Alaska Delegation Continues to Support Trump’s Destruction of Public Lands

By Hal Shepherd

The Center for American Progress just released a report entitled: “The Trump Administration’s Expansive Push to Sell Out Public Lands to the Highest Bidder” which concludes that the Trump administration has taken action that could eliminate or weaken protections for federal public lands and habitat for threatened or endangered species, “stretching over more than 175 million acres of U.S. lands in total - an area larger than California, Florida, and Georgia combined.”^[1]

The question for many Alaskans is that with the American public’s satisfaction with the way things are “going at its lowest since President Donald Trump took office in January,” why do Congressional republicans continue to support his administration’s push to hand over unprecedented amounts of public lands to the extraction industry for drilling, mining, and logging?

Yukon River Landscape in Alaska - Free stock - Public Domain photo - CCO Images

A case in point, last summer, in the face of massive public opposition, Congress was forced to abandon language contained in the ridiculously named “Big Beautiful Bill” that would sell off public lands to the industry. Yet, on September 3, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to overturn the Bureau of Land Management’s Central Yukon Resource Management Plan (CYRMP) under the Congressional Review Act (CRA), the first time the law has ever been applied to land-use planning.

Bureau of Land Management lands in the Central Yukon region encompass some of the most pristine, undeveloped public lands in the nation, including portions of the nation’s third-longest river (the Yukon), and consist of crucial spawning habitat for sheefish and chinook salmon, high-value wildlife habitat for three caribou herds, Dall Sheep, musk oxen, and hundreds of migratory birds. Additionally, these federal public lands serve as a vital carbon sink. A 2018 USGS study found that the amount of carbon stored on federal lands in Alaska accounted for approximately 62 percent of the total carbon stored on all federal lands in the U.S.

The lands in question were previously protected under two Public Land Orders, as well as D-1 withdrawals under the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, which have safeguarded the areas from unchecked development. The 2024 CYRMP is a comprehensive blueprint for managing over 13 million acres of public land, including the Gates of the Arctic National Park, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Yukon River and Dalton Highway corridor, Denali National Park, and Preserve. The CYRMP also provides broad conservation measures that are essential to tackle the climate crisis and puts America on the path to protect these lands by 2030.

Now, in an unprecedented move to overturn the plan through the CRA, with the full support of Lisa Murkowski’s office, Representative Nick Begich, and Senator Dan Sullivan, have introduced legislation that would open the door for Industrial development and mineral extraction, eliminate federal subsistence priority protections, and increase threats to aquatic habitat and subsistence resources.

Because it allows Congress to overturn agency rules with a simple majority vote and bypass the filibuster, using the 1996 CRA to disapprove a resource management plan would create significant uncertainty for existing plans across the country by “enabling Congress to unravel decades of environmental protections and management decisions on public lands.” It also does not appear to matter to Senators Sullivan and Murkowski, and Rep. Begich, that technically, resource management plans are not rules to which the Act applies. As such, if Congress votes to overturn the CYRMP, it would cast doubt on the legitimacy of over 100 RMPs nationwide and undermine every element of the public lands planning process.

In addition, applying the CRA to resources management plans would undermine the existing process to amend such plans, dictated by the Federal Land Policy and Management Act. Also, if the CYRMP is revoked it would put back in place three plans that are over three decades old and prohibit the BLM from issuing a “substantially similar” plan in the future regardless of changing needs or conditions. Finally, using the CRA eliminates the opportunities for Tribal and public engagement included in the agency’s existing processes, and makes it easier to permit the Ambler mining road, which has been a flashpoint in Alaska’s land use debates.

The Road is a proposed transportation corridor that would cut a 211-mile swath through the pristine Brooks Range foothills and traverse the Gates of the Arctic National Park, one of the largest roadless areas in the country, to access the Ambler Mining District for the mineral extraction of copper, cobalt, zinc, lead, and other minerals. From the Dalton Highway, the Road would cross 11 major rivers (including the Koyukuk, Kobuk, and Yukon) and more than 3,000 freshwater streams. If approved, it would pose a grave threat to the delicate ecosystems, subsistence ways of life, and cultural heritage of Alaska Native communities.

In 2024, after a rigorous public comment period in which more than 80% of comments opposed the Road and consultation with multiple tribal governments located within the planning area, the BLM issued a Record of Decision halting the project, citing serious concerns over harm to fragile ecosystems, disruption of the Western Arctic caribou herd, and loss of subsistence access for rural communities.

Yet, despite public opinion about the need to protect public lands, Congress is moving to push through the Road and revoke other protections in the CYRMP under the CRA. According to John Ruple, a research law professor at the University of Utah “This is not about whether the management requirements contained in the challenged plans are a good idea. This is about whether order is preferable to chaos.” Even the conservative Mountain States Legal foundation is shocked by the Bill. Ivan London, a senior attorney at there said that the chaos and potential litigation would be like “the Wild West.”

Worse, overturning the CYRMP isn’t just about one planning area—it’s about the future of Alaska’s public lands, wildlife, and communities. If the CRA process is applied to one RMP, the State could lose Federal protections for rural subsistence, public input in future land management decisions, and safeguards against industrial development in ecologically sensitive areas.

The Alaska Delegation needs to get off the Trump environmental destruction bandwagon and start listening to Alaskans. In typical Trump style autocracy, they are actively promoting legislation that ignores the substantial time and collaboration Alaskan Native and everyday citizens put into planning, and who overwhelmingly support the protection of public lands in Alaska.

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^[1] American the Beautiful for All Coalition WORKGROUPS NEW REPORT: The Trump Administration’s Expansive Push to Sell Out Public Lands to the Highest Bidder (September 24, 2025).