ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Interior Secretary Deb Haaland will maintain protections against potential oil and gas extraction and mining claims on 28 million acres of federal lands across Alaska, the federal government said Tuesday.
The land was protected from such development in 1971 by the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. The Trump administration took steps to lift the protections, with the support of Republican Governor Mike Dunleavy and U.S. Senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan.
However, the Biden administration said it found legal deficiencies in the previous administration’s efforts, leading to a new environmental review to determine the best use of the lands.
Haaland signed the decision Friday after an environmental review and public comment. A new public lands regulation will maintain the protections.
“Maintaining these essential protections that have been in place for decades will ensure continued access and use of these public lands now and in the future,” Haaland said in a statement from the Bureau of Land Management, which manages the lands.
Dunleavy said on social media on Tuesday that the decision was “the latest sanction by the Biden-Harris administration against Alaska.”
“They’re trying to turn Alaska into one big national park,” Dunleavy said. “Alaska is still entitled to five million acres of land under the Statehood Act. Each of these sanctions hurts Alaska’s ability to prosper.”
Sullivan said in a statement that the decision “harms our jobs and our economy, as well as our Alaska Native communities” because it blocks land that belongs to Alaskans, he said.
Joe Plesha, communications director for Murkowski, said public lands policies have become “political land policies” under the Biden administration.
“Alaska residents were completely ripped off when the BLM went back on its own recommendation and commitment to restore Alaska’s lands to federal multiple-use status,” Plesha said.
The office of Democratic U.S. Representative Mary Peltola did not respond to a request for comment.
One of Peltola’s challengers in the upcoming election, Republican Nick Begich III, criticized her on social media for her decision, saying, “Alaska must fight back with every tool at its disposal to restore access to this land.”
The protected areas are spread across Alaska. Together, they are about the size of Pennsylvania. In Western Alaska, they are located in the western interior, on the Seward Peninsula, and in Bristol Bay. They are also located in South Central Alaska and in Eastern Alaska.
According to the Bureau of Land Management, the agency received 15,000 public comments on the draft, with overwhelming support for the protections.
The environmental assessment found that removing some of the protections would likely impact hunting and fishing in dozens of Alaska Native communities, which would lose federal precedence for subsistence farming in certain areas, the agency said. Wildlife, vegetation and permafrost would also be negatively impacted, the agency said.
Conservation groups and some Alaska Native groups praised the decision on Tuesday, saying, among other things, that the release of some areas would have allowed for an expansion of mining opportunities around the Donlin gold mine in the middle of the Kuskokwim River.
“Secretary Haaland’s decision today is an important step toward a future filled with healthy lands, waters, and people who thrive on wild salmon, waterfowl, other migratory animals, and seasonal plant life,” said Anaan’arar Sophie Swope, executive director of Mother Kuskokwim.
The decision will not affect land available to eligible individuals under the Alaska Native Vietnam-era Veterans Land Allotment Program, the agency said.
The Biden administration has taken other important steps to restrict development in Alaska, including imposing strict protections on most of the land in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska and rejecting a federal right-of-way for a 200-mile road to the Ambler mineral district in northwest Alaska.
But in a controversial move, the government last year approved ConocoPhillips’ massive Willow oil project in the oil reserve.