Alaska’s pristine Western Interior lands have long been protected—initially through conservation by indigenous peoples and after statehood through the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act and federal land use plans. That has allowed much of the landscape to remain an unspoiled, intact expanse that is home to an array of fish, wildlife, and plants that support Native communities’ ways of life.
But a proposal from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which oversees 13.4 million acres in its Bering Sea-Western Interior region, could greatly change large swaths of this remote and undeveloped area. Turning away requests from local communities for protections for significant cultural and natural resources, the BLM recently released a draft resource management plan that would open virtually all of the land the agency oversees to mining.
The proposal has high stakes for the region: It will govern how the land is used for the next two decades and determine which areas will be prioritized for conservation of their natural values and which will be available for mining and oil and gas development.
And as work on the plan began in 2014, local tribal communities asked the BLM to protect important watersheds and lands through nominations of Areas of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC). Tribes proposed more than 7 million acres of watersheds for this vital designation—where increased management attention is needed to safeguard cultural and natural resources. Included was the locally nominated Sheefish ACEC on the Big River, home to rare and irreplaceable Kuskokwim River sheefish spawning areas. Eighty percent of the river’s sheefish—a salmonid that weighs up to 60 pounds and migrates as far as 1,000 miles—spawn in this 15-mile stretch.
But the BLM not only failed to include any of the nominations in the draft plan, it also would eliminate protections for almost 2 million acres that have been in place since 1981. In fact, the new proposal would open 99 percent of the 13.4 million acres to mining.
During public meetings, BLM staff said the area had “low mineral potential” so mining would be unlikely to occur. But the agency provided no scientific justification for that view, and its decision invites speculation at the expense of other land management priorities such as reindeer grazing, indigenous traditional use, and watershed protection.
The BLM’s draft management plan and draft environmental impact statement also don’t evaluate the potential effect of mining in the region or whether it could be mitigated to an acceptable level.
This has raised concern among the more than 60 federally recognized Alaska Native tribes living in the Bering Sea-Western Interior planning area. A third of the tribes recently sent a letter to the BLM asking it to “make changes in the Final plan to create greater balance and provide protections for Tribal nominations.” One of the signers—Michael Stickman, first chief of the Nulato Tribal Council—said: “It is our responsibility to take care of land and resources that mean so much to our peoples’ way of life. Our ancestors instilled these values about showing respect and caring for the land.”
The BLM is mandated by law to balance the many uses of this public land, including managing for conservation. By proposing to open nearly the entire Bering Sea-Western Interior planning area for mining, the agency fails to carry out that mandate. The draft plan falls far short of serving the public interest in protecting important historic, cultural, subsistence, and fish and wildlife values identified on the affected lands.
Suzanne Little is an officer with The Pew Charitable Trusts’ U.S. public lands and rivers conservation program.