WASHINGTON — President Trump on Monday granted approval for the 211-mile Ambler Road, a controversial project through a roadless region in Alaska’s Northwest Arctic.
The Ambler Road is intended to spark a new chapter in large-scale mining in Alaska. The decision reverses one made by the Biden administration, which was itself a reversal.
Trump said the Ambler project will make Alaska “greater, bigger and more powerful and job-producing.”
“It's an economic gold mine, so to speak,” he said at an Oval Office event for the announcement. “And I signed this years ago, and Biden unsigned it for me.”
The road would begin on the Dalton Highway, south of Coldfoot, and terminate east of the village of Ambler. About 26 miles of it would be in Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve.
“We got copper, lead, zinc, gold, silver, gallium, germanium,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said. “So, (it’s) rich in all of the minerals that we need to win the AI arms race against China and to prosper as a country.”
Road opponents say they are gearing up for a legal fight.
Opinions are mixed in the Kobuk Valley and in villages along the proposed corridor. Some want the jobs. Others see it has a threat to their subsistence lifestyle, which depends on fishing and hunting.
Ricko DeWilde of Huslia thinks about what it will mean to link the region to the Dalton Highway and Alaska’s road system.
“I don't want the Ambler Road because it's going to bring in too many outsiders during hunting season,” he said. “ And also it's going to open up the land to development and destroy a lot of the habitat, as far as fish-spawning streams and caribou migrations.”
The sponsor of the road project, the state-owned Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, fought the Biden administration’s denial using a little-known section of the 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. It allows the president to decide appeals directly.
The Trump administration also announced Monday the government will invest more than $35 million for a 10% stake in Trilogy Metals, a Canadian company hoping to develop the Ambler mining district.
