Feds update environmental protections for parts of the Alaska petroleum reserve

(CN) — The U.S. Bureau of Land Management on Friday issued finalized, updated regulations to protect wildlife and subsistence resources for Native communities in large parts of the massive National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska.

The final rule codifies protections for 13.3 million acres of the so-called special areas of the reserve, the bureau said, limiting future oil and gas leasing and industrial development in places known for their intact habitat for wildlife, including grizzly and polar bears, caribou and hundreds of thousands of migratory birds.

The rule also codifies existing prohibitions on new leasing in 10.6 million acres of the special areas, or more than 40% of the entire petroleum reserve.

“Since Day One of the Biden-Harris administration, the Interior Department has maintained its commitment to restoring an appropriate balance between conservation and development," Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement. "Today’s announcements underscore our commitment to ensure that places too special to develop remain intact for the communities and species that rely on them.”

Under a 1976 law, the federal government is tasked with permitting oil and gas exploration in the 23 million-acre reserve, while also assuring maximum protection for "significant surface values" from the impacts of the oil and gas program, including subsistence use within the designated special areas. 

Conditions throughout the Arctic have changed dramatically since 1977, when the Bureau of Land Management issued the current set of regulations for management of surface resources and special areas in the reserve, the bureau said.

Rapidly changing conditions — including the intensifying impacts of climate change on the reserve’s natural environment and Native communities — made it necessary for the bureau to develop new regulations that respond to these changing conditions.

"Many communities subsist primarily on food that, in turn, relies on the Special Areas of the NPR-A," according to the bureau. "Natural conditions in the Arctic are changing rapidly due to climate change, which is affecting caribou movement and herd health, causing degradation of permafrost, and altering habitats for wildlife, migratory birds, and native plants throughout the NPR-A."

The final rule codifies the five existing special areas, the bureau said, and it establishes a process for designating, amending, and de-designating special areas in the future.

It also sets standards and procedures for analyzing proposed oil and gas leasing, exploration, development, or new infrastructure in these areas, including providing opportunities for public participation and consulting with federally recognized Tribes and Native corporations that use the affected areas for subsistence purposes or have historic, cultural or economic ties to the areas

The announcement failed to impress some environmental advocates.

“The federal government just wasted one of our best opportunities to protect the entire Western Arctic from more devastating oil drilling,” said Cooper Freeman, Alaska director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “It’s impossible to safeguard the Western Arctic and its spectacular wildlife if oil drilling continues on more than half the reserve. We’re in a climate emergency that’s rapidly destroying the Arctic, and the only reasonable course of action is to phase out fossil fuel extraction completely.” 

The Biden administration disappointed environmental groups, and won a rare show of approval from Republican lawmakers, when last year it approved ConocoPhillips's Willow Master Development Plan for a massive oil and gas drilling project in the Alaskan petroleum reserve.

The 22.8-million acre Alaska reserve, about the size of Indiana, was created in 1923 as a petroleum reserve for the U.S. Navy, and it is the largest single public land unit in the U.S. A number of areas within the reserve have since been designated for maximum protection because of their ecological importance.

On Friday, the Bureau of Land Management also said it wouldn't support the proposed Ambler Road — intended to support mining operations — that would traverse more than two hundred miles along the Brooks Range in Alaska, crossing lands managed by the bureau, the National Park Service, the state of Alaska, and several Alaska Native Corporations.

"The project would require over 3,000 stream crossings and could impact at risk wildlife populations, including sheefish, the already-declining Western Arctic caribou herd, and other subsistence resources," the bureau said. In addition, "irreparable impacts to permafrost would make it unlikely the road could be reclaimed, and that it is reasonably foreseeable that the industrial road would be used by the public, increasing impacts."

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