Alaska. A wild, unruly, untamed piece of majesty that can't be found elsewhere. Untouched, unspoiled. The state holds what many consider the last great frontier, as its jagged peaks, unsoiled forests, pristine rivers, and resplendent natural beauty encompassing every activity offered throughout its confines.
It remains high on my bucket list, with ludicrous adventure ideas about rafting and boating through its estuaries, fly fishing, mountaineering, hunting its caribou and moose, and, like many others, riding the state's famed Dalton Highway.
The highway, built in the 1970s to connect Fairbanks to Deadhorse for the purposes of mineral extraction, is a 400-mile stretch that bisects the state and runs through some of the most desolate sections of federal public lands. Caribou herds roam. Loamy hills that give way to towering forests and granite cliffs can be seen from the back of your bike. And where summer mosquitoes will make you hate your skin.
At least, it was federal public lands. Recently, the Trump administration's Department of the Interior, in conjunction with the Senate, overturned the Resource Management Plan through the Congressional Review Act—the first time it's ever been used in this manner—which then gave the once-protected 1.4 million acres that surround the Dalton to Alaska to manage itself, and basically cut the protections it once enjoyed.
The result? Less majesty, more access for mining and development, with the key beneficiary being Canada's Trilogy Metals and Australia's South32, the companies behind the Ambler Mine that recently got yet another life-saving shot in the arm from the current administration. Now the state's populace is weighing in on what they want to do. But given our legislators' willful disobedience in terms of public lands, it looks like there's another fight brewing.
The removal of the Central Yukon Resource Management Plan is part of a concerted effort by the Trump Administration to piece-by-piece disassemble our nation's public lands, our access to those public lands, and to sell them off to extractive industries and developers—the former of which tend to be not even American, i.e., the Chilean company that recently benefited from the removal of the protections of Minnesota's Boundary Waters.
In the last two years, through the Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management, the Department of Agriculture, the Forest Service, through Congress, and Congressional committees, Trump's public lands civil servants, as well as our own elected officials, have routinely attacked, developed work arounds, or straight-up decided to not listen to their own constituents in our wants and needs that directly impact our nation's public lands. And the Dalton's Resource Management Plan's revocation, along with the revocation of two Public Land Orders, and countless other decisions, have led to the stripping of the protections for this still wild place.
According to our friends at Field & Stream, "Prior to this year, two Nixon-era Public Land Orders exempted the BLM lands along the Dalton from state transfer under the Alaska Statehood Act. But Congress’ removal of the Central Yukon Resource Management Plan and [Secretary of the Interior Doug] Burgum’s subsequent revocation of PLOs 5150 and 5180 opened the door for the transfer." The Alaska Statehood Act, which made Alaska a state—who could've guessed?—relayed that the federal government was entitled to certain portions of land and the rest to Alaska to do with it as the state sees fit.
And what Alaska's politicians want to do is give it to mining companies and developers. Chief among them those involved with the Ambler Mine.
The Ambler project has been decades in the making, and decades of litigation. It's stalled and stopped and restarted multiple times, as Alaskans and fellow outdoorsy Americans have come together to routinely sue the federal government and the mining companies for their plans and routine conservation failures. Yet, despite public backlash and a continued push to safeguard not just the Dalton, but all public lands, the current administration is hellbent on going against the wishes of its constituents and selling off or giving away as much of our public lands as it can. All in the name of mining and fossil-fuel energy extraction. In fact, Trump, Burgum, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, and the rest of the cohort behind these attacks continue to state that very fact in every Executive Order or decree they make.
That includes within the original press release announcing the transfer to Alaska, which we covered when it first dropped.
Alaskans are now speaking their minds on what to do with the 1.4-million acres that they just acquired. Public comment, however, was short and ended on June 26th, with Alaska's Department of Natural Resources stating, "The DNR will begin outreach to communities along the Dalton Highway corridor and nearby villages in the spring of 2026 to gather input on preferred access locations. This engagement may include community meetings, coordination with local governments and tribal entities, and opportunities for written input."
This comes after stating in its announcement that it sees existing restrictions along the Dalton as "affecting access patterns for the general public and for Federally qualified subsistence users," i.e., they want to increase routes, with the biggest being the Ambler Road. As relayed by Field & Stream, "That’s because the 1.4-million-acre transfer of lands along the Dalton included what could become the first 20-mile stretch of the proposed Ambler Road."
As for right now, the comment period is over for the public, and we're awaiting what was said. But given that public comment has been largely ignored in recent months, including those proposing the rescission of the Roadless Rule, which saw over a million people in support comment when it first became law, the concern by many is that Alaska's legislators won't hear or care to hear what their people want and demand. And that energy extraction, which isn't as fruitful as it once was, nor even slated to be returned to the American people, will be prioritized over the opposition.
Hopefully, that natural beauty is preserved. Hopefully, I, and everyone else, can experience it one day.
