Gov. Mike Dunleavy has asked President-elect Donald Trump to immediately reverse the Biden administration’s Alaska environmental and tribal lands policies, arguing that they hurt the state’s economy.
“Your election will hail in a new era of optimism and opportunity, and Alaska stands ready to and is eager to work with you to repair this damage wrought by the previous administration, and to set both Alaska and America on a course to prosperity,” Dunleavy said in a letter accompanying a 27-page document listing his desired Alaska policy changes, released on Dec. 16.
Dunleavy’s policy document said that Trump, as soon as he returns to the White House, should issue an Alaska-focused executive order that removes restrictions on oil development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the National Petroleum Reserve Alaska.
In addition, the document urged Trump to reinstate federal support for a controversial road stretching more than 200 miles through the Brook Range foothills to the isolated Ambler mining district and reverse the ban on new roads in Southeast Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, among other policy changes.
“It is essential that the Alaska specific executive order be issued as soon as President Trump takes office. The Biden Administration’s assault on Alaska was carried out through a multitude of official agency actions; reversal of these actions must comply with time-consuming administrative procedures,” said Dunleavy’s policy document, titled “Alaska priorities for federal transition.”
Additionally, Dunleavy wants Trump to create a cabinet-level task force and six new oversight positions to make sure that various federal agencies adhere to the pro-resource-extraction policy mandates. The newly hired officials would oversee the Department of the Interior, Department of the Army, Department of Commerce, Environmental Protection Agency and the Office of Management and Budget.
Beyond removing limits on resource extraction in federal lands, Dunleavy wants the new Trump administration to abandon the current Department of Interior policy in favor of putting some lands into trust for the benefit of Native tribes.
The issue has been a subject of dispute for several years. Advocates for putting land into trust say it is important to tribal sovereignty, but the idea has drawn opposition from the state. Tribes argue that they are entitled to control of some land, while the state has argued that the 1971 Alaska Native Land Claims Settlement Act put an end to such land transfers by giving lands and subsurface mineral rights to for-profit Native corporations rather than to tribes.
The Biden administration and the Obama administration before it supported the tribes’ trust lands aspiration, while the Republican administration, both under Trump’s previous term and under that of George W. Bush, opposed them.
The latest dispute over land-in-trust concerns a parcel in downtown Juneau that the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes is seeking to be put into trust status. U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason ruled last June that Interior has the right to grant trust status for land parcels, though she said the process used by Tlingit and Haida had flaws and that the application should be resubmitted. The state appealed that ruling.
The Biden administration’s position favoring land-in-trust designations is dangerous to the state’s interest, Dunleavy said in his transition report.
An attorney representing the tribes criticized Dunleavy’s proposal for an end to federal support for Alaska lands-in-trust transactions.
“We were disappointed to see Governor Dunleavy’s requests to the incoming administration. Alaska Tribes should be treated the same as all other federally recognized tribes,” attorney Erin Dougherty Lynch, managing attorney at the Native American Rights Fund’s Alaska office, said by email.
The Alaska Beacon is an independent, donor-funded news organization. Alaskabeacon.com.
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