The Federal Government Plans to Unleash Industry on These Five Alaskan Bird Havens

The first week of the second Trump presidency featured a firehose of executive orders targeting climate programs, environmental justice efforts, and much more. One order stood out because it was focused not on a particular policy issue, but on a specific place. Its title: Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential.

By signing the order, President Trump turned up the heat on long-simmering debates about how to weigh natural resource extraction in Alaska—the bedrock of the state’s economy—against environmental protection in what are some of the nation’s most spectacular wild places. The areas singled out for development are like vital organs that sustain vast migrations and entire ecosystems, says David Krause, vice president of Audubon’s Alaska program. For myriad bird species, for instance, these plains and forests and wetlands are of crucial, hemispheric significance for breeding and staging during migration. What’s more, these diverse ecosystems play a significant role in the global climate, locking up vast amounts of carbon. “All of these areas are integral to the systems that make Alaska unique and special,” Krause says. “They are the core areas of ecological importance that can’t be compromised.”

Executive orders are not laws, but they are nonetheless consequential statements of a president’s policies and directions for federal agencies to carry them out. The moves for Alaska that Trump laid out in January are nothing new—they revive actions that the Biden administration scrapped and that courts have overturned—and opponents say they are prepared to push back. “We’re going to continue to fight for the protections that we know are supported under the law,” says Siobhan McIntyre, staff attorney with the nonprofit Trustees for Alaska.

But because the first Trump administration already laid the groundwork for these projects and policies, environmental and Indigenous activists fear that things could move more quickly this time around, resulting in lasting damage. Here we explore some of the landscapes where drilling, logging, and roadbuilding could soon begin, as well as what’s at stake for the birds and people that have made these places home for untold generations.

National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska 

Oil infrastructure endangers irreplaceable wetlands.

The nation’s largest tract of federal land has a public relations problem. It’s so remote that few visitors ever reach it, and those who do must endure unearthly cold or hellish hordes of mosquitoes. And then there’s the industrial-sounding name: the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.

Set aside in 1923 as an emergency fuel source for the U.S. Navy, these 23 million acres rest atop reportedly vast, largely untapped oil deposits. At the same time, the land’s ecological importance—and its cultural value for the region’s Indigenous people—is difficult to overstate. “In terms of that nexus and those values overlapping, this is definitely ground zero,” Krause says. “It’s also a very, very fragile landscape.”

Recent administrations have sought to balance development—such as the controversial Willow oil project that President Biden approved in 2023—with tough restrictions to protect the reserve’s most sensitive areas. Trump’s stance, on the other hand, is that up to 82 percent of the NPR-A should be open for business.

Wildlife advocates fear that in addition to climate-warming impacts, oil extraction will leave the tundra habitat spiderwebbed with infrastructure. The industry’s interest in drilling around Teshekpuk Lake is especially alarming: The area hosts awesome avian spectacles, including 600,000 breeding shorebirds and up to 100,000 molting geese—birds that disperse to six continents come fall. The caribou that calve there each spring also provide a priceless resource for subsistence communities.

Since ConocoPhillips began operating the first wells there in 2015, oil infrastructure has crept farther into the reserve, and locals are already feeling the impacts. “Some people are not able to get to their campgrounds, their hunting grounds that have sustained them for time immemorial,” says Nauri Simmonds, executive director of Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic, an advocacy group. “Being cut off from that area is like losing part of your homeland.”

Still, many Alaska Natives welcome industry interest, given the economic windfall drilling can bring to local communities. “It’s hard to think about seven generations into the future when you’re just trying to survive,” Simmonds says. But even some who support energy projects have been dismayed by Trump’s no-holds-barred approach to developing the reserve, she says. “Hopefully this will be the alarm that brings us back to center so we can recover what we have.” 

Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve

Mining operations threaten to cut across key migratory pathways.

An elder once told Brian Ridley that even though he had lived through the Great Depression, he hadn’t felt its effects—salmon and caribou had sustained his people, as they had for millennia. The comment resonates with Ridley because that resiliency no longer exists. Climate change has contributed to the collapse of Yukon River salmon, a vital food source for the 37 tribes whose needs Ridley works to meet as chief of the Tanana Chiefs Conference (TCC).

