The 23-million-acre Reserve in Alaska’s Western Arctic is the largest tract of US public land—home to hundreds of species at increased risk from a warming climate, and to Indigenous communities who have lived in relationship with this land for millennia. Without strong climate policy, new drilling here will further threaten the region and lock the US into decades of fossil fuel production. Now, even the Special Areas of the Western Arctic—critical habitats and cultural strongholds—are in the crosshairs, as protections are rolled back in favor of oil and gas development.

In the Brooks Range of northern Alaska, the proposed 211-mile Ambler Road would slice through one of the largest connected park landscapes in the country—polluting nearly 3,000 rivers and streams, disrupting the migration corridor of one of Earth’s largest caribou herds, and threatening hunting grounds and water sources vital to local Native communities. In 2024, the Bureau of Land Management found the damage from this mining corridor too significant to lawfully permit. Now, powerful interests are working to overturn that decision—and we’ll need to stay vigilant for the fight ahead.