The supplemental environmental impact statement for the Ambler Road to the Ambler Mining District was not favorable. The report was released today by the Bureau of Land Management, a division of the Department of Interior.
The road project is proposed by the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority (AIDEA). A district court judge sent the matter back for an additional environmental review after the original environmental impact statement in 2020, saying there was inadequate analysis of subsistence impacts under the terms of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act.
Ambler Mining District is a mineral-rich area that would be able to provide the rare earth and other minerals needed for the Biden Administration’s electric future. Without it, the country will still rely on slave-mined minerals from China. Rep. Mary Peltola has indicated she opposes the road and the mine itself.
The draft supplemental EIS released today analyzes the three route alternatives for the proposed road from the 2020 environmental analysis, as well as a “no action” alternative under which the road would not be permitted. No preferred alternative is identified.
The updated analysis identifies 66 communities whose subsistence activities could be potentially impacted, concluding that any road alternative may significantly restrict subsistence uses in nearly half of these communities.
This nearly triples the number of communities considered, up from 27 in the 2020 analysis. The draft supplemental EIS also contains updated information on potential impacts of the proposed road to caribou and fish populations, and expands incorporation of Indigenous Knowledge gained through consultations, ethnographic interviews, comment letters and testimony, and Regional Advisory Council meetings.
Mining activity and future potential public use of the road are identified and analyzed as reasonably foreseeable, a term that is defined in the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and its implementing regulations and guidance, the BLM said in a statement.
“The latest draft includes additional data and analysis informed by robust Tribal consultation and cooperation, on-the-ground perspectives, and public input,” said BLM Alaska State Director Steve Cohn. “We appreciate the hard work of BLM staff and our partners, and the many Alaska Native Tribes, Corporations and stakeholders who engaged in this updated process. Continued public input and engagement on this draft is critical to ensuring our analysis captures the proposed road’s potential impacts.”
AIDEA proposed Ambler Road to connect the Dalton Highway, which runs from north of Fairbanks up to Deadhorse, to the Ambler Mining District located in northwest Alaska. The proposed route would traverse more than 200 miles across lands managed by the BLM, state of Alaska, Alaska Native Corporations, and through the Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, managed by the National Park Service.
“The additional analysis confirms that this private mining road would be a road to ruin for Alaska’s struggling caribou,” said Cooper Freeman, Alaska representative at the Center for Biological Diversity. “You can’t bulldoze through millions of acres of wilderness, migration routes, rivers and a national park without causing major destruction. The Biden administration should revoke the permits for this harmful road and keep Alaska’s wild places intact.”
The public has 60-days from publication of the draft supplemental EIS in the Federal Register, which is scheduled for next week, to provide comments. The BLM will post the schedule for public meetings, subsistence hearings and other engagement opportunities on the BLM National NEPA Register in the coming days. The BLM will review and consider all input before publishing a final supplemental EIS. The BLM will continue to consult with Alaska Native Tribes and Corporations throughout this process.
It’s becoming ever so clear as to the “real” Clear & Present Danger to economic prosperity for Alaska. The ‘willful’ and ‘intentional’ malicious acts – decisions by these Rogue Agencies, are completely unconscionable. Any amount of support for these liberal progressive communist hacks is economic suicide. Soon enough, as the next National Election ramps up, it will be easy to identify whom the ‘enemy’ of resource development is.
The BLM and the NEPA process are designed to be politically manipulable. They will waste millions of dollars producing a document that says what they wanted in the first place. The BLM’s “Middle Yukon Resource Development Plan” is another BS document being used to bolster this travesty. This will be the third or fourth EIS for the Ambler Road, and a new Republican admin will be fought with another.
The caribou population is healthy and not endangered by this road nor any other. If there is an issue with the caribou, it’s the wolves the feds imported into Kanuti NWR and Gates of the Arctic NP in 1994, “to bolster and restore the ‘natural’ predator/prey balance” – an experiment that failed utterly, unless you like wolves coming into your village eating your pet dogs. Restore same-day aerial land-and-shoot wolf hunting and caribou will return to Kanuti.
I’m impressed MRAK has reviewed and digested 2,000+ pages of Supplemental EIS already!
It’s only about 120 pages… with comments from every outside tree hugger in the nation and china too.
Jaded, interestingly the Chi-Coms sent $ to Joe Bidens personal address in a couple of unexplained transactions. Of course this has no bearing whatsoever on the demented Grampa Sniffy’s administration’s rewarding the Chi-Coms by keeping American Rare Earth’s off the market, thereby maintaing the Chi- Com monopoly. Right?
Was any of that in the report? Hmm…
It’s a travesty how seemingly intelligent people can be so jaded.
I await your response in defending the Traitor on Chief.
You wont hear zip from fools who disbelieve facts or simply ignore the huge amounts of payouts as normal gifts to royalty.
Since hunters laptop info was diregarded by 50 top officials from various departments just shows their level of ignorance and corruption at the top.
I don’t appreciate any of these bureaucracies. Useless consumers who fail to realize where the products they are using comes from. We need that road built asap.
It’s an easy decision for the Biden and other likeminded administrations – if it concerns natural resource extraction ban it! The only difficulty involving some actual work these agencies face is coming up justifications to support their preloaded decisions. Sometimes it can be challenging to get the “science” to support the decision rather than letting the decision be determined by the science. Such is the lot of the government bureaucrat but, as we see time and again, they’re up for the task.
Today, there is more energy extracted than ever before in America.
How is metals an energy unless it’s uranium you moron. And yes extracted in African nations by 8 year old slave labor.
And there are more anti-energy proposals and regulations being put into place than ever before in America (sic). Courtesy of the cabal who exercises power behind the Potemkin facade of China Joe PotatoHead.
All the naysaying is brought to you by generous contributions by the owners of the mines, supplying the market with these products.
Imagine a Burger King could invest some money through the right venues to shut down McDonald’s and Chick-fil-A
The easily duped are gonna be duped.
And there’s a reason why Gilliam spent all the money for the anti-pebble mine rhetoric.
Did you expect anything less from Grandpa Bloodstains and co?
Iran and China don’t need competition.
BLM only uses protecting subsistence rights when it benefits their extremist agenda otherwise they despise title 8 of Anilca.
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