The Biden administration has closed mining roads in Alaska, a move that public lands advocates see as a win for national parks across the country.
The Department of the Interior has denied construction permits for the Ambler Road project, which includes more than 320 miles of road through Alaska’s wilderness.
Alex Johnson, Alaska Interior director for the National Parks Conservation Association, said projects like this could happen anywhere.
“We consider this a huge win for salmon and the fishery,” Johnson noted. “We hope the people of Washington will also celebrate this decision on behalf of salmon.”
Johnson noted that the decision is also a win for the region’s indigenous communities and subsistence resources. Companies supporting the project said the decision would be a hit to the local community’s bottom line.
Mr Johnson countered that the action would keep vast tracts of pristine landscape intact.
“This is the largest area in the entire system, including 16 million acres of contiguous wild roadless parks and more than 20 million acres of national parks in northwest Alaska that would have been affected had this road been built. “This is a major national park victory for the national park landscape,” Johnson outlined.
The mining road would pass through the gates of Arctic National Parks and Refuges, potentially damaging migration routes for Western Arctic caribou. The region is also home to 66 Alaska Native communities.
Disclosure: The National Park Conservation Association contributes to our foundation for reporting on budget policy and priorities, climate change/air quality, endangered species and wildlife, environment, public lands/wilderness, and water. If you would like to help support news in the public interest, click here.
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Conservation groups on Friday welcomed the Biden administration’s decision to reject a proposed mining road in Alaska.
The 311-mile Ambler Road would have cut through the gates of Arctic National Parks and Refuges and cut off the migration route of the Western Arctic caribou herd.
Alex Johnson, Alaska Interior director for the National Parks Conservation Association, said it’s important for federal officials to take a stand in Alaska to prevent mining interests from looking at other national parks.
“This is a very expensive, very destructive, very speculative project that in no way supports our national clean energy goals,” Johnson argued. “And ultimately, it will forever threaten the health and well-being of communities and tribes.”
Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski sharply criticized the decision, saying it would limit jobs and tax revenue in Alaska by preventing exploration for minerals such as copper, cobalt, gallium and germanium that are important to national security. warned that there was a possibility that
Jamie Dittmar, a photographer and filmmaker from Fairbanks, said the road would be extremely disruptive to the 66 Native American villages along the proposed route.
“That’s 168 trucks passing right by the village,” Dittmar pointed out. “Hundreds of bridges will be built. It will dismantle thousands of years of subsistence livelihoods.”
The road was considered a negative for tourism to the Brooks Range region. According to the Alaska Travel Industry Association, 9% of travelers visiting Alaska are Californians.
Disclosure: The National Park Conservation Association contributes to our foundation for reporting on budget policy and priorities, climate change/air quality, endangered species and wildlife, environment, public lands/wilderness, and water. If you would like to help support news in the public interest, click here.
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Arizona conservation groups and sports officials say they’re glad the Bureau of Land Management recognizes conservation as an integral part of public land management.
The agency’s new rules place environmental protection on par with other land-use priorities.
Scott Garlid, executive director of the Arizona Wildlife Federation, said that historically BLM has done what he called “a significant amount of work,” not only managing Arizona’s roughly 12 million acres of public land, but also protecting its natural resources. He said he had done a good job.
“They have a tough job,” Garlid acknowledged. “I think this rule will help make their job a little easier because it gives them a tool to balance the different demands of the 12 million acres they manage.”
Garrid predicts the rules will elevate what he calls “hard-to-quantify conservation values” to the same level of importance as more extractive land uses, such as oil and gas exploration and extraction. did. He believes most Arizonans will see the new rules as a positive thing. A solid majority of Arizona voters, across party lines, say they are conservationists and use public lands for recreation.
To Garrid, the rule makes clear that the BLM recognizes that certain portions of federal land around Arizona and the West are degraded. He argued that restoration leases, which would allow the BLM to lease acres to groups for the purpose of improving conditions on specific landscapes, would be a good tool. He noted that opponents of the new rules may see leases as a way to “enclose” land, which he argued is not true.
“An example would be a nonprofit organization like the Arizona Wildlife Federation,” Garlid noted. “We could also obtain conservation leases from the Bureau of Land Management to do riparian restoration work and work to remove invasive species along stream banks.”
Casual uses of leased land, such as recreation, hunting, fishing, and research activities, typically continue while a restoration or mitigation lease is in place, according to the BLM.
Support for this report was provided by the Pew Charitable Trusts.
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State and federal agencies are working together to increase the use of prescribed fire in the Northwest.
Prescribed fire is the controlled use of burns to minimize the significant risks of wildfire and smoke. This is seen as an increasingly important strategy as wildfire season becomes a greater threat to the Northwest.
Casey Sixkiller, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Northwest Regional Administrator, said the agency wants to help maintain forest habitat.
“Prescribed burning is one of the best tools to increase forest resilience to catastrophic wildfires, helping to manage and target harmful fuels and create healthier forests. ” Mr. Sixkiller explained.
Sixkiller noted that the EPA is involved because wildfire smoke poses a risk to people’s health. This collaboration is between federal agencies, Oregon and Washington state departments, and tribal governments.
Sixkiller pointed out that a formal agreement is needed for cooperation to proceed.
“That’s what we’ve been able to accomplish here with this agreement,” Sixkiller emphasized. “It’s about getting federal land managers and the states and all of us in the same room and making sure we’re all on the same page about what success looks like.”
Sixkiller added that the collaboration has another benefit. It helps facilitate engagement with communities that may suffer from prescribed burns.
“They have confidence that the effort that goes into planning that activity is thought out, from the soup to the nuts,” Sixkiller acknowledged. “And they are at the table and engaged and their concerns are being addressed as we move forward with that work.”
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