Where We Work

The Copper River salmon habitat, and the activities of the EPC in its   defense, exist in a region of exceptional natural beauty and untamed wilderness. The town of Cordova sits at the edge of this; Alaska   itself is almost at the edge of the world. So you will need to get your bearings. Google maps could not have been better designed for this, so we invite you to explore.

The Prince William Sound and Copper River watersheds are home to some of the mightiest returns of wild pacific salmon in the world.  An incredibly rare ecosystem, the majority of land area is defined geologically as temperate rainforests, and is ringed by glaciers and the highest coastal mountains in the world. The 17-million acre Copper River watershed includes the astounding Copper River Delta which encompasses over 700,000 acres of fresh and saltwater wetlands, the largest contiguous wetland on the Pacific coast of North America. Surrounded on three sides by the Chugach and Wrangell-St. Elias Mountains and fed by the powerful Copper River, the Delta is the biological heart of a landscape of massive glaciers, tundra and rainforest. The Chugach National Forest is the second largest National Forest in the United States at 5.5 million acres. The Copper River ecosystem is to the east and northeast of Prince William Sound. The Sound is still recovering from the disastrous Exxon Valdez oil spill.

From early in the early 20th century, the region has been highly targeted for resource extraction.
The abundant natural resources (timber, oil, gas, coal, wildlife, seafoods) of the Copper River and Prince William Sound watersheds continue to make it especially vulnerable to destructive development. The need to preserve culture and wild salmon habitat is critically apparent. And the connection between cultural and environmental preservation– social and environmental justice– is sorely overlooked and often misunderstood within the context of this struggle.