Editor’s note: The Ambler road is being planned in Alaska to connect the Dalton Highway with the Ambler Mining District. It will cross the Arctic National Park, state lands and native lands. The road in itself poses many threats to the wildlife which is described in the following piece. Many stakeholders are involved in this project, some of them support it and some of them oppose it. Proponents include the Congressional delegates from Alaska and native tribes who hope to benefit from the added jobs in their economy. Those who oppose it are the native groups whose subsistence hunting and gathering is threatened by the road and conservationists.
As George Wuerthner mentions in this piece, for a long time, the mining project was not feasible economically, and thus the area was protected from extraction. As we are extracting the last remaining fossil fuels, mining sites like these, which were too expensive in the past, become more necessary for the so called energy transition. We can expect this trend to grow in the future. As fossil fuels peak, there will be more and more extraction of these last remaining pockets of minerals. This mining prospect in Alaska is just another example of this.
By George Wuerthner/Counterpunch
While much conservation and political attention have focused on whether to allow oil development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, another project, the Ambler Mining Project, and road construction proposal may pose even greater threats to the Arctic’s wildlife and wildlands. Despite this threat, The Ambler project has thus far received far less attention from the media, politicians and conservation organizations.
The proposed 211-mile Ambler Road would connect the Dalton Highway (pipeline haul road) with the Ambler Mining District in the western Brooks Range. The ore belt that stretches for 200 miles contains copper, cobalt, lead, and zinc and could be one of the most valuable deposits in the world, especially as people turn to electric vehicles.
There is new interest in encouraging the US development of critical minerals and energy, and the Ambler Mining proposal benefits from this push for US sources of minerals.
Although these deposits have been well-known for decades, the cost of mining, smelting, and transportation has precluded development. (I knew about the ore deposits in the 1970s when I lived and worked along the Kobuk River).
Years ago, I taught a class on Alaskan Environmental Politics. I emphasized that Alaska has more oil, coal, minerals, and even forests than most other parts of the United States. Many of these resources remain undeveloped because of the harsh climate, remote locations, and lack of access.
There are, for instance, substantial forest resources in Southeast Alaska. Still, they cannot be cut and transported without government subsidies because it’s cheaper to log trees in Oregon or Washington.
The Prudhoe Bay oil fields were the world’s 10th most significant oil reserves, and the other nine were in the Middle East. The Prudhoe Bay oil fields would have remained undeveloped had it not been for the construction of the Alaskan Oil Pipeline, which made these oil reserves economic to develop.
The Ambler Mineral deposits are considered “world-class.” Getting a road to the Ambler Deposits is the first step in making mining operations profitable. The Bureau of Land Managment (BLM) and the Corps of Engineers under the Trump Administration approved the road plan in 2020, and officials agreed to issue a 50-year right-of-way for the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, the state public corporation working to develop the project.
However, the Biden Administration halted the road project while a Supplemental EIS process mandated by the courts was completed. However, my sources in Alaska suggest this may be for show. The comment period ended on November 4th, and the BLM review will likely be published sometime in the new year.
If you want to understand politics, all you have to do is follow the money.
The mining claims are owned mainly by local Iñupiat people living in NW Alaska coast and inland along the Kobuk River, represented by NANA corporation. They also operate the Red Dog Zinc mine, one of Alaska’s most significant mining and polluted sites.
During the land selection process created by the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA), native people targeted the lands with valuable known mineralization or fossil fuel resources.
In the case of the Ambler mines, NANA shareholders are likely to be employed during road construction and mining operations.
One study estimates that 20% of all construction jobs will be held by local villagers, providing significant money input into these rural villages. NANA corporate leaders likely believe they are working in the best interests of their constituency.
In addition to NANA and some residents who would benefit from jobs and royalty payments, the road is also supported by the state of Alaska. The Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority (AIDEA) would own Ambler Road.
Alaska’s Congressional Delegation, including newly elected half-Native Democrat Mary Peltrola and Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, support the road and mining proposal. Peltrola has also joined her Republican counterparts in the Senate to support oil development in the Naval Petroleum Reserve.
The road, if built, would likely lead to road sprawl and the expansion of development in the region, including perhaps oil development in the Naval Petroleum Reserve to the north of the Brooks Range.
Although the supporters point out that the road would be a private road only accessible to industrial use, opponents point out that the same claim was made about the Pipeline Haul Road. However, in 1994 the state opened the Pipeline Road (Dalton Highway) for unrestricted, public use.
