LONDON, Apr 18, 2010 (Dow Jones Commodities News Select via Comtex) --

U.K.-listed mining group Anglo American PLC (AAL.LN) will face accusations this week that it risks damaging one of the world's most valuable salmon habitats in Alaska, The Observer newspaper reported Sunday.

Alaska tribal leaders and fishermen will come to London Thursday to tell the company's annual meeting that plans to build an open-pit gold and copper mine in the Bristol Bay region will destroy the breeding grounds of sockeye salmon, the newspaper said.

They will say that mining the ore deposit, which is underneath some of the most important salmon spawning grounds, will generate up to 10 billion metric tons of mine waste and require 160 billion liters of water to be taken from rivers.

Bobby Andrew, a spokesman for Nunamta Aulukestai, a group representing eight local villages, said he hopes to persuade shareholders to reconsider the projects, the paper said.

Anglo American spokesman James Wyatt-Tilby said the project is only at the exploration phase and there is no plan for a mine at this stage.

"We have been very clear that if we cannot build tis mine in a safe and responsible way, then we will not build it at all," Wyatt-Tilby told the newspaper.

Web site: http://www.observer.guardian.co.uk