Late last week, lawmakers in Washington D.C. hashed out an annual spending bill called the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The must-pass legislation allocated more than $895 billion dollars in defense spending for 2025. Noticeably absent from the final version, however, was a controversial amendment that would have forced the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to permit a 211-mile mining road through an untrammeled roadless area in Alaska’s Brooks Range.
The proposed Ambler Road was tabled in June 2024 when the BLM blocked a key permit for the project. The decision came after months of heavy opposition from Alaska residents, indigenous subsistence hunters, and concerned hunters and anglers across the country—all of whom cited threats to caribou, sheefish, Arctic greyling, and other wildlife species. All told, some 135,000 public comments against the Ambler Road were submitted to the BLM in the run-up to its June permit denial.
In its decision to deny permitting, the BLM described the negative consequences that road construction and large-scale mining operations would have for native wildlife in the Brooks Range. “The BLM’s analysis found that the road would have required over 3,000 stream crossings and would have impacted at risk wildlife populations, including sheefish and the already-declining Western Arctic caribou herd, which are critical food sources for Native communities,” the agency said in a press release issued June 28, 2024. “The proposed Ambler Road would have traversed significant wildlife habitat and pristine waters that are vital for the subsistence activities of Tribal communities along the iconic Brooks Range in north central Alaska.”
While Ambler Road opponents celebrated the BLM’s decision last summer, supporters of the mining project were quietly working to circumvent the agency's permit denial. “It was a surprise to many folks that Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska was able to get that amendment into the NDAA,” Backcountry Hunters & Anglers (BHA) Government Relations Manager Kaden McArthur tells Field & Stream. “This is a must-pass bill that comes around every year, so it’s a smart place to land something that you want to see get done. But traditionally there’s a lot of hesitation to use NDAA’s for attacks on conservation like this, or even good conservation legislation.”
According to McArthur, an amendment like the Ambler Road Provision isn’t easy to remove, particularly when added to the “base text” of the Senate version of the bill, as this amendment was. “It’s a high bar to get something like that taken out,” he said. “Big credit goes to the overwhelming and broad response from the conservation community telling everybody in Congress this is not something they wanted to see in the Brooks Range.”
BHA is part of a coalition of conservation organizations, Alaska-based outfitters, and national hunting and fishing companies that have publicly opposed the Ambler Road since the fall of 2023. That group, known as Hunters & Anglers for the Brooks Range, also lists Trout Unlimited and the National Deer Association as coalition partners on its website—as well as for-profit companies like Mystery Ranch, Simms, Orvis, MeatEater, Vortex, Maven, and Phelps.
“It is a great relief to have the Ambler Road project removed from the NDAA,” said Lewis Pagel, owner of Arctic Fishing Adventures in Kotzebue, Alaska, who guides out-of-state anglers looking to catch tarpon-like sheefish through the ice in the Brooks Range. “But we as hunters, anglers, and stewards of the land must continue to be vigilant in our efforts to ensure the land and water of the Brooks Range remains wild and rich with fish, waterfowl, and game animals for generations to come.”
Read Next: A Wild Mission: Getting Our Military Veterans Outdoors
Though the Ambler Road is off the table for now, McArthur doesn't see proponents of the proposed project giving up anytime soon. “I would expect this to crop up again,” he said. “This is far from over, unfortunately. The incoming Trump administration pursued the road the last time they were in office. I’d expect Sen. Sullivan to continue his support, along with Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski. She's a supporter of the road as well and, as incoming chair of the Senate Interior Appropriations Committee, she'll have authority over all spending within the Department of the Interior and related agencies.”
