Trump’s under-the-radar Alaska order has environmentalists on edge

  • CNN
  • February 3, 2025
CNN

 — 

One of President Donald Trump's sweeping executive orders has reignited a debate over the future of Alaska's vast wilderness and resources, sparking deep concern among some environmental groups and Indigenous communities.

Trump on his first day in office signed an executive order focused on "unleashing Alaska's extraordinary resource potential." It includes a directive to develop Alaska's energy and mineral resources "to the fullest extent possible."

The executive order has been lauded by state officials and industry leaders who hope to take advantage of Alaska's drilling and mining potential. But environmentalists and some Indigenous Alaskans have warned of the negative impact on the state's wilderness, wildlife and local subsistence lifestyles.

While oil and gas drilling are a focus of Trump's executive order, it has major implications for mining in a remote region of the Last Frontier state.

The order includes reviewing a project called the Ambler Road, a proposed industrial route that would stretch 211 miles across northwest Alaska to explore the potential to build mines for extracting minerals like copper and cobalt.

It's a reversal of a Biden administration decision from June 2024 that halted the project due to environmental concerns. Trump's order reinstates a decision published in July 2020 during his first term that had affirmed the project.

A spokesperson for the Interior Department said in a statement to CNN that the department is "working to expeditiously implement the President's Executive Order."

Miners work at a drilling site in Ambler Metal's Arctic deposit area on September 6, 2022, in Ambler Mining District, Alaska.

Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post/Getty Images

Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy sent a letter to Trump in December highlighting a wish list of priorities related to the state, including reviewing the Ambler Road project, and Alaska Senators Dan Sullivan and Lisa Murkowski, both Republicans, have applauded Trump's order. Project 2025, the controversial conservative blueprint for a second Trump term, mentioned advancing the Ambler Road as a policy agenda.

Yet, any developments are expected to face legal challenges. Alex Johnson, a campaign director for the National Parks Conservation Association, an advocacy group, said in a statement, "There's no escaping the disastrous impacts of this mining road on the clean water, people, wildlife and national parks."

Cobalt and critical minerals

The US Geological Survey designates 50 minerals as "critical" to the US economy and national security.

Alaska is home to 49 of 50 of these critical minerals, meaning the state is at the forefront of efforts to build a domestic supply chain, said Lee Ann Munk, a professor of geosciences at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Critical minerals have surged in popularity in recent years because they are used to build technologies involved with renewable energy, like batteries for electric vehicles. Cobalt, for example, is used in EV batteries, in addition to semiconductor chips and mobile phones. Critical minerals like antimony are also used for military equipment and defense systems.

While Trump has shown no interest in a green energy transition, members of his administration like Secretary of State Marco Rubio have previously been outspoken about the need for critical minerals, according to Jef Caers, a professor of earth and planetary sciences at Stanford University.

"Securing critical minerals has very large bipartisan support in and outside Congress," Caers added.

The US currently relies on global supply chains to buy these minerals for cheap. The nation's first and only cobalt mine opened in Idaho in 2023 before halting production due to a price slump in the market that made the mine unprofitable.

The US relies entirely on imports for 12 critical minerals and is over 50% reliant on imports for 29 others, according to the 2024 US Geological Survey.

A collection of mineral samples outside a tent at the Bornite Mining Camp on September 7, 2022, in Ambler Mining District, Alaska.

Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post/Getty Images

There have been bipartisan efforts in Congress to develop the supply of critical minerals in the US, particularly to move away from supply chains based in the Democratic Republic of Congo and processing plants in China due to concerns of labor and human rights abuses.

In 2023, the DRC accounted for 77% of the global cobalt mine supply, according to data from Darton Commodities, a critical minerals company. Additionally, China produced 79% of all refined cobalt in 2023.

"Since most cobalt is mined in the DRC and influenced by China, including the processing of the ore in cobalt, this is a considerable supply chain issue," Stanford's Caers said.

In 2022, the Biden administration invoked the Defense Production Act to expedite the production of critical minerals like cobalt and nickel.

"The potential to increase the domestic supply of all of these minerals, but in particular minerals such as cobalt, I can see why that is viewed in Washington as an overall benefit to our industrial base," Adam Simon, a professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Michigan, told CNN.

While there are mines across the US, including in Alaska, a vast swath of northern Alaska called the Ambler district has yet to be mined.

The Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, a state-owned company that proposed the Ambler Road, said in a statement that it "strongly supports and appreciates the Executive Orders issued by President Trump."

The road is designated to be used by Ambler Metals, a mining company based in Alaska that is jointly owned by the Canadian company Trilogy Metals (TMQ) and the Australian company South32. Shares in Trilogy Metals have surged since Trump's reelection in November.

Ambler Metals has a partnership with the Northwest Arctic Native Association (NANA), a company that represents Inupiat Alaska Natives. NANA declined CNN's request for comment.

"President Trump's executive order provides a pathway for the United States to develop a domestic supply of minerals from the Amber Mining District that are critical for our economy and national security," said Kaleb Froehlich, managing director of Ambler Metals, in a statement.

Concerns about Ambler road

The Ambler Road project would be constructed in an area of Alaska with little to no prior development, causing drastic changes to the region, according to Liliana Diaz, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council Global Energy Center.

Building the road would involve establishing nearly 50 bridges of varying sizes, in addition to airstrips, maintenance sites, communication towers and other items, according to the Bureau of Land Management's June 2024 environmental impact statement.

"The economics of this road will depend on whether the mining project is successful and can actually be profitable into the future, and whether the economic value that it brings outweighs the environmental costs that it will create," Diaz said.

"It's based on uncertainty, whereas the environmental costs of developing a piece of infrastructure will be filled as the infrastructure is actually developed and laid down," she added.

Karmen Monigold, an Alaskan Indigenous Inupiaq and subsistence provider, told CNN that she thinks the industrial development of the Ambler region would mean the destruction of her tribe's culture and their subsistence lifestyle.

A bull caribou in its summer habitat in Alaska's Gates of the Arctic National Park.

Danita Delimont/Alamy Stock Photo

Monigold was born and raised in Kotzebue, Alaska. She traveled to Washington, DC, in the past year to advocate for blocking the Ambler Road project.

"Our people rely heavily on our culture, and that is why we are against this road, because it would devastate our culture," Monigold said.

Tanana Chiefs Conference, a consortium of 39 villages and 37 federally recognized tribes in Alaska, said in a statement that it "continues to honor Tribal resolutions opposing the Ambler Road Access Project and advocating for the protection of subsistence resources."

"We will engage in discussions regarding the review of land policies to ensure Alaska Native rights are respected," the statement added.

To be sure, some Indigenous communities are in support of the project. Proponents of the Ambler Road project expect it will usher in new jobs to the region.

Jim Dau, a caribou biologist who worked for decades for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, told CNN that he expects the 211-mile road would negatively impact the migration pattern of caribou in northwest Alaska, posing irrevocable issues for Indigenous communities that rely on the herds each season.

"With the economic benefits of industrial mining up there, there's always costs," Dau said. "How much is an Indigenous culture worth? How much is a caribou herd worth? There are so many intangible aspects to things that surround this Ambler Road, things like cultural identity (and) traditional subsistence lifestyles."