The Interior Department is expected to reject a request from mining company Ambler Metals to build a 211-mile industrial road on federal land to a copper deposit in Alaska’s wilderness because it has the potential to harm both wildlife and communities. The decision will be a major win for environmentalists who have claimed for years that it would threaten wildlife, along with the Alaska native tribes who hunt and fish on the land.
The land in question is believed to have a $7.5 billion copper deposit beneath it. Building the road would be the first step to accessing the copper, as there are currently no mines in the area. Ambler Metals has said that the copper is necessary for production of wind turbines, photovoltaic cells and transmission lines for renewable energy.
The two-lane gravel road, which would cost $350 million, would cross 11 rivers and thousands of streams as it runs through the Brooks Range foothills and the Gates of the Arctic National Preserve—and the impact would be far-reaching, opponents say.
“The caribou is struggling, the fish are struggling,” Julie Roberts-Hyslop, the first chief of the Tanana Tribe, said previously, and the road would make those problems ever worse.
