A quick chat with Scott Hed, a man front and center in battle over Alaska’s Bristol Bay

Some of North America’s most effective conservation advocates rarely see their name quoted in the pages of Outdoor News. They’re the men and women who criss-cross the continent, appealing to donors, pitching their mission to sporting clubs, or requesting 90 seconds of a key politician’s time.

They eschew the limelight while quietly plugging away on their laptops in the dark corner of an airport while awaiting a red-eye, or negotiating an endorsement via cell phone while catching an Uber ride.

Hailing originally from a small town in southern Minnesota, Scott Hed is one of those people, and he might be the most effective conservation advocate you’ve never heard of.

His work to stop the Pebble Mine in the Bristol Bay drainage of southwest Alaska during the past 20 years has protected the hunting grounds of several big-game species, not to mention the largest wild salmon fishery in the world. If you’ve ever fished (or dreamed of fishing) the region, or maybe you just enjoy purchasing a chunk of wild sockeye salmon at your grocery store, thank Scott Hed.

Quick to credit others, Hed nonetheless owns mass respect from his colleagues in the business of North American conservation. He carved out 30 minutes to chat with Outdoor News in September.

Outdoor News: Tell us about your background.

Hed: I grew up in Gaylord, in southern Minnesota, north of Mankato and had a graduating class of 55. I attended St. Olaf College and got a degree in economics, then worked for 10 years in the commercial finance industry before an unlikely set of events led me to working in the conservation field.

I was in a management job in my early 30s working in Sioux Falls, S.D., and I had been thinking for a couple of years: Is this really something that I want do for the rest of my working life?

Then fortuitous circumstances happened, though most people would look at it as a terrible situation: They decided to close our office in Sioux Falls. But I had a 10-month severance package, and I figured it was an opportunity.

I had been to Alaska a few times on shorter vacations, but that summer, I spent six weeks in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, backpacking across the Brooks Range and rafting to the Arctic Ocean. That trip led me into my first encounters with folks who worked on conservation issues.

As a participant in that trip, I was asked if I wanted to go to Washington D.C. as a citizen lobbyist and meet with my members of Congress about protecting the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It sounded daunting, but I thought, if I don’t go, maybe nobody goes and tells this story.

I learned during that trip when you’re talking to folks about something that you have a passion about, it turns out you don’t need to be an expert on every aspect of an issue. It was really energizing.

When I got home from my Alaska adventure later that summer, I had a message on my answering machine from someone whom I had met in D.C. asking me if I knew anyone in the Midwest who might be interested in a couple-month contract to talk to people about wild lands in Alaska. I returned the call and I said, “I know somebody. You’re talking to him.”

Here we are 23 years later, and I’ve never looked back.

ON: You were working on ANWR, then jumped to the Pebble Mine issue?

Hed: One day my boss – ironically his name is Tim Bristol – said there’s something new that’s popping up in Alaska. He asked me to narrow my focus to outreach to folks nationwide who like to fish and hunt and speak to the Pebble Mine issue in a place called Bristol Bay in southwest Alaska. My response was: “You want me to go and talk to people who hunt and fish about one of the most unbelievable sporting destinations on the planet? And I’m still going to get paid for this?”

This was in 2006, when Pebble just started showing up on the radar, and for a number of years I spent a lot of weeks and months on the road. Especially during sport show season. I liken myself to Johnny Appleseed. I got to run around and plant the seeds in the Lower 48 for the effort that aimed to stop Pebble Mine from the sporting side of things.

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ON: You helped build a broad coalition. How’d you get folks from all sides of the political spectrum on board?

Hed: First off, this effort was born in Bristol Bay. It’s led by the locals there, the Alaskan natives who’ve relied on that resource for thousands of years. The commercial fishing industry, which has been in operation for like 150 years. And the sportfishing industry.

The salmon resource there is enormous, I mean, the numbers are unreal. This year, the return of sockeyes into Bristol Bay was upwards of 50 million fish once again. There have been many competing interests for that resource over the years, but the threat of Pebble came along and they recognized quickly that they needed to work together on behalf of the fish.

I thought the most effective way to do my work was to utilize voices and individuals in the Bristol Bay region whose livelihoods in the hunting and fishing world were at risk. Like lodges, and outfitters and fishing guides in southwest Alaska. People travel from all over the world to fish and hunt there. Guides and outfitters on the hunting side joined the cause, too, and once you start utilizing their points of reference and networking, well, somebody knows somebody and next thing you know, you’re getting support from folks like Craig Boddington or Dallas Safari Club and others.

ON: How’d you handle people who opposed your work?

Hed: My boss appreciated that I’m this Midwestern guy with a pretty low-key personality. I’m not one to fly off the handle and get confrontational, so that played well in my favor.

But over the years and all those sport shows and the thousands and thousands of people that I’ve encountered, maybe only a handful of times were people aggressively in favor of the mine. Pebble was an outlier since day one, and polling consistently shows that a majority of people in Alaska do not want this project.

Why would you put the headwaters of the most prolific and most valuable wild salmon fishery on planet Earth at risk for a copper and gold mine? That fishery is worth $2 billion every year.

