planning consultation to the Eyak Preservation Council, an indigenous nonprofit advocacy organization. One of EPC's primary goals is the formation of a Native Lands Conservancy, to help regain control of ancestral tribal lands and work for their permanent protection. Additionally, we have also assisted the multi-stakeholder Copper River Watershed Project.

Some specifics of our involvement in this watershed:

• For three years now, RFA has organized a summer raft trip on the Copper, bringing journalists, donors, and activists to the river, and raising funds and awareness for the Eyak Preservation Council.
• We are working with an experienced filmmaker to produce an independent documentary film, Cultural Survival: Oil, the Arctic Refuge and the Copper River.