A reconsidered resolution about a gold ore trucking plan was toned-down considerably last week by the Fairbanks North Star Borough Assembly. The Assembly passed a resolution March 9 to oppose the plan to bring ore on heavy trucks 240 miles up the Richardson Highway from the Manh Choh mine in Tetlin. But one member who voted for it then, moved to look at it again.
The National Weather Service on Wednesday confirmed that the haze many Southeast Alaska communities experienced on Wednesday was caused by smoke from wildfires in Alaska, British Columbia and the Yukon
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Will the Federal Government Reverse Course, Retain Protections on Intact Alaskan Landscapes?
The Ray Mountains are among the millions of acres that could soon be open to mining and other industrial activity.
David W. Shaw
This issue brief is part of a series outlining public lands in Alaska that are in danger of losing protection.
Overview
Since 2016, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the U.S. Forest Service have advanced five efforts that would dramatically alter protections for some 60 million acres of federally managed land in Alaska. If fully enacted, the policies and decisions outlined in those proposed and finalized plans would open vast stretches of the Bering Sea-Western Interior, Tongass National Forest, Central Yukon, National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A), and unencumbered BLM land to extractive development and have significant impacts on Alaska’s lands, rivers, wildlife, and the Indigenous peoples who cal