Opposition to the road comes from Tanana Chiefs and other Athabascan Indians living along the Koyukuk River and tributaries. The Athabascan would gain no advantage to a road except perhaps for more accessible and cheaper shipment of supplies. But they fear the road would disrupt subsistence hunting and gathering.
The Athabascans are not necessarily opposed to mining or oil development themselves. Doyon Native Corporation, which represents the Athabascan people of the Yukon Basin, during the land selection process of the Alaskan Native Claims Settlement Act has specifically targeted mineralized lands. Today, they have several active mining operations. However, Doyon has neither endorsed or opposed the Ambler Road and mining projects.
Doyon also has ongoing oil and gas development.
However, Doyon has proposed alternative road access to the Ambler district from Nome.
So, in essence, the road is pitting one ethnic native group against another.
In addition to opposition from some native people, many conservationists also oppose the road. The Ambler Road, if built, would cross the Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve and numerous other protected areas like the Kobuk Wild and Scenic Rivers.
The National Park Service did an excellent review of the potential impacts of the road on wetlands, water quality, fish, wildlife, subsistence, and recreational impacts on the park that applies to the total road mileage.
Conservationists and native people opposed to the mine have produced a good video about how the road would impact the Arctic:
An environmental review by the BLM in 2020 found that the road would impact salmon, caribou, and other wildlife.
Roads can be semi-permeable barriers, and although crossing such obstacles is possible, caribou may shift or entirely abandon their seasonal habitat. The disturbance and activity along the road and mining operations are likely to affect caribou in other ways. Studies have shown that caribou may travel up to 9.3 miles to avoid roads and 11.2 miles to avoid settlements.
The Western Arctic caribou herd is already in steep decline.
For instance, a study of the Native-owned Red Dog Mine Industrial Access road north of Kotzebue found that just four vehicles an hour affected the migration of 30% of collared caribou, or approximately 72,000 individuals of the 2017 population estimates.
Linear features like roads also are used by predators like wolves. This can increase predator influence on prey like caribou. Roads and seismic lines in Alberta have led to increased predation on woodland caribou.
It also does not take much imagination to see that this road will eventually be extended to the coast by Kotzebue, fragmenting the entire western Brooks Range’s ecosystems.
Nevertheless, the road’s construction was approved by the Trump administration. However, the Biden Administration has ordered the Bureau of Land Management to reevaluate the Environmental Review.
The BLM accepted comments until November 4th. Whether the BLM review changes the decision to move forward with the road remains to be seen.
But my sources in Alaska say that the Biden Administration is likely to approve the road to help Alaskan politicians, perhaps with stricter regulations designed to address environmental concerns. The Biden Administration doesn’t want to oppose new Democratic Congressional Representative Mary Petrola who is a supporter of the mine road. Murkowsi was critical to Democrats in voting to convict Donald Trump for his role in the Jan. 6th insurrection, was one of three GOP to vote for nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson and she was the only GOP member to support the Voting Rights Bill. Biden does not want to alienate her potential support for other Democratic agenda votes.
I can’t emphasize enough that this road is one of the biggest threats to the Arctic’s wildlands and wildlife. It is bigger than just the development impacts that may result from the Ambler Mining operations. I have no doubts that the road, if built, will eventually make other mineral and oil, and gas sources economically viable to develop.
George Wuerthner is a professional photographer, writer, and ecologist. He has written more than three dozen books on natural history and other environmental topics. He is currently the Ed of Public Lands Media. Wuerthner has visited hundreds of mountain ranges around the West, more than 400 wilderness areas, more than 200 national park units, and every national forest west of the Mississippi. Listen to Derrick Jensen’s latest interview with George Wuerthner.
Featured image: Meandors and oxbones of the Redstone River by National Park Service, Alaska via Flickr
George Wuerthner is an old Earth First!er from the 1980s, and his book Welfare Ranching educated many people about the ecological horrors of cattle grazing in the western U.S.
Roads are one of the fundamental evils that humans do. Roads fragment natural habitat, cause unnatural erosion, allow motor vehicles where they previously had no access, cause motor vehicles to hit wildlife, and allow destructive projects like this proposed mine. Road-building should be opposed as much as other destructive activities, like mining.
