FAIRBANKS, Alaska (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration and its allies have pushed aggressively for drilling, mining and logging in Alaska.
This has intensified long-standing debate over extraction projects in the nation’s largest state, particularly within Alaska Native communities.
Some view such projects as key to jobs and economic development. Others see them posing environmental risks as they’ve already faced severe fishing restrictions on the state’s longest rivers due to a collapse in the salmon population.
Scientists are unsure of the causes of the salmon collapse — which possibly include warming waters and commercial fishing — but opponents of extraction say its possible impacts could be similar in terms of endangering subsistence traditions and food sources. They say this risks, in turn, damaging their sacred connections to the land and to cultural traditions tied to fishing and hunting.
How has the administration pushed for extraction projects?
Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office in January seeking to “maximize the development and production of the natural resources” in the state.
Congress, in its recent budget bill, authorized an unprecedented four new sales of oil and gas leases in the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in northeast Alaska. It also authorized more sales in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska in the northern part of the state.
Extraction proposals take years to become reality, if ever. Previous lease sales have generated limited interest, and the extent of oil reserves in the Arctic refuge remains uncertain.
Members of Trump’s Cabinet visited Alaska in June. They called for doubling the amount of oil coursing through its vast pipeline system and building a massive natural gas pipeline as its “big, beautiful twin.”
The administration is also boosting the proposed Ambler Mining District Industrial Access Project, which would include construction of a 200-mile …