Victory for 20 Million Acres of National Park Lands

VICTORY! U.S. Department of Interior Secretary Deb Haaland recently announced that it will cancel permits for the 211-mile proposed Ambler industrial mining road, which would have cut through Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve in Alaska. The road would have severed the migration route for the Western Arctic Caribou Herd and devastated a vast wilderness landscape including more than 20 million acres of national park lands and the homes of 66 Alaska Native communities.

Advocates submitted more than 116,000 comments opposing the road, and the Biden administration concluded, after an extensive analysis, that threats of irreparable harm were too great to allow the industrial road’s permits to remain in place. 

NPCA has long argued, alongside local, Tribal and national partners, that the ecological, economic and social impacts to the lands and communities of Alaska’s Brooks Range far outweighed any speculative benefits from this proposed mining project.

The state of Alaska had planned to build the industrial access road along the southern Brooks Range to transport ore from open pit copper mines planned in the northwest region of the state. The road would have cost more than $1.4 billion and crossed 20 miles of Gates of the Arctic National Preserve. It would have also crossed nearly 3,000 rivers and streams, including the Kobuk Wild & Scenic River.

NPCA is proud to have helped protect one of the last great intact ecosystems on Earth, and to have worked in partnership with the people who have called it home for generations.