Tribes ask US not to lift federal land protections
Seventy-eight tribes in Alaska are urging the federal government to retain protections on large areas of land in the state. These so-called “D-1 protections,” which the U.S. Bureau of Land Management is considering lifting from 28 million acres, could keep this land off limits for mining companies and other extractive industries.
“In this rapidly changing environment with so many future unknowns, it is in the public interest to adopt a precautionary action and prioritize the protection of the natural environment that supports our Peoples’ subsistence resources over the industrial exploitation of intact lands and pristine waters,” said a letter addressed to U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland.
It was signed by the leadership of tribal governments from communities across Alaska, including several in the Norton Sound region, such as Elim, Saint Michael, Shaktoolik, Stebbins and Unalakleet.
Frank Katchatag, the president of the Native Village of Unalakleet, explained why he and many other tribal leaders are opposed to this D-1 protections being lifted.
“It’s our only protection from stopping any kind of mining because we all know it’ll be the international companies that come in and tear up the land,” Katchatag said.
The land in question includes a large swathe inland from Unalakleet, stretching north and south.
Katchatag said that maintaining the health of the region’s rivers and streams for all kinds of salmon is his main concern.
“We’re going through salmon crashes all over the state of Alaska,” he said. “To add on to it doesn’t make sense.”
He said he’s also concerned about the impacts to other wildlife that are sensitive to environmental changes, such as migrating caribou, wolves, bears and wolverines.
“We live off everything,” he said. “It just doesn’t make sense to open up the land and have our way of life altered.”
These protections were put in place under Section 17 D-1 of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, or ANCSA, in 1971. The measures were meant to reserve undeveloped land for future claims by Native corporations and the state. But over the last two decades, BLM has been reevaluating their status.
The Trump administration had advanced several land orders that would lift D-1 protections, turning over large areas of land to state management and opening the potential for some forms of resource extraction. The tribes, in their letter, called these actions by the Trump administration “flawed” and said they had not been adequately consulted.
After the Biden administration came into the White House, Secretary Haaland halted these orders and instead initiated the process to study the potential environmental impacts of such a move.
Alaska’s two Republican U.S. Senators, Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, opposed the Biden administration’s decision. Earlier this year, they reintroduced legislation ultimately intended to lift D-1 protections by codifying the Trump administration’s land orders.
“It is infuriating that the federal government continues to play politics and refuses to fulfill its land conveyance commitments to the State of Alaska—harming our resource economy and our ability to responsibly produce and develop critical materials like oil, gas, and minerals,” Murkowski said in a statement earlier this year.
Katchatag said that he was surprised by the senators’ stance because he and other tribal leaders “talked with them many times in our communities” about the issue.
Getting rid of these protections would also open parcels of lands that had been promised to Alaska Native veterans and their heirs through a federal allotment program. Sullivan called the pause in this process under the Biden administration a “grave injustice” to those veterans who are still waiting for their land.
Katchatag said he agreed that veterans should get the land they deserve, but expressed concern about these allotments being tied up with measures that could also usher in more development.
“I always will support veterans getting their Native allotments,” Katchatag said. “However, I hope that the government is not using that as a tool to open land up for mining. I hope that the government’s not using the veteran allotments to open it all up for everything.”
The Seward Peninsula Subsistence Regional Advisory Council discussed the D-1 protections when they met in Nome earlier this month.
The council voted to sign a letter to the state’s BLM director urging the agency to retain federal protections on these lands.
BLM is still preparing its draft of an environmental impact statement that is supposed to guide Haaland’s decision about whether to lift the D1 protections. The agency said this document could be published as early as mid-December. The public will have 60 days to comment on BLM’s findings once they are released.