28 Million Acres of Alaska Land Remains Off-Limits to Big Development
Federal government heeds the call of more than 100 Tribal Nations to preserve critical landscapes
Crucial protections for more than 28 million acres of wildlife habitat and traditional Tribal land in Alaska will remain—precluding large-scale development—thanks to a recent decision from the U.S. Department of the Interior.
The lands total an area larger than the state of Virginia and include wildlife corridors, habitats, and waterways crucial for the well-being of at-risk species, including caribou, migratory birds, and Pacific salmon. The areas are critical for more than 100 Indigenous Alaska communities relying on subsistence harvesting—using wild resources—to live and include land that is adjacent to the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers, wildlife refuges, and the Bering Sea.
The protections covering these lands were created by the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, which has discouraged large-scale development since the law was passed in 1971. Local communities have been concerned that recent efforts to lift protections would lead the areas to be targeted for oil and gas drilling. A new environmental review found that taking away protections would cause severe impact to subsistence resources, including wildlife, vegetation, and watersheds that support fish populations, moose, and caribou. As a result, the Interior Department recommended that the land, overseen by the Bureau of Land Management, keep its federal protection.
More than half of Alaska’s 229 Tribal Nations joined together, forming a united front to call for maintaining the protections. Many Tribal villages are within close range of the lands, which offer sustenance for Tribal members and have provided fertile hunting, fishing, and gathering grounds for their ancestors for millennia.
“We rely heavily on the land and sea,” says Frank Katchatag, president of the Native Village of Unalakleet and first vice chair of the Bering Sea Interior Tribal Commission, a consortium of Tribal Nations that have lobbied for the protections. “We don’t have Walmart or Costco. We have tiny local stores with limited supplies.”
Katchatag grew up in Unalakleet, a remote Iñupiaq village in the western Arctic that is accessible only by plane. The 800 residents rely heavily on moose, caribou, reindeer, wild berries, and salmon—food that can be frozen, canned, and dried to use throughout the year. Any disruption to the animals’ migrations or important spawning watersheds and calving grounds would make it more difficult for species to reproduce—affecting the availability of food for the Tribal communities, whose leaders often travel great distances to hunt, fish, and gather.
The Tribes also believe that protecting landscapes and native plants that support native animals is a forward-thinking approach that will help prevent the species from declining.
“Climate change is real,” Katchatag says. “Ice is not forming in the winter. In the last six years, we’ve had no ice that supports our winter travel. Those are real impacts that we’re facing, and we’re adapting. But it’s scary to think the sustainable resources are fading.” Tribes are concerned that the impact of extractive development on top of changes already occurring from climate change might be a fatal blow to Indigenous peoples’ way of life.
Over the last decade, The Pew Charitable Trusts has supported Indigenous-led conservation and the efforts of the Alaska Tribes to safeguard the pristine land and waters that serve as a cornerstone for their way of life.
“This decision will almost solely affect Alaska's Indigenous communities, and I have never seen stronger unified advocacy by Indigenous communities, Tribes, and Tribal organizations,” says Suzanne Little, who oversees land conservation in Alaska in partnership with Alaska Native peoples for Pew’s U.S. conservation project. “Pew has worked hard to learn what communities affected by land use decisions want to see as an outcome. It’s been a great honor for us to work alongside the region’s first conservationists, Alaska’s Indigenous people.”
“We don’t like to fight with people, but this decision is going to impact all communities near this land in Alaska,” says Katchatag, who has seven children and 14 grandchildren. “We are the caretakers of our land. We know not to overharvest or waste. What we do now will impact our children and grandchildren, so we have to get it right.”
The Bering Sea Interior Tribal Commission and its 38 member Tribes are grateful for the decision to retain the protections and applaud the federal government for listening to the outcry of Alaska’s first peoples in finalizing this decision.
Carol Kaufmann is a Trust staff writer.
