Administration gutting protections for Western Arctic resources
Alaska's Western Arctic
BLM via Flickr
The Trump administration today announced that it is officially eliminating vital protections for high-value habitats in the Western Arctic by rescinding the 2024 Bureau of Land Management rule titled “Management and Protection of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska.”
The move is another step in the administration’s destructive effort to deregulate industry, sell off our national public lands and allow oil companies to develop and irreparably harm those lands without safeguards for wildlife, fish, or local subsistence needs.
The Wilderness Society released the following statement from Alaska Senior Manager Matt Jackson in response to today’s announcement:
“The management rule that Secretary Burgum is rescinding was based on science, public input and the balanced interests of communities in the Western Arctic, where people depend on healthy lands and waters to feed their families. By destroying protections and opening some of our wildest landscapes for the benefit of big oil companies, this administration is attacking Alaskans’ freedom to live off the land now and for generations to come.
“At a time when subsistence foods like caribou and salmon are already declining, removing these protections for clean air, clean water and healthy wildlife is an attack on the way of life Alaskans take pride in.”
Officially named the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, the 23-million-acre Western Arctic is America’s largest tract of public land and was designated by Congress in the Naval Petroleum Reserves Production Act to be managed for both conservation and energy production.