Over the years, I’ve been to some conservative places where I drummed up support. A couple of White Houses ago, when President Obama began the work to protect Bristol Bay from Pebble using the Clean Water Act and his Environmental Protection Agency, I had people come up to me and say, “You know, this is the only thing that I see eye to eye on with President Obama.”

ON: Fly Rod and Reel Magazine named you its 2014 angler of the year for your work on Pebble. What’s the situation with the mine now?

Hed: First, let’s be clear: They bestowed that onto me because of my work, certainly not because of my fly-fishing prowess. It’s 10 years later and we’re still talking about Pebble Mine. It’s a long, drawn-out process where the EPA in January 2023 finally finished their work under a narrow portion of the Clean Water Act that’s only been used 14 times in the 52-year history of the CWA.

To get to that point, we needed to navigate initiating the process under President Obama, plus four years of the Trump administration, which did not allow the mine to go through. In fact, the Army Corps of Engineers under President Trump denied Pebble their permit. Then, under President Biden, they resumed the Clean Water Act process and in January 2023, finalized the Clean Water Act protections and that concluded the process that gets us the strongest protections that we can achieve administratively.

To stop development of the Pebble deposit, what they did was they outright prohibited some activities and they restricted other activities in and around the site of Pebble. That means they cannot mess up the water that supports the fish; the fish, of course, support everything else.

While this rare use of the CWA  hasn’t been overturned in any of the prior 13 cases, there is a risk it could be overturned by a future presidential administration, or potentially the courts.

The other side is in the courts right now, trying to find ways to undo that protection that the Clean Water Act provided. There also is congressional legislation is in the works – the Bristol Bay Protection Act introduced this past May that would codify those administrative protections. That would add another layer of protection because it would take an act of Congress then to undo.

ON: That’s similar to what folks are trying to achieve by protecting the Rainy River watershed from copper-sulfide mining in northern Minnesota.

Hed: The parallels are pretty strong. That’s also an amazing wild area that provides recreational opportunities and a tourism economy in the Boundary Waters and the greater Rainy River watershed region.

Several years ago, I was asked to assist that Boundary Waters campaign in getting an outreach effort up and off the ground. It’s now known as Sportsman for the Boundary Waters. I helped form it and get it moving and today it’s organized to an amazing level of success by Lukas Leaf, who has really cranked it up another eight notches.

ON: Any advice for folks working on that effort?

Hed: Yeah, never, never, never say die. Getting that administrative protection for those 225,000 acres of the Superior National Forest certainly was a big win. But again, that’s administrative, so do what you can to support efforts to pass legislation that would protect those areas by law.

ON: What are you doing now?

Hed: I continue to work on Bristol Bay on issues like the Bristol Bay Protection Act, which was introduced back in May. It’s a long game. We got to the finish line administratively, but with legislation, you’re looking at the House of Representatives and you need a majority vote. Then you have to pass in the Senate; sometimes it can take 60 votes to pass on the Senate side. So that’s where my efforts are focused these days.

We also have a project called Businesses for Bristol Bay that has everyone you would imagine, you know, hunting and fishing brands, fishing lures and fishing tackle. Restaurants and chefs and grocery stores all across the country that rely on Bristol Bay salmon. Those folks all have a stake in what happens to this fishery.

Things slow down congressionally going into an election, but it will pick back up in January.

ON: Any big-picture outdoors and conservation policy items that you think about?

Hed: The need to continually protect public lands is something we can never let slip. Also, retention and hopefully growing in the number of folks who enjoy fishing and hunting. Things like the Pittman-Robertson Act and Dingell-Johnson Act generate excise taxes that support state fish and game agencies.

You start losing participation, you start losing revenue dollars in license and gear sales. And suddenly you do not have enough to support the tremendous professionals who manage those resources for our benefit.

ON: What do you do for fun?

Hed: Well, I love to hunt and fish. I grew up hunting in Minnesota, and spent a number of years in South Dakota, and I was spoiled pheasant hunting there.

My wife and I travel a lot and we’ve really begun enjoying saltwater fishing. I’ve learned that saltwater species like marlin, rooster fish, dorado, tuna, things like that fight harder than those bullheads I grew up fishing in Gaylord.

Aside from outdoors, I’m an enormous sports fan, a long-suffering Vikings fan. But my favorite sport is baseball and has been since I was a little kid. My dad was my tee-ball and little league coach. I played all through high school and managed Gaylord’s American Legion team. I have always loved baseball, and I will go to my grave thinking it’s the world’s greatest sport.

ON: What’s something you’ve enjoyed being immersed in the outdoors industry?

Hed: Meeting and spending time with some tremendous people. There are extremely dedicated, passionate, and talented individuals who have chosen to make a career out of the conservation of America’s public lands and fish and wildlife. I hope people respect and appreciate the folks who do that.

I’ve had meetings in congressional offices, and I really respect the people who live inside places like the Beltway or work in the capital of Minnesota. It’s 24/7 when Congress or the Legislature is in session – a 24/7 nose-to-the-grindstone situation. Working with them has been one of the biggest benefits of my career.