Industry News
The Trump Administration recently announced approval for the Ambler Road, a 211-mile road connecting the Dalton Highway to the Ambler Mining District, located in the remote Alaskan interior. The gravel road, open only to mining operations and not the public, will cut through pristine Alaskan wilderness at the foothills of the Brooks Range. Vast amount of caribou habitat will be disturbed, and the road could require 48 bridges and nearly 3,000 culverts, disrupting fisheries that many Alaska natives rely on for wild food subsistence. At least 26 miles of the road would cut directly through the southern portion of Gates of the Arctic National Park.
The Ambler Mineral belt was first identified in the 1970s, and was found to contain vast deposits of copper, cobalt, gallium, germanium, silver, gold, and other valuable minerals. There are no other surface roads that access the area, meaning approval of the Ambler Road is necessary for any mining operations to begin. In 1980, Congress passed the Alaska National Interest Land Conservation Act, which established ten different National Parks, National Forests, and other conservation areas, including Denali National Park and Gates of the Arctic National Park. The act included a compromise that guaranteed access to potential mining areas and other resource extraction, including specifically the Ambler Mineral Belt. The relevant section reads: “Congress finds that there is a need for access for surface transportation purposes…from the Ambler Mining District to the Alaska Pipeline Haul Road…and the Secretary shall permit such access.”
State officials began preliminary work on a possible route in 2009, and the project began in earnest in 2013 when the State of Alaska transferred the project to the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, a quasi-governmental investment bank the state has run since 1967. The road was first approved in July 2020, during the first Trump Administration, and work continued on the project through 2021 securing right-of-way agreements with the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and other land managers. After subsequent litigation primarily by environmental groups, a Federal court ordered a more comprehensive environmental impact statement and a new decision. Based on the findings of the new environmental impact statement that the road would substantially affect caribou and fish populations, the Biden Administration cancelled the project in June 2024.
From the start, environmental groups have opposed the Ambler road, alongside the Tanana Chiefs Conference, which represents 39 native villages and 37 Federally recognized tribes in an area that covers more than 37% of the state, or 235,000 square miles. The Tanana Chiefs Conference submitted an extensively researched 78 page comment on the original environmental impact statement in strong opposition to the project. “We have lived on these lands for thousands of years,” Frank Thompson said, First Chief of Evansville, in a press release after the Biden Administration cancelled the project in 2024. “Our lives here are only possible because of the subsistence resources that also exist here. The previous administration ignored our knowledge of subsistence resources that exist on these lands and the grave threat to those resources posed by the proposed industrial road. We therefore thank the Biden administration for standing up for our people and our right to continue to live on these lands with our resources intact, and we ask the State of Alaska to follow suit and stop pursuing this road.”
But, opposition from Alaska native villages has not been universal. The Kobuk, Shungnak, Hughes, Ruby, and Allakaket villages have all issued statements in support of the project. A common theme among supporters for the project is the limited economic opportunities for Alaska natives in the region. The Red Dog Mine has operated since 1989 and has been one of the only employers in the Northwest part of the state. “When the Red Dog mine was being planned, tribes were listened to and included in the process,” Miles Cleveland said in an opinion piece published by the Anchorage Daily News. “Job opportunities are scarce. Many of our young people leave to find jobs in urban areas of the state, like Fairbanks or Anchorage.”
With approvals reinstated and a Federal Government strongly in support of resource extraction on public lands, work on the Ambler Access Project is likely to move swiftly. Alaska represents a stark contrast between some of the last extended wilderness areas on the planet and prolific resource extraction. Indeed, the same legislation that protected vast swaths of land in Alaska also guaranteed resource extraction would continue. The Ambler road certainly has economic benefits, and will certainly have a negative impact on the environment. The question, to be answered in the years to come, is how bad that impact will be?
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