Taking the proposed Ambler Road to court
On August 4, 2020, Alaska Wildlife Alliance and our allies filed a lawsuit against the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, and Army Corps of Engineers for approving a 211-mile state-subsidized industrial gravel road (“the Ambler Road”) across the pristine southern Brooks Range. The Ambler Road would cut through federal public lands in the Gates of the Arctic National Preserve for the sole purpose of giving private mining companies access to undisturbed regions for hard rock mining. In permitting the Ambler Road, these agencies violated the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, National Environmental Policy Act, Clean Water Act and other federal laws and regulations by making final decisions based on a deeply flawed and inadequate environmental review.
The Alaska Wildlife Alliance believes in sustainable development, and has supported projects that have adequate risk assessment, mitigation, and an environmental ethos that considers the health of future generations. This is not one of those projects.
-Nicole Schmitt, AWA’s Director
Alaska Wildlife Alliance is opposed to the road is because it would expose critical watersheds to pollution, fragment caribou herd migrations, threaten critical bird habitat, and put stress on moose populations along the Koyukuk, Kobuk Wild, Alatna, and John Rivers. The road also threatens the culture and way of life of local communities, which need healthy ecosystems to support the wildlife and fish upon which they subsist. Furthermore, the approval of the Ambler Road means that despite wide opposition from Alaskans in local communities and across the state, Alaskans will be footing the bill, via the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, for a private road across public lands which we cannot use. Thus, the concerns surrounding the approval of the Ambler Road are multi-faceted, with impacts to wildlife, the ecosystem, local subsistence culture, and economics.
The road would expose critical watersheds to pollution, fragment caribou herd migrations, threaten critical bird habitat, and put stress on moose populations along the Koyukuk, Kobuk, Wild, Alatna, and John Rivers. Caribou swim across the Kobuk River (Photo: US Fish and Wildlife Service).
To learn more about the concerns associated with the Ambler Road read our Factsheet about Ambler Road, Alaska Wildlife Alliance’s 2019 comments to BLM regarding the Ambler Road, or the filed lawsuit.
The Plaintiffs on the lawsuit include Alaska Wildlife Alliance, Northern Alaska Environmental Center, Center for Biological Diversity, Earthworks, National Audubon Society, National Parks Conservation Association, Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society, and Winter Wildlands Alliance. We deeply thank Trustees for Alaska for representing us and Alaska’s wildlife in this case!
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