Published: Thursday, April 15, 2021
Seward Peninsula, Alaska Photo credit: DCSL/Flickr
The Interior Department is pausing a Trump-era order that would have opened up millions of acres in Alaska to mineral development, including on the Seward Peninsula. DCSL/Flickr
Updated at 1:42 p.m. EDT.
The Interior Department today tapped the brakes on a last-minute series of Trump administration orders that proposed to open as much as 28 million acres of federal lands in Alaska to mining and other mineral extraction activities.
The lands at issue were included in five draft public lands orders signed by former Interior Secretary David Bernhardt in January during the final two weeks of the Trump presidency.