In a Monday afternoon press conference from the Oval Office, President Donald Trump announced an executive order that approved construction of the 211-mile Ambler Road in Alaska. The Ambler Road would be a private construction for mining vehicles only, to access remote mineral deposits along the Brooks Range, one of the most remote, pristine wilderness areas in the entire world. All mining companies with claims to minerals in that area are not American, and plan to ship their minerals to a smelter in the Asia Pacific region.
The road will cost around $1.4 billion, and proponents claim that will be paid for by tolls on mining companies. However, it’s unclear if the potential mineral yield in the Ambler Mining Area would even be enough to cover the cost of road construction.
The road would cross currently pristine habitat, connecting the existing Dalton Highway (which runs from Fairbanks to Prudhoe Bay, on the shores of the Arctic Ocean) with the Ambler Mining Area. This mining area lies in the headwaters of the Kobuk River, which provides subsistence fishing for sheefish and other species to native tribes throughout the region. The Kobuk River is also famous for its trophy sheefish, which draws thousands of anglers every year.
The Ambler Road would cross both the Kobuk and Koyukuk Rivers, as well as countless other tributaries that are critical to this untrammeled Arctic landscape. The Brooks Range lies entirely above the Arctic Circle, making it one of the most unique places in the world.
Caribou herds would also be severely impacted, as the road would cross through their current migration routes.
“What scares me is they’re going to build a road that could start a period of industrial expansion in a portion of the Western Arctic Herd’s migratory and winter range,” Jim Dau, the WAH caribou biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game from 1988 to 2016, told Yahoo! News. “It’s not just the road. So far, the state has limited the discussion to only the road. They won’t talk about what happens after the road. They won’t talk about an industrial mining complex and what that’s going to look like. They won’t talk about all the little smaller access roads between mines that are going to crop up. They’re not saying what its footprint is going to be, or the types of mining. What concerns me about this Ambler Road is what we don’t know.”
It’s unclear if the United States would benefit from any of the mining interests in the Ambler Mining Area, as current claim holder Trilogy Metals stated in a 2023 feasibility study that its focus would be on smelted metals sold to the Chinese market. Trilogy Metals is owned by Canadian and Australian backers.
Trump’s executive order does give the United States a 10% stake in the company, with the opportunity to purchase an additional 7.5%, but it’s unclear whether that gives the country first rights on purchasing smelted minerals.
You can learn more about the value of the Brooks Range, and voice your opposition to the Ambler Road, here.