The Bureau of Land Management recently released a proposed plan for over 6 million acres of federal property in the eastern interior. Crafted over 8 years with user input, the management plan offers new resource development potential and environmental protections.
The BLM Eastern Alaska Management Plan’s coverage area includes the White Mountains National Recreation and Steese National Conservation areas near Fairbanks, as well as the Forty Mile Mining District, and the Draanjik, or Black River area. BLM eastern interior field office manager Lenore Hepler says the 18 hundred page proposal, replaces outdated plans.
”Things have changed a lot since the 80s, so we’re updating these plans looking at new issues, new uses and how we’re going to manage those,” Hepler said.
One major focus of the plan is recreation. Helper notes a provision that would allow snow machines in some previously closed areas.
“In some small areas called research natural areas, and the proposed in this plan is to open those up.”
Hepler says another change would remove a restriction on motor boats on the Forty Mile River.
”In wild segments of the river and in the proposed we’d be removing that restriction so it would be open for motor boats,” Hepler said.
The other major focus of the plan is mining, including a recommendation that the Secretary of the Interior open 1.7 million acres, much of it in the Forty Mile mining district, to new claims.
“These areas have been withdrawn from middle entry or from the staking of new claims since the 80s and before to protect land for selection by the state and the Native corporations and also to look at classifying these lands under these certain laws,” Hepler said. We’ve looked at those withdrawals or restrictions and looked at where we could lift those.”
The areas that could open to mining are balanced by new protection proposals on over a million acres of other lands.
”A proposed area of critical environmental concren in the Upper Black River area, or the Draanjik area. And then also two of them in the 40 mile country,” Hepler said.
Protections in the Draanjik area resulted from feedback from tribal entities. Chalkyitsik village corporation consultant Joe Matesi says tribes are “fairly satisfied” with the proposal which would set aside more than 75 percent of lands requested for protection, including all of the most critical upper Draanjik River area.
“Originally they proposed opening the entire area to oil and gas and to mining,” Matesi said. “And in the end, the entire Draanjik River watershed is no protected from those resource developments.”
Tanana Chiefs President Victor Joseph credits tribal leaders and the BLM with a compromise that protects king salmon and other Draanjik area subsistence resources.
”We just have to remember that there are grocery stores out there,” Joseph said. “It’s not at Fred Meyer’s. It’s out there and it’s a resource that they rely on wholeheartedly.”
Proposed protections in the BLM plan, including in the forty Mile Mining region do not sit well with Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, who’s also critical of the BLM’s release of the proposal during mining season.
”This has real consequence, real substance and it is put out there for comments during the height of this summer with just 30 days for a protest period here so lots wrong on a lot of different levels,” Murkowski said.
The 30 day protest period began with the plan’s release last Friday. The BLM’s Hepler says the plan was not timed to coincide with miners being in the field, noting that the proposal already reflects input of stakeholders collected during an over year long public comment opportunity. She said the proposal represents compromise on issues the agency got very divergent input on.
”There’s decisions that one side or another is not gonna be happy with because it’s not exactly what they wanted, but what we were trying to do was get a balance over the whole area and what’s going on around it,” Hepler said.
Hepler says the proposed eastern Alaska management plan must also undergo review by the state. The plan is expected to be finalized by the end of the year.
Dan Bross is a reporter at KUAC in Fairbanks.
