www.AlaskaAlliance.com 41 Alaska governor looks forward to renewed support In December, Gov. Mike Dunleavy sent a list of Alaska priorities to President-elect Donald Trump and his transition team. The 28page “Alaska Priorities for Federal Transition” report sent to the incoming presidential team details current and future actions to reverse what Dunleavy described as “a four-year assault on Alaska’s statehood and economy — seizing opportunity and autonomy from Alaskans in the name of bolstering federal authority.” Here is the introduction and Alaska-specific executive order offered by Dunleavy. The full report can be found on the governor’s website. “The first Trump Administration made significant improvements to land and resource management policy essential to the prosperity of Alaska and the Nation. In many cases, the actions achieved had been stalled for decades under both Democratic and Republican Administrations. Misguided environmental activism that spawned in the Alaska lands debate of the late 1970’s had been effective at frustrating meaningful and responsible development of Alaska’s abundant natural resources for decades. The Trump Administration recognized that Alaska could host domestic development of the critical mineral and energy resources upon which our energy and national security would depend on for generations. Further still, the Administration’s actions began fulfilling the promises the federal government made to Alaska upon statehood 60 years earlier; that it would have control of its fish and wildlife, lands, and navigable waterways. “In one significant achievement, President Trump signed the law lifting the 1980 suspension of oil and gas development in the Nation’s most prospective oil field — a small portion of the Coastal Plain in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) — and his Administration completed the first of two statutorily directed lease sales. The Trump Administration also: freed the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPR-A) from the anti-development policies imposed under Presidents Clinton and Obama; ended a 40 year-old ban on mineral development and statehood land selections on 28 million acres of Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands; authorized road access to the critical minerals of the world class Ambler Mining District; completed a decade long environmental review that opened millions of acres to State selection that had previously been withdrawn for constructing the Trans Alaska Pipeline System; ended the lastminute Clinton and then Obama Administration prohibition on essential infrastructure in the Tongass National Forest; and halted the purposeful isolation of a small native village in the Aleutian Islands by an Obama Administration Secretary of the Interior. “The Biden Administration has carried out a four-year assault on Alaska’s statehood and economy — seizing opportunity and autonomy from Alaskans in the name of bolstering federal authority. It reversed the diligent efforts of the first Trump Administration, disregarding the needs of Alaskans, as well as statutory mandates, to appease activists with little sense of Alaska’s reality. The Biden Administration has hidden behind superfluous environmental review and consultation while enacting policies in conflict with the voice of the very groups claimed to have been consulted. This categorical revocation of the Trump Administration’s important work was result driven and not balanced, reflecting only political favors to CONTINUED on PAGE 42 MIKE DUNLEAVY “The Biden Administration has carried out a four-year assault on Alaska’s statehood and economy — seizing opportunity and autonomy from Alaskans in the name of bolstering federal authority. It reversed the diligent efforts of the first Trump Administration, disregarding the needs of Alaskans, as well as statutory mandates, to appease activists with little sense of Alaska’s reality. “The Biden Administration has hidden behind superfluous environmental review and consultation while enacting policies in conflict with the voice of the very groups claimed to have been consulted. “This categorical revocation of the Trump Administration’s important work was result driven and not balanced, reflecting only political favors to special interest environmental groups to the detriment of our Nation’s economy and security. — Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy
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