The Ambler Road Project: Profits, Power, and the Cost to People
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Time to read 3 min
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Time to read 3 min
There’s a proposal on the table for a 211-mile industrial road cutting through Alaska’s Brooks Range — the Ambler Road (Ambler Access Project). Marketed as a path toward mineral wealth and economic opportunity, it threatens something much older and more precious: ecology, culture, and Indigenous life.
Below is a more citation-rich version of the case for why this project deserves scrutiny, resistance, and real conversation.
What Is the Ambler Road Project?
The Alaska Industrial Development & Export Authority (AIDEA) is behind the proposal to build a 211-mile road from the Dalton Highway to the Ambler Mining District in northwestern Alaska. Its purpose is to facilitate industrial mining of copper, zinc, cobalt, and other minerals considered “critical.” ([The White House]
The proposed route would cross federal, state, and Native-owned lands. It would require thousands of culverts/bridges, intersect numerous rivers and streams, and pass near or through areas of traditional subsistence use. (Center for American Progress)
Indigenous Rights & Local Voices
Subsistence and culture are at stake. The proposed road would affect over 66 Alaska Native communities whose livelihoods depend on hunting, fishing, gathering, and the seasonal movement of wildlife. (Bureau of Land Management)
One of the Native regional corporations, NANA, withdrew from the project, citing that it did “not align with the corporation’s values and community interests.” They raised concerns about impacts on the caribou, subsistence resources, community benefits, and job creation. (Alaska Public Media)
Local tribal organizations such as the Evansville Tribal Council argue the project will bring not just environmental harm, but economic ruin, food insecurity, health impacts, and social disruption. (Audubon Alaska)
Environmental & Ecosystem Impacts
Wildlife:
The road would disrupt migration of caribou, particularly the Western Arctic Caribou Herd, a key species both ecologically and culturally. Younger and older routes of these animals risk being degraded or fragmented. (Center for American Progress)
Wetlands and streams along the route would be degraded or destroyed, impacting fish species (salmon, sheefish, whitefish) in watersheds upon which local communities rely. (Center for American Progress)
Hydrology & Permafrost:
Crossing thousands of waterways and disturbing permafrost regions would risk thawing that leads to erosion, altered water flow, and long-term ecological shifts. (Northern Alaska Environmental Center)
Even dust from construction, maintenance, and traffic is projected to damage air quality, vegetation, and water via runoff. (Northern Alaska Environmental Center)
Subsistence & Health:
Changes to fish and wildlife populations reduce availability of traditional foods. This has implications for nutrition, culture, and community health. (National Parks Conservation Association)
Noise, pollution, and increased traffic could bring health risks, including exposure to contaminants. (Northern Alaska Environmental Center)
Recent Actions & Political Moves
In 2024, under the Biden administration, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) issued a Record of Decision rejecting the Ambler Road, choosing the “No Action Alternative.” The decision cited significant habitat fragmentation, risks to caribou and fish, adverse effects on subsistence, and cultural disruption. (Alaska Beacon)
However, October 2025 saw a reversal: President Donald Trump signed an order reinstating permits for the road and directed federal agencies to issue necessary authorizations. The administration emphasized the project’s economic importance and its role in supplying domestic critical minerals. (Reuters)
Why This Is More Than Just a Road
This isn’t simply about asphalt and trucks; it’s about which values we choose: immediate gain versus long-term resilience, extraction versus care, profit over purpose.
When Indigenous communities are sidelined or their concerns are treated as secondary, it’s not just an ecological injustice — it’s a moral one.
When wild rivers, quiet tundra, and ancient migration routes are threatened, the damage is intergenerational. Once compromised, many of these systems don’t bounce back.
The climate crisis adds urgency: disturbing permafrost and intact ecosystems accelerates warming, creating feedback loops that affect us all.
What Needs to Happen
Respect for Indigenous sovereignty: Communities must be consulted in deeply meaningful ways, not just token hearings. If they say “no,” that must carry weight.
Rigorous, transparent environmental review: All routes, alternatives, costs — ecological, social, cultural — must be fully assessed, with Indigenous Knowledge incorporated.
Valuing natural systems as more than “resources”: Water, wildlife, permafrost, fish runs — these are not just inputs in a production equation. They are living systems vital to the entire planet.
Conclusion: A Choice of Futures
Building the Ambler Road is a choice — one that risks desecrating land, undermining Indigenous ways of life, and causing environmental harms that ripple far beyond the Brooks Range. But rejecting it is also a choice — a reaffirmation that some things are sacred, that nature isn’t just a supply line, and that we belong to place, not the other way around.
If we keep choosing power over purpose, profit over presence, the world we leave may be poorer in more ways than we know. We still have a chance to choose differently. Let’s use it.