Overview of BLM Lands
The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1972 closed over 50 million acres of BLM lands throughout Alaska to mineral exploration and development. These lands were removed until analysis of the lands could be conducted and proper protections put in place. Rather than safeguarding the land it now holds in trust, the BLM is seeking to drastically increase damaging development through the Resource Management Process. This action could potentially jumpstart new mining districts throughout Alaska’s untouched public wild lands. These lands possess valuable wildlife habitat, recreation hotspots, subsistence use areas, and cultural sites.
The agency’s proposed management schemes run counter to BLM’s management mandate. Numerous locations within the BLM’s five planning areas – totaling more than 30 million acres- in Alaska have been nominated and meet qualification for Congressional designation and protection as National Wild and Scenic Rivers and administrative designation as Areas of Critical Environmental Concern (ACECs). BLM’s ACEC Manual explicitly recognizes mineral withdrawal as an appropriate management prescription for protecting ACEC values[1]. However, all of these special areas are open to mineral development.
Emerging Issues and Patterns in Alaska Resource Management Plans:
1. Revocation of 1971 mining withdrawals across 30 million acres of public lands: Protections on vast, remote acres of virtually inaccessible lands are disappearing rapidly as (d)(1) mining withdrawals established by the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 are being revoked by the BLM RMPs. In an attempt to subvert the time-consuming RMP/EIS process, BLM submitted a report to Congress in June 2006 recommending action to revoke approx 95% of the existing (d)(1) withdrawals statewide. To date, Congress has taken No Action on those recommendations. Completing the RMP process gives the Secretary of the Interior the authority to open these lands to mineral development without a review from Congress.
2. Minimal management guidelines claim to balance resource and habitat protection with future mining permits and operations. In areas currently off-limits to development, the management of future activities will be subject to the agency’s weak and discretionary “Required Operating Procedures and Stipulations”.
3. The agency is using irresponsible rationale to open sensitive areas. The agency claims that it is not “inciting a mining land rush,”[2] and that development will be “unlikely due to rough topography, very little existing infrastructure, and very limited access.”[3] But high market mineral values can offset the cost of marginal deposits resulting in a huge increase in development activity if these lands are open.
4. Special management of nearly 6 million acres of proposed Areas of Critical Environmental Concern (ACECs) are open to mineral developement. Despite petitions by tribes, sporting groups, local residents, subsistence and recreational users, and others to protect valuable lands with special designations, BLM is forging ahead with plans to open these areas to leasble and locatable mineral development. BLM’s ACEC Manual explicitly recognizes mineral withdrawal as an appropriate management prescription for protecting ACEC values[4]. Yet, the agency is recommending that existing (d)(1) withdrawals are revoked from approx. 95% of the proposed ACECs.
5. BLM has displayed cultural insensitivity to comments from Native Communities. The vast majority of comments submitted from Native Communities have been disregarded in the plans for being ‘non-substantive.’ Designating comments in this way eliminates the potential incorporation of Traditional Knowledge into Resource Management Plans. BLM has not attempted to accomidate the variation in communication styles: Native styles of communication are unique and different from non-native individuals. By doing this, the agency is essentially excluding comments and disenfranchising Alaska Native residents.
[1] BLM Manual No. 1613, Section .33.C (Provision for Special Management Attention)
[2] BLM bid to spur mining stirs ire.” Bluemink, Elizabeth, Anchorage Daily News, Oct. 26, 2006.
[3] BLM response to comment #0086-2 in the East Alaska RMP/Final EIS, July 2006. Off-highway vehicle access will be allowed in accordance with the State of Alaska’s notoriously lax “Generally Allowed Uses”.
[4] BLM Manual No. 1613, Section .33.C (Provision for Special Management Attention)
