Under a new order from Secretary Burgum, the Trump administration just announced its intent to sell off public lands the size of Yellowstone National Park in Alaska.
We’re talking about 2.1 million acres of wild country between Gates of the Arctic National Park and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Caribou, grizzlies, wolves, Dall sheep, muskox, moose, wolverines. Rivers full of salmon and Arctic grayling. Over 200 species of migratory birds that fly from six continents to breed there every summer. The only overland route to the Arctic Ocean. And the subsistence hunting grounds that Alaska Native communities have depended on for thousands of years.
Gone. Opened up for state takeover, mining claims, and industrial development. Fifty years of federal protection, erased with a signature.
And this is just the beginning.
How They Did It
Here’s how a land grab works when you want to do it legally.
For decades, a pair of federal protections called Public Land Order 5150 and PLO 5180 kept this stretch of Alaska safeguarded as public land. They were created in the 1970s when the Trans-Alaska Pipeline was built, and they did exactly what they were supposed to do. They kept the pipeline corridor stable, kept the surrounding wilderness intact, and kept the land under consistent federal management. The corridor they protected stretches 244 miles from the Yukon River north through the Brooks Range. It is the connective tissue between a national park and three wildlife refuges. Without it, those protected areas become islands surrounded by industrial development.
Yesterday (February 20), Burgum revoked both protections. He issued a new Public Land Order that opens all 2.1 million acres to mining claims and, more importantly, activates the State of Alaska’s long-dormant land selections.
Here’s the mechanism. Alaska has claimed for years that the federal government owes it additional land under the 1959 Statehood Act. About 5.2 million acres of entitlement remain. For decades, the state has filed what are called “top filings” on these corridor lands. Think of them as placeholder claims. Alaska was saying: we want this, but we can’t have it yet because the protections are in the way.
Burgum just removed the barrier. Those placeholders can now become actual transfers. More than 2 million acres of your federal public land can shift into state hands. And once the state takes title, everything changes.
The Dangerous Precedent
Here’s what should keep you up at night, no matter where you live.
The legal mechanism Burgum used is simple. The Secretary of the Interior has authority under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act to revoke Public Land Orders. That authority exists for every PLO on every piece of federal land in America.
The Dalton Corridor is the test case. If this transfer goes through without serious legal or political consequence, it becomes the playbook. Find a state entitlement claim or a justification for revocation. Kill the withdrawal. Activate land selections. Transfer the land. Eliminate the protections. Move on to the next one.
There are Public Land Orders protecting federal lands across the entire West. Any one of them could be revoked by any Interior Secretary using the exact same process. This administration has already used the Congressional Review Act to overturn land management plans in Alaska, Montana, and North Dakota. They have publicly stated their intent to open federal lands for energy and mineral development at every opportunity. They are not hiding the ball.
This is not just about Alaska. This is about whether the federal government can unilaterally sell off our public lands with a signature and a press release. And right now, the answer appears to be yes.
What We Lose in Alaska
The land Burgum just opened up is not some barren stretch of frozen tundra. It is one of the most ecologically significant landscapes left in North America.
The Dalton Corridor encompasses three major ecosystems – boreal forest, Arctic mountains, and high Arctic tundra. It is the migration route for the Western Arctic Caribou Herd, one of the last great land migrations on Earth. Its rivers support salmon runs that have sustained communities for millennia. Dall sheep lamb on its mountain slopes. Grizzlies dig for roots along its river valleys. Wolves den in its foothills. It is vast, unbroken, and wild in a way that almost nothing in the Lower 48 can match.
If this land transfers to the state, federal environmental protections disappear. Public oversight disappears. Your ability as an American to have any say in what happens on that land disappears. When land is under federal management, environmental reviews are required, management plans are required, and the public gets a voice. Once Alaska takes title, all of that is gone.
This also clears the path for the Ambler Road, a proposed 211-mile industrial gravel highway that would slice through the Brooks Range and Gates of the Arctic National Preserve to reach mineral deposits in the Ambler Mining District. It would cross nearly 3,000 rivers and streams, fragment caribou migration routes, and bring pollution-spewing mining trucks through one of the last intact wild landscapes in North America. Hourly. For over 30 years. The Bureau of Land Management denied this road in 2024 because the damage would be too great. The Trump administration reinstated the permits anyway.
