Trump Targets Alaska's Oil And Other Resources As Environmentalists Gear Up For A Fight
President Donald Trump's expansive executive order aimed at boosting oil and gas drilling, mining and logging in Alaska is being cheered by state political leaders who see new fossil fuel development as critical to Alaska's economic future and criticized by environmental groups that see the proposals as worrying in the face of a warming climate .
The order, signed on Trump's first day in office Monday, is consistent with a wish list submitted by Alaska Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy shortly after Trump's election. It seeks, among other things, to open to oil and gas drilling an area of the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge considered sacred to the Indigenous Gwich'in, undo limits imposed by the Biden administration on drilling activity in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska on the North Slope and reverse restrictions on logging and road-building in a temperate rainforest that provides habitat for wolves, bears and salmon.
In many ways, the order seeks to revert to policies that were in place during Trump's first term.
But Trump "just can't wave a magic wand and make these things happen," said Cooper Freeman, Alaska director at the Center for Biological Diversity. Environmental laws and rules must be followed in attempts to unravel existing policies, and legal challenges to Trump's plans are virtually certain, he said.
"We're ready and looking forward to the fight of our lives to keep Alaska great, wild and abundant," Freeman said.