Interior Department gives away lands for proposed Ambler Road
The conveyance is intended to facilitate construction of the controversial Ambler Road by removing subsistence priority protections for local hunters
Following up on the February revocation of Public Land Orders 5150 and 5180, the Department of the Interior today officially conveyed 1.4 million acres of public lands to the state of Alaska.
The conveyance is intended to facilitate construction of the controversial Ambler Road by removing subsistence priority protections for local hunters – protections that are vital to Indigenous communities in the remote and mostly roadless region – and threatens to open the region to industrial mining. In response, The Wilderness Society released the following statement from Alaska Senior Manager Matt Jackson:
“Instead of protecting our shared public lands so they can be handed down to future generations, this administration is working directly against the best interests of the American people by giving away those lands for the benefit of foreign mining companies.
“This short-sighted move poses an enormous threat to the freedom of rural Alaskans to continue hunting, fishing, and exploring these places that support their way of life.”
The public land orders that were revoked in February protected lands in the vicinity of the Dalton Highway and Trans-Alaska Oil Pipeline, north of the Yukon River, and prevented those lands from being conveyed to the State of Alaska.
