Mining for green energy threatens Alaskan wilderness

North of the Arctic Circle, in Alaska’s remote Brooks Range, a backpack and strong legs can take you to the quietest spot in the entire National Park Service system. A pack raft and a bit of paddling can have you communing with musk oxen and caribou on the tundra. I still struggle to believe how wild and open these mountains are, and I have been among them my entire life.

But the state of Alaska wants to change all of that. Last year, the permit for a 211-mile industrial trucking corridor to promote mining along the southern edge of the Brooks Range was approved via a shoddy, fasttracked process.

Ironically, the Ambler Road project, advanced by the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, is being pushed forward in part for green-energy reasons, even as it would act like a gravel dam across a nervous system of tundra and thousands of Alaskan streams and waterways, inviting industrial traffic into the backyards of villagers who often don’t even have running water in their homes. The unwanted road would solely serve extraction industries, allowing mining where it has never been possible before.

I was born in Alaska, and my parents raised me and my sister in the Brooks Range as our family built a wilderness lodge that’s now in its 48th year of welcoming visitors from all over the world.

There are villages of Indigenous people here, far from grocery stores and fast food, where the elders still talk of constant movement as a way to follow the food and stay alive. Harvest seasons remain vitally important. Traditional hunting practices help sustain the physical, spiritual and cultural needs of the people in the region. Children grow up hunting ducks, hanging fish to dry, gathering berries and laughing at icy winds from the bow of a riverboat bumping over rapids and beaver dams.

The rivers and lakes run clean with wild, unstocked fish. Hundreds of thousands of caribou still migrate here, annually covering some 2,000 miles across the only U.S. state with any caribou left. The weather ranges from blistering hot to freezing cold depending on the season. Trees no bigger around than your wrist are often 150 years old, while 1,200-pound moose range the willows and waterways.

Now Alaska, through its development arm, intends to build a road here that would serve Ambler Metals, a partnership of Canadian and Australian mining companies. The state says the project is needed for economic and employment reasons, and the Trump administration signed off on the permits needed to build on the federal land it will cover.

Those hoping President Joe Biden would put a stop to it have so far been disappointed. The Biden administration sees mineral extraction as critical to U.S. energy independence. The copper and other minerals accessible via a future Ambler Road are sought after for solar panels and other green-energy technology.

But at what cost?

“This road could change life in our region more than any other single decision in history, and yet the people most affected by it have largely been left out,” Carl Burgett, the first chief of Huslia, Alaska, said in announcing that his largely Indigenous community had joined a lawsuit to block the road. Huslia is seeking to “protect our hunting and fishing resources and activities, ancestral lands and waters of cultural and economic significance,” he said.

Over the past several years, state and federal officials have told the people of the Brooks Range that they were carefully analyzing the impacts of a road. However, research by Politico and Type Investigations uncovered a rushed agenda by an administration that didn’t assess significant impacts to the environment and people as required by law.

None of this comes as a surprise to those of us who live here and care about our families, villages and businesses. We saw firsthand the speed and recklessness of the permitting process, and now several Alaska Native tribes and conservation groups have sued the federal government.

The Biden administration can and should revoke the permit issued through a hurried and potentially illegal process and defend one of this nation’s wildest landscapes. It is far cheaper to act now, before more public funds are spent to subsidize private industrial access at great cost to the land and people.

Those hoping President Joe Biden would put a stop to it have so far been disappointed.