“Protecting any wild land under law in the 21st century is an extraordinary achievement, but the Koppi stands out, Mariusz Wroblewski at the WSC told us, because, ‘it is the best sea-run taimen river in the world.’ The refuge’s charter evolved out of ten years of hearings at the local, regional, and federal levels that sought, Wroblewski says, to answer ‘the central question of, ‘How can the community that relies on the resource somehow protect it?’'”

Published in The Drake. Story by Ryan Peterson. Photos by John Sherman.

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