cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/6362073
President Donald Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum sparked outrage Monday evening after announcing the US government would take a 10 percent stake in a for-profit foreign mining corporation set to profit handsomely from an executive order that would “bring ruin to a national park and an incomparable wilderness landscape” with an industrial project in Alaska opposed by communities, Indigenous communities, and conservationists near and far.
Green groups warn that Trump’s order to begin the controversial 211-mile Ambler Road Project, which was approved by the Republican president during his first term but subsequently blocked under former President Joe Biden, will irreparably harm the Gates of the Arctic National Park, destroy 1,400 acres of fragile wetlands and spawning regions for inland fish, and bisect the state’s largest wild caribou herd.
Conservationists and local tribes that oppose the project argue that it’s misleading to view it as a road-building project.
“This is no ordinary road,” said Athan Manuel, director of the Sierra Club’s Lands Protection Program. “It’s an industrial corridor through intact forests and Alaskan landscapes long enough to connect Washington, DC, to Philadelphia. Moreover, it would divide the migration route of the Western Arctic Caribou Herd, causing irreversible damage.”
Alongside the order to restart the project, which Trump and Burgum said would begin in 2026 with federal support, the president announced taking the 10 percent stake in the Canada-based mining giant, Trilogy Metals, which has long sought to exploit the project to expand its mining operations.
thats great X-(
