On December 22nd, 2023, three prominent tribal consortia organizations representing 118 federally-recognized Tribes released a joint letter addressed to Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland. The letter comes in response to the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) recently released ANCSA 17 D-1 Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). The letter requests Secretary Haaland to retain all protections of the 28 million acres of land contained within the area.
“In this rapidly changing environment with so many future unknowns, it is in the public’s interest to adopt a precautionary approach that prioritizes the protection of the natural environment that underpins our subsistence resources, over the industrial exploration of intact lands and pristine waters,” the letter states. Tanana Chiefs Conference (TCC) joined Kawerak, the Association of Village Council Presidents, the Bering Sea Interior Tribal Commission, and 78 other Tribes in asking for the approval of the no-action alternative.
The draft EIS document lists four alternatives to the development of the 18 million acres of land that contains thousands of miles of salmon spawning, rearing watersheds, and ancestral lands of the Kawerak, Tanana Chiefs Conference, and Association of Village Council Presidents. Alternative A proposes the retention of all D-1 protections; Alternative D lifts all D-1 protections; and Alternatives B & C retains some protections while lifting others.
D-1 lands in this EIS include BLM-managed lands in five BLM planning areas: Kobuk-Seward, Bering Sea-Western Interior, Bay, East Alaska, and Ring of Fire. These areas contain critical watersheds with highly productive salmon streams, caribou calving grounds, tundra landscapes, coastal estuaries, moose habitat, and marshes crucial to migratory birds. Additionally, they serve as important hunting, fishing, and gathering grounds for more than 100 Indigenous Alaskan communities.
“Our fathers, mothers, grandparents, and ancestors gathered, hunted, and fished on this land, and we carry on these traditions today across these lands and watersheds that feed us,” said Melanie Bahnke, President and CEO of Kawerak, “It is our obligation to protect our traditional lands and longstanding cultural practices for our children, grandchildren, and those yet to come.”
D-1 public land orders can only be lifted by the Secretary of the Interior if recommended in a BLM Resource Management Plan or an Environmental Impact Statement. BLM has finalized five management plans in these regions that recommend lifting all D-1 protections from BLM-managed land in these planning areas. Most of those plans were finalized decades ago, and did not consider impacts from climate change nor the impacts to Indigenous communities. In response to this, the Biden administration announced this most recent EIS process to modernize the analyses of impacts and the recommendations to the Secretary of the Interior. The joint letter is a call from Indigenous communities who will be most impacted by this decision.
“Our people have stewarded this land for millennia and we are calling on the Bureau of Land Management to honor our culture and traditions and protect these lands just as we have always done,” said Brian Ridley, Chief/Chairman of TCC.