And it gets worse. In November 2024, after nearly ten years of public outreach, scientific research, and consultation, the BLM finalized the Central Yukon Resource Management Plan. It designated 3.6 million acres as areas of critical environmental concern. It protected 746,000 acres of caribou habitat. It kept this corridor under federal management as a backcountry conservation area. Congress used the Congressional Review Act to overturn it. Trump signed the repeal in December 2025. And here’s the poison pill: the CRA legally prohibits the agency from issuing any future rule that is “substantially the same” as the one Congress struck down. Those protections that took ten years to build can’t be reinstated by a future administration. They are legislatively dead.
So in the span of a few months, they killed the management plan, reinstated the mining road, and revoked the land protections – a coordinated demolition.
The Money Trail
Follow the money and the picture becomes very clear.
Trilogy Metals, the company with the mining claims in the Ambler District, is headquartered in Vancouver, Canada. Its partner, South32, is an Australian mining conglomerate. The minerals they want to extract would feed global supply chains, not American ones.
Your federal government spent $35.6 million of taxpayer money to buy a 10% stake in a Canadian mining company. The Pentagon cut the check. When the Ambler Road permits were reinstated, Trilogy’s stock surged over 200% in a single day. When the Dalton Corridor announcement dropped, Trilogy tweeted about it within hours, celebrating that the revocation unlocks access to critical minerals. They weren’t surprised. They were waiting.
So let’s be clear about what happened. Your government revoked fifty years of land protections, overturned a decade of environmental planning, and is preparing to subsidize a billion-dollar road so that foreign mining companies can extract minerals from American public land. And then it bought stock in the company that stands to profit.
The administration frames this as “energy dominance” and “fulfilling promises.” The only promises being kept are to shareholders.
What’s Happening Now
Legal challenges are underway. In January 2026, ten conservation and Tribal organizations filed an amended complaint challenging the Trump administration’s reinstatement of the Ambler Road permits. The coalition, represented by Trustees for Alaska, includes the Northern Alaska Environmental Center, Alaska Wildlife Alliance, Alaska Wilderness League, Center for Biological Diversity, National Parks Conservation Association, Sierra Club, and The Wilderness Society.
The Defend the Brooks Range coalition continues to organize. So does Protect the Kobuk, a grassroots group of Alaska Native community members from the Northwest Arctic who have been fighting this fight for years.
But legal challenges take years. Land transfers can happen in months. Every day without a reversal, the ground truth changes.
What You Can Do Right Now
I don’t write pieces like this to make you feel helpless. I write them because there are things you can do, and they matter.
1. Contact your U.S. Senators and Representative.
Tell them you oppose the sell-off of federal public lands in Alaska. Tell them this sets a precedent for the disposal of public lands nationwide that you will not accept. Tell them the Ambler Road is a speculative boondoggle that benefits foreign mining companies at the expense of the American public.
Find your representatives: senate.gov and house.gov
2. Submit public comment when the Federal Register notice publishes.
The Public Land Order will officially publish in the Federal Register next week. Watch for comment opportunities. The BLM’s ePlanning page for the Dalton Utility Corridor is live: eplanning.blm.gov
3. Support the organizations fighting this on the ground.
These groups are doing the hard work, filing lawsuits, organizing in remote communities, and putting themselves on the line to defend this landscape:
Southeast Alaska Conservation Council (SEACC): seacc.org
Defend the Brooks Range Coalition: defendbrooksrange.org
Alaska Wilderness League: alaskawild.org
Northern Alaska Environmental Center: northern.org
Trustees for Alaska (legal representation): trustees.org
Protect the Kobuk (grassroots Alaska Native advocacy)
National Parks Conservation Association: npca.org
4. Spread the word.
Share this piece. Talk about it. Most Americans have never heard of the Dalton Corridor. That’s by design. These land sell-offs happen in the cracks of the news cycle, buried under acronyms and procedural language. The more people who understand what’s happening, the harder it becomes to pull off.
Until next time,
Will
No more vague or virtual. Now it’s down and dirty in real time. Feels pretty hopeless… We gotta keep fighting 💪🏾
Thanks for all your hard work and efforts, Will (and Jim). We all deeply appreciate you!
These F'in criminals in our government, they are so corrupt. All they care about is $$, they are greedy and destroying our public lands and wildlife all to make shareholders happy and using our taxpayer dollars on top of it. How about we all stop paying taxes?! F them! I am livid. When does it stop? They are literally destroying our planet and wildlife.