Groups sue to keep federal protection of Alaska public lands
Evard Pettersson
(CN) — A group of 10 environmental advocacy groups sued the Trump administration on Tuesday to prevent the removal of federal protections from about 2 million acres of public land along the Dalton Highway corridor in Alaska.
The revocation of the protections that have been in place since the early 1970s will open up the land along what is now the Dalton Highway and Trans-Alaska Pipeline System to mining and oil and gas development and will expedite the permitting process for the controversial mining access Ambler Road, the nonprofits said in their complaint filed in Anchorage federal court.
“These public lands orders should never have been revoked without a thorough environmental review, public accountability, and meaningful consultation with the communities the most directly affected,” Krystal Lapp, president of the board for Northern Alaska Environmental Center, said in a statement. “Eliminating these protections opens the door to state land selections, mining claims, and industrial development in one of the most ecologically significant landscapes in North America.”
The Dalton Highway corridor crosses the region’s rolling, forested hills, across the Yukon River and Arctic Circle, through the rugged Brooks Range, and over the North Slope to the Arctic Ocean. The corridor and its surrounding lands, the conservationist groups say, are profoundly important to Alaska’s wildlife and people.
The highway and the Trans-Alaska pipeline were built alongside each other in the 1970s, running straight down the state from north to south.
The Department of the Interior last month said it would would revoke two public orders issued in 1971 and 1972 — which had put the land along the highway under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management and protected it from industrial development — in order to, what it called, expand opportunities for resource development and to enhance Alaska’s control over its own destiny.
In 2024, according to the environmentalists, the Bureau of Land Management had largely decided to leave the protections along the Dalton Highway corridor intact — until President Donald Trump’s 2025 executive order, “Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential.”
In it, the president called for the immediate reversal of the “punitive restrictions implemented by the previous administration that specifically target resource development on both state and federal lands in Alaska.”
“President Trump was clear — promises made are promises kept and this decision is about unlocking opportunity for American Energy Dominance to lower costs for all American families,” Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum said in a Feb. 20 statement. “By opening these lands, we are empowering Alaska to chart its own course and develop energy, minerals and infrastructure that strengthen America’s security and prosperity.”
The nonprofits claim the Department of the Interior has failed to comply with the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 and the National Environmental Policy Act in revoking the previous federal protections of the area.
They are represented by attorneys with Trustees for Alaska in Anchorage.
A representative of the Department of the Interior said the department doesn’t comment on pending litigation.