26 ALASKA RESOURCE REVIEW FALL 2024 Lands in decades-long dispute include the vital TAPS corridor BY TIM BRADNER A DECADES-OLD FIGHT WITH THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OVER OWNERSHIP AND CONTROL OF MILLIONS OF ACRES OF ALASKA LANDS IS NOT CLOSE TO BEING RESOLVED. IN FACT, THINGS MAY NOW BE MORE COMPLICATED, AND WORSE FOR THE STATE. Lands in question include the vital Trans Alaska Pipeline System corridor. The core issue is the status of Public Land Orders, or PLOs, dating from the 1970s, that closed access to public lands. The orders were issued as the Alaska Native Land Claims Act, or ANCSA, was passed by Congress. The PLOs removed the land from disposal and other forms of entry such as mining for the purpose of study and classification. In total, almost 160 million acres of land were set aside in Alaska for this simple purpose. The land orders were intended to be temporary when first put in place. They were done so the newly-formed Alaska Native regional and village corporations had the best options to select lands promised by the 1971 Native claims act. The corporations were able to choose about 45 million acres. Lands were also withdrawn and held to allow the federal government time to plan new national parks, wildlife refuges and wild and scenic rivers. These protected areas were finally created in the Alaska National Interest Lands and Conservation Act, or ANILCA, in 1980, which involved about 100 million acres. But when those conservation units were created and a great compromise between land use and conservation in Alaska had been achieved, the PLOs remained. Approximately 160 million acres remained in limbo for years, still closed to new mining claims and for state land conveyance. On August 27, U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced with great fanfare that 28 million acres of federal lands in Alaska would remain in a protected status indefinitely. This was inclusive of lands in Interior and western Alaska. Haaland’s action reversed a decision made in the final days of the Trump administration to lift the PLOs, which BLM had been recommended internally as no longer necessary. She claimed that the Trump decision would have opened the 28 million acres to mining claims and other extractive activities, but also that the action would also have removed the federal subsistence priority from millions of acres. The subsistence priority could have been affected somewhere between 44 and 117 rural Alaska Native communities, had the PLOs on the 28 million acres been lifted, Haaland said. ALASKA FEDERAL LANDS AT HEART OF FIGHT Trans Alaska Pipeline System in winter. State of Alaska seeks control of pipeline land corridor. The federal government is resisting. CONTINUED ON PAGE 28
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