Immediate Actions: Alaska

When Alaska was admitted to the Union in 1959, nearly its entire landmass was federally owned

So Alaska was granted the right to select 104 million acres (out of 375 million acres) to manage for the benefit of its residents.48

In less than eight years, Alaska selected 26 million acres. Then-Interior Secretary Stewart Udall—who served during the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations—put a freeze on further land selections to protect any claims that might be asserted by Native Alaskans.49 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.

The discovery of oil at Prudhoe Bay in 1968 made resolution of the issue by Congress a matter of urgency. As a result, in 1971, Congress passed the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA), which allowed the Native community to select 44 million acres.50

Environmentalists, upset that too much of the land they coveted would be selected by the state and Native Alaskans for development, demanded the inclusion in the act of a provision—Section 17(d)(2)—that ordered the Interior Secretary to withdraw 80 million acres for future designation by Congress as parks, refuges, wild and scenic rivers, and national forests.51 The deadline for this congressional action was 1978, and as it neared, the Carter Administration, impatient and worried, decided to force Congress’s hand. The Administration unilaterally withdrew 100 million acres from any use by the state or Native Alaskans.52 Alaska promptly sued, charging that the Administration had failed to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act.53 In a lame duck session at the end of 1980, Congress passed (over the objections of the Alaskan delegation) the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, which revoked all of the withdrawals of the Carter Administration and sub- stituted congressional designations that put 100 million acres permanently in federal enclaves, doubled the acreage of national parks and refuges, and tripled the amount of land declared to be wilderness.54 Through all of this, Alaska pressed for the DOI to convey the lands to which Alaska was entitled by federal law, but the department grudgingly transferred only portions of that land.

By the time Ronald Reagan took office, Alaska had received less than half the lands to which it was entitled after its admission into the Union, and Native Alas- kans had received only one-third of the land due to them.55 From January of 1981 through 1983, however, under Reagan, Alaska received 30 million acres and a com- mitment of land transfers at the rate of 13 million acres annually. In the same period, Native Alaskans received 11 million acres, which constituted nearly 60 percent of their entitlement, and an additional 15 million acres were transferred by the end of 1988.56

Despite the passage of nearly 40 years since the end of the Reagan Adminis- tration, the federal government has yet to fulfill its statutory obligation to Alaska and Alaska Natives—specifically, each group has 5 million acres of entitlement remaining. Standing in the way are Public Land Orders (PLOs) issued by the BLM seizing that land for the agency. Those PLOs must be lifted to permit Alaska and Alaska Natives to select what was promised by Congress.

For example, revocation of PLO 515057 will provide the state of Alaska 1.3 million acres of its remaining state entitlement. This revocation should be a top priority. BLM recommended this revocation in the 2006 report to Congress based on the Alaska Land Transfer Acceleration Act, and the Interior Secretary has authority to revoke based on the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act under section d(1).58 All other remaining BLM PLOs—all of which are more than 50 years old—should be revoked immediately.

Alaska has untapped potential for increased oil production, which is important not just to the revitalization of the nation’s energy sector but is vital to the Alaskan economy. One-quarter of Alaska’s jobs are in the oil industry, and half of its overall economy depends on that industry. Without oil production, the Alaskan economy would be half its size.

A new Administration must take the following actions immediately:

Approve the 2020 National Petroleum Reserve Alaska Integrated Activity Plan (NPRA-IAP) by resigning the Record of Decision. (Secretary Haaland’s order reverted to the 2013 IAP, the science for which is out of date, unlike the 2020 IAP.)

Reinstate the 2020 Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) by secretarial order and lift the suspension of the leases. Approve the 2020 Willow EIS, the largest pending oil and gas projection in the United States in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, and expand approval from three to five drilling pads.59

Minerals. Alaska is not just blessed with an abundance of oil, it has vast untapped mineral potential. Therefore, the new Administration must immedi- ately approve the Ambler Road Project60 across BLM-managed lands, pursuant to the Secretary’s authority under the ANILCA and based on the Final Envi- ronmental Impact Statement on the project.61 This will permit construction of a new 211-mile roadway on the south side of the Brooks Range, west from the Dalton Highway to the south bank of the Ambler River, and open the area only to mining-related industrial uses, providing high-paying jobs in an area known for unemployment.

Wildlife and Waters. Throughout Alaska’s history, the federal government has treated Alaska as less than a sovereign state. This is especially the case when it comes to two of Alaska’s most valued resources, its wildlife and its waters. Immediate action is required to end, at least in part, this injustice. A new Admin- istration should:

Recognize Alaska’s authority to manage fish and game on all federal lands in accordance with ANILCA as during the Reagan Administration, when each DOI agency in Alaska signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game ceding to the state the lead on fish and wildlife management matters.63

Issue a secretarial order declaring navigable waters in Alaska to be owned by the state so that the lands beneath these waters belong to Alaska. This will force the BLM to prove that water is not navigable, since in the case of non-navigability, any submerged lands belong to the BLM. Currently, BLM requires Alaska to prove navigability at its own expense—including the BLM’s preposterous assertion that the mighty Yukon River is non-navigable. Reinstate President Trump’s 2020 Alaska Roadless Rule64 for the Tongass National Forest in Alaska, which was replaced by a Biden Roadless Rule that continues a 2001 Clinton rule affecting 9.37 million of the forest’s 16.7 million acres.65 The Clinton rule affects an area where communities are in small islands with no road access. It has prevented multiple infrastructure projects, including roads, electric transmission lines, and water and sewer projects, and it forces residents to use a heavily subsidized ferry system. Logging has been shut down to the extent that New York harvests more timber than does all of Alaska.