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In north-central Alaska, up to 2.1 million acres of federal land could be transferred to state ownership, opening the door for new mining and road development. On February 25, the Department of Interior announced the revocation of Public Land Orders 5150 and 5180 in Alaska\u2019s Dalton Utility Corridor, which traces the Dalton Highway north to the Arctic Circle.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The area, currently managed by the Bureau of Land Management, contains a portion of the proposed Alaska Liquefied Natural Gas pipeline, as well as the proposed Ambler Road\u2014an industrial mining road that would be used to access rich copper, gold, and silver deposits in the region. It\u2019s long been the desire of mining companies like Canada-based Trilogy Metals and Australian giant South32, and already the corporations are rushing to get bulldozers on the ground. Just days before the public announcement, Trilogy Metals announced a slew of new, high-level executive hires dedicated exclusively to permitting and building the Ambler Road.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Meanwhile, conservation and public-land groups are raising the alarm, as the transfer could reduce public hunting opportunities in the area. \u201cThese changes raise reasonable questions about the future of hunting and fishing access in this particular region\u2014both subsistence and sport,\u201d MeatEater\u2019s Director of Conservation, Mark Kenyon, said. \u201cBut this is also just the latest of many examples in recent months of protections for Alaska\u2019s public lands being removed.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Specifically, the sport hunt in question is a unique, archery-only caribou hunt immediately adjacent to the Dalton Highway. Per state regulations, a five-mile non-motorized corridor extends to both sides of the highway, making room for a challenging but rewarding hunt\u2014one valued by many Alaskans. Those hunters, however, fear that opening the door to development could increase industrial traffic on the highway (technically a gravel road) and disrupt wildlife with road-building and mining activities.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Additionally, the transfer would inhibit the ability of native and rural Alaskans to subsistence hunt on all but 62,000 acres of land in the Dalton Corridor. In Alaska, subsistence hunts are regulated federally by the US Fish and Wildlife Service as outlined in the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA). Thus, the transfer of ownership from federal to state jurisdiction would eliminate the \u201cpriority\u201d subsistence hunt. In a memorandum of agreement between the feds and the state, the state recognizes that they will make \u201creasonable efforts\u201d to allow harvest in accordance with state<\/em> hunting regulations, but stops short of grandfathering in subsistence hunting rights.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Jumping out to a larger, more administrative perspective, the Department of Interior is employing a somewhat convoluted mechanism in transferring ownership of the Dalton Corridor to the state of Alaska.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n A key component to understanding it is the 1959 Alaska Statehood Act, which authorized the transfer of 105 million acres of federal land to the state of Alaska when the territory became a state. Currently the state only has 5.2 million acres of that entitlement remaining\u2014and they\u2019ve identified a long list of parcels they desire. One of those parcels is the Dalton Utility Corridor. However, the Corridor has been protected (or \u201cwithdrawn\u201d in technical lingo) from mining and utility development since the 1970s by Public Land Orders 5150 and 5180. As such, land has been considered \u201ctop-filed\u201d and unavailable to state selection\u2014until now.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Public Land Order 7966 in the Federal Register strips the protections afforded by PLOs 5150 and 5180. And when those protections are removed, the top-filed lands automatically transfer to state ownership. That process is currently underway in the Dalton Utility Corridor, and under Doug Burgum\u2019s leadership, the Department of Interior is working with Alaska to pick and choose what land will be available for the taking. That move sets a dangerous precedent, and it\u2019s easy to imagine the BLM working with Alaska to fulfill a substantial portion of their remaining statehood acreage while an extractive-resource-first administration is in place.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Bigger picture, though, it\u2019s a reminder that the erosion of public-land protections happens in bits and pieces. Public Land Order 7966 is not out of the blue. It builds on the revocation of the BLM\u2019s Central Yukon Resource Management Plan by Congress last fall and an executive order signed last January called Unleashing Alaska\u2019s Extraordinary Resource Potential<\/em>. Both are cited in a BLM document outlining the decision rationale.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThe frequency and pace of these changes are particularly noteworthy,\u201d Mark said. \u201cIf this were an isolated incident, it would be one thing, but the larger trend it illustrates cannot be ignored.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Taken alone, these types of high-level policy and legislative actions might seem abstract\u2014and they are\u2014but collectively they have real, tangible implications for the wildlife, the landscape, and hunters. In Alaska, sportsmen are about to see the effects of those implications firsthand\u2014and there are likely more to come.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/div>\n