Many if not most traditional indigenous societies had absolute prohibitions against digging into the Earth. Minerals that are under the Earth should stay there, period. But this insane society is so disconnected from the natural world and the web of life that it doesn’t see any problems with things like mining, so we get proposals like this one.
Short of the complete collapse of global civilization, I see little chance that environmentalists will succeed in stopping the mining industry, in more than a few locations. And one reason is that industrialists see environmentalism as a bigger threat to civilization than industry.
The entire world economic system depends on perpetual growth. And the profit motive that is essential to capitalism makes it impossible for most people to grasp a simple truth: Perpetual growth is mathematically impossible, and can only result in economic collapse, massive extinction, and the death of most organisms — including billions of humans.
Even those who concede the impossibility of perpetual growth in a finite environment are blinded by various myths and fantasies. And we create these myths to avoid admitting that our entire culture is based on fraudulent thinking. We simply cannot accept the obvious, because it leads quickly to the realization that our entire culture is based on impossibilities, which we enshrine by refusing to engage in long-term thinking.
In economics, we deny long-term truths by focusing on short-term goals and measurements, such as the fiscal year — i.e., if this year looks good, then doing more of the same should result in more good years, continuing forever.
In politics, we deny the long term by focusing on election cycles, and on a similar mindset: If we struggled on from the last head of government to the present one, then surely the next one will stagger through, as well.
World religions support these delusions, with myths based on the coming of some divine figure, who will save the world. Christians, for instance, await the “Second Coming” of Jesus, though their own Bible proves that this is a failed prophecy.
In each of the synoptic gospels, Jesus is quoted as saying that all of his “End Times” predictions would occur during the first century, C.E. When Jesus is asked when these things will happen, he repeatedly says that, “This generation shall not pass away, before all these signs be fulfilled.”
In other words, his own, first century followers would live to see the End Times. And yet, Christians are still spouting this gibberish, 2000 years later. Muslims have similar beliefs in the coming of a new prophet, while Buddhists have myths of their own. Other “faiths” tell similar lies.
Economists and industrialists, meanwhile, hold to beliefs that can generally be summarized as, “Surely someone will think of something.” The fossil fuel catastrophe will be prevented by “renewable energy” — though “renewable energy” is based on minerals like cobalt, copper, and “rare earth,” all of which are equally finite, and tjeir extraction is just as certain to produce environmental disasters.
As for mineral shortages, the myth-makers assure us that we can rape the moon, Mars, and the asteroids, the same way we raped Earth — regardless of little realities like the moon being uninhabitable (due to monthly temperature swings of 540° Farenheit, no atmosphere, and negligible water), no plan for how humans might survive the weightlessness and radiation exposure of a trip to Mars, or the far greater problems of running an extraction industry on asteroids that are hundreds of million of miles away.
Mining the asteroids, of course, would also require robotic miners, and humans to build, monitor, and maintain the robots — to say nothing of the fact that the cost of mining and retrieving minerals from the other side of the solar system would cost far more than the minerals themselves are worth. We might as well be counting on Jesus to bring us the ore.
The bottom line is that industry is inherently based on non-renewables, and thus is doomed to failure, by the exhaustion of resources.
For a good example of how our growth culture is based on lies, I looked up the future of the steel industry. If you ask industry executives, they tell you not to worry, that we have resources to continue meeting steel demands for another 60-70 years.
Not only does this presuppose the collapse of industry during the lifetimes of today’s toddlers, but even the 60-70 years is wildly exaggerated. Using the steel industry’s own numbers, when we divide “estimated global reserves” by the annual steel requirements of the last 70 years, we find that the steel industry should run out of raw materials not in 2080 or 2090, but in 2036.
Likewise, the electronics industry estimates that, by 2040, computers alone will require more electricity than could be produced by all known technologies combined. And that doesn’t take electric vehicles into account, which, by 2035, are expected to require far more electricity than we will have, without burning a lot more coal and oil — the prevention of which is the whole point of electric vehicles.
The harsh truth is that human development can no longer be sustained. And that truth does not even consider the life-threatening problems caused by the carbon dioxide that has already been emitted, the plastic pollution of the environment, plunging human fertility rates, or any of the other threats posed to life on Earth, by the poisons pumped into the environment in years past.
Civilization deserves collapse. And, by mid-century, we are almost certain to get it. The tragedy is that millions of other species will also pay for humanity’s mistakes, as will the relative handful of indigenous humans who are not contributing to the collapse.