The Trump administration is preparing to lift a classification on 28 million acres of federal land in Alaska that has long prevented it from being developed or transferred to the state or Alaska Native corporations.
Removing so-called D-1 Withdrawals would open new land for resource extraction and other uses, in the Chilkat Valley, Southcentral, the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta and beyond. The plan comes less than a year after the federal government ceded 2 million acres in Interior Alaska to the state.
Will Steinfeld with the Chilkat Valley News broke that story last week. He said the planned change — which is part of Trump’s initiative to open up more of Alaska to development — had its start in the last days of the first Trump administration
Listen to the interview at the link above. The following transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Will Steinfeld: The easiest way to understand it is this word withdrawal. So basically, what it's doing is pulling the land out from a number of processes that can change how land is used. So things like transferring federal land to state ownership or private ownership, issuing mineral leases, oil and gas leases. That's all prevented by a D1 withdrawal. So essentially, what this is doing is preventing a lot of development of the land and keeping it in federal ownership.
Avery Ellfeldt: Your story says the federal government is preparing to remove that classification on all this land in Alaska. Why is this coming up now?
WS: There's nothing preventing the Secretary of the Interior from getting rid of these withdrawals. And the Trump administration, their first time around in 2021, right in the final days of that administration, tried to do exactly this – what we're talking about right now. They issued new public land orders, which would have gotten rid of these 28 million acres of withdrawals. But a few days later, the Biden administration came into office, and after a long review, they reversed that decision and kept all of the withdrawals. Where this is now coming from is a new Trump executive order from his current administration that essentially said, "Let's go back and go forward with those plans we had before."
AE: It sounds like we know this is planned, but your story specifically says it could be coming in the next couple of weeks. How do you know that?
WS: A lot of this information is coming from Alaska Native corporations and tribal entities. That's because the federal government is doing what are called government-to-government consultations – basically allowing tribes to request a meeting with the Bureau of Land Management to discuss these possible changes. Just a few weeks ago, at the this year's AFN convention, the Alaska Federation of Natives, AFN, passed a resolution that specifically talked about some of this stuff and specifically said that the the Bureau of Land Management has said their intent is to go through with revoking these withdrawals before the end of the year, which is what a lot of people have been hearing in these in these more private conversations.
AE: Based on your reporting, what's the administration's goal with the move, and then what would you say the implications are for affected lands?
WS: The idea is to spur more resource development in the state. This whole effort is part of an executive order that is titled "Unleashing Alaska's Natural Resource Potential." So I think right then and there, these impacts that we talk about with potential for more mining, more oil and gas drilling, things like that, that's the main intention.
AE: 28 million acres is a ton of land, and you write that some of it is in Southeast and the Chilkat Valley specifically. Your story says that lifting the classifications could actually remove some barriers for the Palmer Project and timber sales in the Haines State Forest. Could you elaborate on that?
WS: These withdrawals are preventing lots of types of resource development. Removing them would remove that barrier. Specifically with these projects here, the 2024 Biden administration review named the Palmer Project, our advanced mineral exploration project here, and then also Haines State Forest logging – the designation was essentially “reasonably foreseeable future developments,” if these changes happened. So what that could be is new mineral leases on this land that's withdrawn right now, or transfers of land to the state, which would then become part of the Haines State Forest. It seems possible that would happen because almost all these D-1 lands here have been state-selected, which basically says the state would like to acquire them in some fashion at some point.
AE: What other parts of the state could be impacted?
WS: Mostly, the impacts are outside of Southeast. The only real parts of Southeast that are affected are Haines, and around Haines and Klukwan, and then a little bit in Yakutat. But the bulk of the D-1 withdrawals that we're talking about here are in places like Southcentral or the Y-K Delta.
