The Vancouver-based company behind the Palmer Project in Haines, Alaska, plans to put it up for sale, and that has some in the community on edge.

American Pacific CEO Warwick Smith told analysts recently selling the property is the best move, adding it should instead go to an Alaska-based company.

"It's outside of our wheelhouse, if we're completely honest," he said during a virtual roundtable last month.

Located about 56 kilometres northwest of Haines, American Pacific has been looking for a mix of copper, silver, gold and zinc on the roughly 25,000-hectare property located in the Chilkat Valley, an ecologically significant watershed that provides vital habitat to moose, grizzlies and all five species of salmon.

Earlier this year, the project's main backer — a Japanese company called DOWA that's interested in zinc — bailed. At the time, Smith and others with American Pacific billed this as positive because the junior company would assume complete control of the project.

For years, the project has faced stiff opposition from conservationists and Klukwan.

Kimberley Strong, the vice-president of the Village of Klukwan, fears a bigger company will take over the site.

"It's still a major threat," she said, noting the major pressures from the Trump administration to extract oil, gas and minerals across the state, with a sharp focus on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Strong said actions like these fly in the face of sovereign Alaska Native tribes.

"We need food security," she said. "We need clean water. Jeopardize that situation with a hard rock acid mine, we're threatening our survivability. We can't eat the minerals."

Strong said Tlingit will remain vigilant.

"This may give us an opportunity to take a deep breath and gather more people on our canoe journey of trying to protect [the valley]."

Smith, the CEO, stressed the property is attractive, that it can be "world-class."

"It's going to take money to do that, and it's Alaska," he said.

In an email to the state's Division of Mining, Land and Water, the company states it has no plans to do exploration work this year.

Rose Fudge, a community organizer with Chilkat Forever, a community-based conservation organization, said talk of a sale shows the Palmer project isn't wanted — or viable — in the community, and that investments should go elsewhere.

"I think it points towards the need for us to focus on supporting the sustainable industry that has been in our community for a long time, such as our commercial fisheries and our visitor industry," she said.

"No mining company has a social licence to operate in the Chilkat Valley," she said.