The Bureau of Land Management on June 28 quietly shut down the last hope of the proposed Ambler Road project in northwest Alaska. Simultaneously, the bureau also recommended that no mining, oil or gas development be allowed across 28 million acres of Alaska’s federal land under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.
The decisions limit economic opportunities for Alaskans, but East Coast denizens should care too. Denying the construction of the Ambler Road blocks access to a wealth of minerals needed for the Biden administration’s clean-energy agenda. The government’s right hand would be wise to consult what its left is doing.
The Ambler Road was a proposed 211-mile private-access road in Alaska’s Northwest Arctic Borough. The Ambler Mining District holds significant quantities of zinc, lead, silver, cobalt and copper—the last two of which are critical to electric vehicles, solar panels and battery storage.
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