Alaska Governor Sends “Priority List” To Trump Transition Team

Permitting the Ambler Road through Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve to open up mining; giving Alaska control over fish and wildlife, including within National Park System units; and discarding the National Park Service’s practice of managing lands “eligible” for wilderness as official wilderness are among the requests Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy has made to President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team.

“Over the last four years, under the Biden administration, Alaska has been targeted by no less than 60 White House executive orders and agency actions, undermining the state’s authority over its land and people, cutting off access to public lands, foreclosing future energy and mineral development for our nation, and destroying economic opportunity,” Dunleavy wrote in a cover letter (attached below) to Trump that outlined the changes he is seeking.

“Your election will hail in a new era of optimism and opportunity, and Alaska stands ready and is eager to work with you to repair this damage wrought by the previous administration, and to set both Alaska and America on a course to prosperity,” he continued.

The 28-page list of “Alaska Priorities” (attached below) calls for an almost wholesale reversal of policies adopted during the Biden administration, many of them which reversed policies adopted during Trump’s first term. Not on the list, though, is approval of the Pebble Mine proposal, which calls for a copper and gold mine to be built near Lake Clark National Park and Preserve but which the Biden administration blocked by refusing to allow the dumping of mining wastes into the headwaters of the Bristol Bay watershed that supports a world-class salmon fishery.

Ambler Road Proposal

The Ambler Road proposal has drawn opposition from many groups, including hunters and anglers who say it would be detrimental to wildlife, fisheries, and backcountry recreation. The 211-mile route would cross parts of Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve and the Kobuk Wild and Scenic River.

Trilogy Metals, Inc., a main stakeholder of the road, believed the mine would bring high-paying jobs, training, and educational opportunities to a region suffering from high unemployment and lack of economic opportunity. As proposed, the road would run from the Dalton Highway to reach a mine site near Ambler, a tiny village believed to sit near one of the world’s richest copper deposits. 

The area encompassing the mining district serves as habitat for salmon, whitefish, and sheefish as well as a crucial migration corridor for Alaska’s largest caribou herd, the Western Arctic. Approximately 20 miles of the proposed road would cross Park Service lands in the Kobuk River unit of Gates of the Arctic National Preserve. The remainder of the route traverses Bureau of Land Management, state, and Native Corporation lands.

The long-running effort to build the road, which would cross the wild and scenic Kobuk River in the process, landed the river on American Rivers’ 2024 list of America’s Most Endangered Rivers®.

In denying the necessary permits for the project, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management last spring said there was no evidence the proposed mine could be economically viable and that impacts to Native tribes, wildlife, and other natural resources outweighed any envisioned benefits from the mine.

Wildlife Disputes

The National Park Service and Alaska wildlife officials have frequently been at odds over wildlife management in the state: the state supports baiting of bears to bring them within range of hunters, something the Park Service supported under the first Trump administration but opposed during the Biden administration, and Alaska has actively killed wolves and bears from the air in an effort to grow populations of caribou.

Back in 2010, helicopter-borne Alaskan predator control agents killed an entire wolf pack from Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve, prompting the National Parks Conservation Association to call for “immediate suspension” of the program near the national preserve. Park Service officials, meanwhile, were left wondering why the shooters killed two radio-collared wolves, as the Park Service had an agreement with Alaska Fish and Game officials that collared wolves would be spared as they were part of a long-term study of wolf behavior in the preserve.

The shootings come less than two weeks after a particularly contentious Alaska Board of Game meeting when it comes to wolves and national parks. While the board was asked at one point to expand a no-take wolf buffer zone in an area surrounded on three sides by Denali National Park and Preserve, the board completely removed the buffer. And the state agency also did away with a regulation that required Alaska game officials to obtain Park Service permission before they conduct any predator control on parklands.

In 2013, wolf numbers plummeted at Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve, where National Park Service officials attributed the steep decline to the state’s desire to reduce predators to improve hunting.

Along with calling for approval of the Ambler Road, Dunleavy’s list includes:

• Opening of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oilfield development, with at least two lease sales of not less than 400,000 acres each;
• Reopening of 18.6 million acres of the National Petroleum Reserve to oil and gas leasing;
• Transferring 1.4 million acres of federal lands to the state as called for under statehood land entitlements;
• Opening up for mining and other multiple use 28 million acres that were withdrawn from development in connection with the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA);
• Removing the roadless rule that blocks roads from being built in areas of the Tongas National Forest;
• Transferring to Alaska ownership of submerged lands beneath some 12,000 rivers and more than 3 million lakes currently held by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management as required under the Submerged Lands Act of 1953;
• Giving Alaska primacy over fish and wildlife in the state;
• Revamping the rural subsistence management program to give Alaska more say in the program;
• Removing the National Park Service’s authority to close areas of park units for management reasons;
• Removing the National Park Service’s practice of treating “eligible” wilderness as defacto wilderness, something the state argues is no longer valid as the Alaska Native Lands Conservation Act prohibited additional wilderness designations;
• Requiring the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to adopt Alaska’s hunting and fishing regulations “wherever possible”;
• Revising the Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act to prevent the Fish and Wildlife Service and Marine Fisheries Service from blocking fossil fuels development, better defining “foreseeable future” in deciding whether a species is to be listed as threatened or endangered as it currently is open-ended, ending the use of long-term climate change models to justify a species listing under either act, and defining critical habitat should not be required in listing decisions;

“With dynamic cooperation between the State and the new Trump administration, the Biden administration’s offensive on Alaska can come to a swift end. A single Alaska Focused Executive Order will set the federal agencies to work ending the land grab, unleashing Alaska energy, fulfilling the promises of statehood, restoring fish and wildlife access with expert State management, and reining in agency authority to fit within their organic statutes,” the transition document said. “Though all of these actions will revitalize Alaska, clarification in the environment and wildlife protection spheres will benefit the whole Nation.”