Now a controversial project in the foothills of the Brooks Range could put salmon, caribou, and the Native communities that depend on them at greater risk. Trump’s day-one order reinstates crucial permits for building a 211-mile-long private, industrial road connecting the Dalton Highway to multiple proposed open-pit copper mines. The Ambler Access Project would cut through state, Native, and federal lands, including 26 miles of Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve. Last year the Biden administration effectively killed the project by overturning a 2020 permit for the road approved by the first Trump administration. The permit denial cited a litany of negative impacts, including habitat fragmentation and degradation, air and water pollution, accelerated permafrost thawing, and cultural disruptions.

The 450-foot-wide easement would cross 11 major rivers and thousands of streams, potentially polluting or blocking salmon and sheefish spawning grounds and interrupting the migration route of the 150,000-head Western Arctic caribou herd. But the road, the bulk of which goes through the TCC region, could be only the beginning, Ridley says. “Our fear isn’t just the road, or that there might be a big mine at the end of the road. It’s that we could have hundreds of mines all throughout those tributaries.”

Outside the government and industry, there’s little support for the project. Tribal organizations representing 90 Alaska Native and First Nations governments have passed resolutions opposing Ambler Road. “It’s a bad investment for Alaska,” says Alex Johnson, a campaign director for the National Parks Conservation Association. Johnson leads Defend the Brooks Range, a coalition of tribal leaders, community members, fiscal responsibility advocates, and conservation groups, including Audubon. “The numbers really just don’t pan out.” The state, which would cover the estimated $2 billion price tag to build and maintain the road, estimates it would break even in 30 years, assuming four major mines are built. To date, no company has applied for a mining permit.

Izembek National Wildlife Refuge

A land swap puts a world-class migratory stopover site and other protected places at risk.

To a migrating Brant, no place on Earth looks as inviting as Izembek National Wildlife Refuge. Although the refuge, at roughly 310,000 acres, is Alaska’s smallest, it offers sprawling beds of nutritious eelgrass. So rich is the buffet that after they breed in the Arctic and other points north, nearly all Pacific Brant gather at Izembek to fatten up for the rest of their migration to Baja California.

This unparalleled bounty has sustained Brant, Emperor Geese, and other waterfowl for millennia, but now its future is uncertain. Trump’s day-one executive order directed the Interior Department to “facilitate the expedited development” of a gravel road that would run for 11 miles through the refuge. Residents of the isolated, mostly Aleut community of King Cove say they need the road to the all-weather airport in Cold Bay to access emergency medical care. First proposed in 2009, the road has been debated since long before Trump took office; President Biden gave it his backing before leaving office.

Conservationists warn that the project could set a precedent that could lead to habitat destruction far beyond Izembek. That’s because the plan to build it involves a land swap: The Native-owned King Cove Corp. would give 31,198 acres to the refuge system in exchange for the 490 acres needed to build the road. Congress designated that land and nearly all of Izembek as wilderness, and Interior’s ceding it without congressional approval would set a dangerous example, legal experts say. “If this land exchange goes forward, then all of a sudden you’re going to have corporations knocking on the door for an exchange in potentially every national park and national wildlife refuge across the state,” says Bridget Psarianos, a senior staff attorney at Trustees for Alaska.

The road’s opponents say the transportation problem can be better solved with a ferry, which would not pose the same threat to migratory birds and other wildlife. Several Indigenous communities have issued resolutions opposing the road’s construction, pointing to the vital role Brant and other waterfowl have long played in their culture and food security. “We’re a community that mostly relies on seasonal foods, and especially the birds during spring and fall,” says Edgar Tall, tribal chief in the Native Village of Hooper Bay. “If the animals don’t come back, how else are the people going to survive?”

Tongass National Forest

Logging and mining could fracture a globally unique rainforest.

In late March, Gordon Chew watched orcas pursuing seals from his home on Tenakee Inlet in Southeast Alaska. “It’s incredibly diverse and wild,” he says. “We’ve got Snow Geese coming through now, Sandhill Cranes any day.”

