Obama Administration Moves To Protect Some Remote Areas Of Alaska

"President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration may be nearing, but that doesn’t mean President Obama’s Interior Department is finished making decisions about the future of the United States’ vast natural resources and open spaces.

This week, the agency’s Bureau of Land Management issued four plans to shape the management of some 6.5 million publicly owned acres of Alaska’s eastern interior, a remote area stretching from Fairbanks to the Canada border that is filled with rivers, streams, forests, and very few major roads. Featuring key sections and tributaries of the Yukon river, it’s more home to animals like grizzly bears, moose, and caribou than to humans, but is also the province of native Americans including the Gwich’in, and substantial gold-mining interests in the Fortymile area near the Canada border.

The move is just one of many Obama era conservation moves in Alaska, including designating large parts of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as wilderness. However, it is not clear whether some of the plans’ more contentions measures — involving lands available for mining — will stay in place, due to the presidential transition just weeks away and specific laws that govern land in the state of Alaska."

Chris Mooney reports for the Washington Post January 5, 2017.