The Norton Bay Watershed Council (NBWC) applauds the Biden Administration's protection of 28 million acres of Alaska D-1 lands, which Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland finalized on August 27th, 2024. Thanks to an outpouring of support, these ancestral lands and irreplaceable landscapes are now safeguarded for future generations. The Alaska D-1 withdrawal protections support fish and wildlife, local communities, clean water, healthy habitat, and food security. Thank you for standing up and protecting these special public lands from extractive industrial development.

The protections come in response to the Trump Administration's unlawful decision to end the longstanding protections (known as withdrawals) without sufficient analysis of the potential impacts such a decision would have on subsistence and other important resources, appropriate Tribal consultation, and without compliance with other legal requirements. This sweeping action would have opened millions of acres of public lands to extractive development activities, such as mining and oil and gas drilling, and removed the federal subsistence priority from millions of acres. Thankfully, this decision helps to ensure that lands, ways of life, traditional cultures, and access to subsistence foods are protected for current and future generations.

The Record of Decision and associated Public Land Orders (PLO) adopted and implemented the BLM’s preferred “No Action” alternative in the final EIS, which analyzed the environmental consequences of the previous Administration’s decision. The BLM analyzed a set of alternatives ranging from partial to full revocation. The BLM’s analysis found that revoking any of the protections would likely harm subsistence hunting and fishing in communities that would lose federal subsistence priority over certain lands, ranging from 44 to 117 communities, depending on the alternative. The analysis also found that lifting all or even some of the withdrawals could have lasting negative impacts on wildlife, vegetation, and permafrost.

These withdrawals, established under Section 17(d)(1) of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA), stretch across BLM’s Bay, Bering Sea-Western Interior, East Alaska, Kobuk-Seward Peninsula and Ring of Fire planning areas. The final decision of the DOI is to thankfully keep the protections in place to ensure the public interest in important resource values.

The Alaska Native Claim Settlement Act (ANCSA) established public land orders in section 17 D-1. The ANCSA 17 D-1 PLO was put in place to prevent development on lands so that native corporations and individual Alaska Native allotment selections could take place for available undeveloped land managed by BLM.

NBWC Vice-President and Elim resident Emily Murray said, "I was very rejoiced when I heard the news. We are thankful for the decision they recently made. Right now, we are standing our ground. We are still going to fight to keep lands from opening in our backyard." She added, "We need those undeveloped places. Our economy remains the same, our villages follow their traditional food practices, supplementing what we get from the grocery store."

Thank you to all the Alaska tribes and others who worked tirelessly to achieve this protection of critical watersheds and subsistence resources throughout the State!