Bristol Bay is, rightly, considered the "Salmon Factory of the World".  Pebble Bay would be the world's largest open pit gold and silver mine (and that's saying something).  Trout Unlimited has set up a separate web site devoted to preserving the salmon resource and stopping the mine, located here.

The Pebble Mine complex, covering some 15 square miles, would include the largest dam in the world, larger than Three Gorges Dam in China, made of earth not concrete, to hold back the toxic waste created in the mining process.

The mine itself would use a "cyanide leach" process, in which cyanide (one of the few chemicals which will dissolve gold) in a liquid form would be sprayed over ground ore.  The cyanide would dissolve the gold and the leachate would be collected from the bottom of literal mountains of ore, then refined to yield the gold.

Take five seconds and you can begin to see the scope of the problems.

I'm pro-environment.  I live in a state where you can see the differences between highly polluted areas and pristine areas and that alone is a good reason to want to save our environment.  

Palin challenged the Bush administration's decision to classify the polar bear as an endangered species.