Chew lives in the Tongass National Forest—some 17 million acres spread across the rugged panhandle and 1,100 islands that support six salmon species, Sitka black-tailed deer, and American Goshawks. Chew’s livelihood depends on the forest: His logging company supplies local contractors and Native carvers with timber. Sustainability is key, he says. They take at most one in three trees, each selected by the Forest Service, and are transitioning to cutting young-growth trees. It’s a small operation in an industry that has shrunk dramatically since the 1990s, when subsidies and high harvest rates fueled the clear-cutting of many of the biggest old-growth trees. Even so, the Tongass is the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest.

Trump wants to resuscitate the once-dominant timber industry. In addition to expanding logging in national forests, the White House is seeking to rescind the 2001 Roadless Rule, which prohibits industrial roadbuilding and logging on nearly 9.4 million acres of the Tongass. In his first term, Trump repealed the rule, which Biden largely restored. Trump’s new plans could open more than half of the forest for logging as well as mining for metals.

Chew and other Roadless Rule advocates say such activities could have serious repercussions. Jen Leahy, Trout Unlimited’s Alaska policy director, points to a report by Audubon and The Nature Conservancy identifying 77 Tongass watersheds, largely within roadless areas, that aren’t protected from development. “New roadbuilding and clearcuts could negatively impact important salmon and deer habitat, which could undermine Southeast Alaska’s economy and rural food security,” she says.

As logging has waned, locals have turned to businesses that rely on conserving trees rather than cutting them. In 2021 Sealaska, an Alaska Native corporation, ended its Tongass timber operations, investing instead in ventures that support ocean health. Today nearly 1.7 million people visit the Tongass annually, and fishing and tourism provide a quarter of the region’s jobs. The habitat conservation critical to sustaining those industries has benefits that extend far beyond Alaska. The Tongass holds 20 percent of all carbon stored by U.S. national forests, making it a natural bulwark against global climate change.

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

Fossil fuel development jeopardizes breeding grounds for an array of wildlife.

Ever since the creation of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in 1980, a swath of the spectacular landscape has been in a contentious limbo. While most of the 19.6-million-acre refuge is designated as wilderness and therefore off-limits to development, some 1.5 million acres along the shore, known as the coastal plain, don’t have that protected status. As a result, politicians have seesawed between safeguarding the area as one of the wildest places on Earth and seeking to tap it for oil. “This is an incredibly unique place on the planet,” says David Krause. “Just like Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon, the refuge is part of the nation’s natural heritage and is not suitable for resource extraction.”

So far the battle over the coastal plain—a roadless mosaic of tundra, lakes, and wetlands where polar bears den, caribou give birth, and 70 bird species nest—hasn’t led to any oil development. The first-ever lease sale, under the first Trump administration, generated a scant $14.4 million in bids; the Biden administration later canceled the leases, calling the sale “seriously flawed.” A second auction in January, mandated by Congress, got zero bids. “It’s high conflict, it’s expensive, and there are cheaper places to produce hydrocarbons,” Krause says, explaining the lack of interest. Nevertheless, Trump’s executive order endeavors to open the entire coastal plain to oil and gas development.

If developers are enticed, it could have enormous ecological and cultural ramifications. The coastal plain is already experiencing dramatic effects of a changing climate, including thawing permafrost that, in turn, releases heat-trapping methane and further accelerates warming. The infrastructure needed for exploration and drilling would spur more thawing and could affect the survival of the Porcupine caribou herd, according to NOAA.

That herd is essential to the Gwich’in people. “Our main source of food is caribou,” says Kristen Moreland, executive director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee, which formed in 1988 to fight fossil fuel development on the coastal plain. “They provide us with tools, clothing, our teachings to our children, our connection to the land.” The coastal plain is so precious to Moreland’s people that they call it Iizhik Gwats’an Gwandaii Goodlit, the sacred place where life begins. “Our future generations mean the world to us,” she says. “We have to keep fighting for this land—for our people and for everyone else.”

This story originally ran in the Summer 2025 issue as “Risky Business.” To receive our print magazine, become a member by making a donation today.