As a 58-year Alaska resident, I’m outraged and deeply saddened at the state-funded Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority plan to build the Ambler road across pristine Arctic wilderness, and with no respect for the consequences for those lands, the animals that inhabit them, and the Native peoples who depend on them for their subsistence.
I am very familiar with the area, having lived in Kotzebue and traveled up and down the Kobuk River and along almost the entire route of the proposed road. The following are some unfortunate consequences if the road is built:
• Interruption of the migratory movements of the Western Caribou Herd, resulting in serious impacts on the subsistence lives of the Inupiat and Athabascan peoples living there.
• Devastation of the unparalleled wilderness landscapes and wildlife, and hence of the delicate ecological balance of the area. The Kobuk watershed will be particularly hard hit, especially its salmon and sheefish runs.
Although AIDEA states it will pay for and maintain what it says will be a “private” road, I ask, where will the money come from? And further, how will they maintain it? With insufficient funds to maintain even the roads we presently have, and with further challenges from climate change, the Ambler road will become yet another financial noose around our necks!
Worse, for a foreign mining corporation (Trilogy) to even contemplate shipping the copper ore in tens of thousands of immense diesel-powered truckloads from the Kobuk mine more than 400 miles to railhead in Fairbanks, then send it by railroad to Anchorage to be trans-shipped by huge freighters overseas to Asia to be smelted and used there to build their cities and military might, is akin to insanity. And imagine the colossal amounts of carbon pollution that will be spewed into our atmosphere and onto adjacent wild lands, added to the greenhouse gases that are already warming the planet to catastrophic levels. And with no benefit to Alaska’s treasury because of our pitifully low royalty requirements!
Those involved in this “fairytale of endless economic growth,” with no respect for future generations, should heed young Greta Thunberg’s words, “How dare you!”
— Frank Keim
Fairbanks
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