Alaskans and members of the Defend the Brooks Range coalition condemned today’s dissolvement of the Central Yukon Resource Management Plan (RMP), a sweeping, science-based framework developed over more than a decade in partnership with Alaska Native Tribes and rural communities. President Trump today signed a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution into law, overturning the 2024 RMP. The action reverts management of 13.3 million acres of public land across Alaska’s Central Yukon, Brooks Range foothills, and Yukon River watershed, to long defunct regulations written more than 30 years ago. This repeal will remove protections and streamline permitting of industrial development like the Ambler Road.
A Plan Built Through Tribal Partnership and Public Engagement
The Central Yukon RMP was shaped through 13 years of federal and Tribal collaboration, including 33 public meetings and participation from six Tribal cooperating agencies: Ruby Tribal Council, Venetie Tribal Council, Allakaket Tribal Council, Koyukuk Tribal Council, Nulato Tribal Council, and
Tanana Tribal Council.
The now-revoked plan designated more than three million acres of Areas of Critical Environmental Concern to safeguard caribou migration routes, salmon spawning grounds, permafrost-sensitive tundra, and key subsistence areas.
“This decision erases years of consultation with Alaska Native governments and silences the communities that depend on these lands for food security, cultural survival, and economic stability,” said Huslia tribal member Ricko DeWilde. “We’re being forced to sell out our lands and way of life
without the benefit of receiving anything in return.”
Unprecedented Use of the Congressional Review Act
Congress has never before used the CRA to revoke a public lands management plan. The law not only overturns the 2024 RMP but bars the Bureau of Land Management from issuing any “substantially similar” plan in the future, effectively freezing the agency’s ability to update management across a landscape undergoing rapid climate-driven change.
This decision could accelerate permitting for large-scale industrial projects such as the proposed Ambler industrial road, a mining corridor that would cut across the southern Brooks Range and threaten subsistence access for dozens of communities.
“This is a historic misuse of the Congressional Review Act that destabilizes the entire public lands planning system, and the repercussions of this decision will be felt throughout all of Alaska,” said Jim Adams, Alaska Regional Director for the National Parks Conservation Association.
“Once again, this administration is trampling the wishes and needs of local communities to clear the way for industrial development. In doing so, they are sacrificing one of America’s most extraordinary national park landscapes in an effort to push the expensive and speculative Ambler mining road.”
Threats to Subsistence, Ecosystems, and Public Oversight
By reverting to outdated management plans from the early 1990s, the CRA action undermines protections for subsistence hunting and fishing, weakens oversight of industrial development, and jeopardizes habitat for the Western Arctic and Porcupine caribou herds. This repeal threatens the
ecological health of the Yukon River watershed and the largest national park landscape in the United States.
“This is another gut shot from DC and our “representatives” insisting on opening public lands to the lowest outside bidder for the smallest possible return per acre, said John Gaedeke, lifelong Alaskan and owner of Iniakuk Lake Wilderness Lodge. “These lands are wild-food tenderloins
for more than 60 communities, only a reckless act of congress would prioritize a management plan that treats the rivers, lakes and caribou herds like an ATM for short term foreign industrial extraction.”
This unprecedented rollback leaves Alaska’s rural communities, hunters, and Tribal governments with fewer protections at a time when climate change and resource pressures are rapidly intensifying. Without a modern management plan, decisions affecting the Brooks Range and Yukon
River watershed will now be made using outdated information and diminished public oversight. Defend the Brooks Range calls on national leaders to restore science-based planning and ensure that the people who live closest to these lands have a decisive voice in how they are managed.
FOR MEDIA INQUIRIES PLEASE CONTACT:
Jayme Dittmar
info@defendbrooksrange.org
907-750-9579
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