What the Ambler Road Approval Means for Hunters and Anglers

“This road goes through an area where there’s no roads. Ambler Mining District at the end of that has some of the richest mining deposits in all of America and in all of the world,” said Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum. “These are minerals that are absolutely essential to defense and to industry moving forward today. Just take copper. This is one of the richest copper locations in the country.”

The decision is the latest in a back-and-forth over the proposed road, which was originally greenlit during the first Trump administration before being reversed by the Biden Administration. Following the announcement, the U.S. Senate repealed the Yukon Resource Management Plan (RMP) on October 9 through an unusual use of the Congressional Review Act. Doing so reverted the region to an earlier RMP—and paved the way for Ambler Road and mining development. Though the Trump Administration touted the corridor as a way to increase energy independence, experts say that this may not be the reality as ore from the mines will likely need to be shipped Asia to be processed.

While mining development proponents are celebrating the industrial road’s approval, conservation and environmental groups are roundly condemning the outsized impacts it could have on wildlife populations and recreational opportunities. Here’s what you need to know.

The Ambler Road would transect a formerly roadless area along the southern edge of the Brooks Mountain Range. Ambler would run West from the Dalton Highway from near Wiseman, a small community 270 miles north of Fairbanks. Notably, Ambler would cut through Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve as well as parts of five Wild and Scenic Rivers. The potential ecological impacts are numerous and difficult to fully quantify because of the “compounding” impacts of mines, the scale and number of which are not yet clear, according to a 2023 Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) prepared by the U.S. Department of the Interior and Bureau of Land Management biologists.

From a big game standpoint, the primary species threatened by Ambler Road is caribou, particularly the famed Western Arctic Caribou Herd. The herd supports a significant amount of subsistence hunting for isolated local indigenous communities in the region, as well as backcountry sport hunting from traveling hunters. According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, the herd was once considered the largest herd in North America but has declined significantly over the last 20 years, dwindling to the lowest count in forty years in 2023. According to Tim Fullman, a senior ecologist for The Wilderness Society, several factors appear to be contributing to the herd’s decline, including but not limited to low female survival rates, warmer winters, more icing events, larger storms, and other variables. While caribou herds are known to cycle naturally, Fullman worries about the additional impacts that Ambler Road and its associated mines could cause.

“Forty-plus years of studies of caribou in the U.S., Canada, and Europe have shown that the species is sensitive to development,” Fullman told MeatEater. “We see displacement away from roads and various other behavior changes from human activities and development. The concern is that at a time when there are other stressors, additional development could have a negative impact on the herd’s ability to recover from being at a lower level.”

Caribou are particularly sensitive to roads because of their migratory behavoir. “Caribou live in an environment with extreme seasonal changes,” Fullman said. “They use movement as a way of varying their access to areas to get different resources when they need them. That’s why things like roads that hinder their ability to access those resources can potentially have a bigger impact on caribou [than other species of ungulates].”

According to the 2023 Draft Environmental Impact Statement, in addition to habitat loss and fragmentation, “fugitive dust” from the road could negatively impact the lichen-dominated vegetation that caribou depend on. While Fullman says it’s difficult to quantify exactly how severely the development of Ambler Road will impact the Western Arctic Caribou herd, he worries about its timing.

“Is this the time to increase pressures on the herd when there are already so many challenges its facing?” he asks. “I hope that those who are making these decisions will weigh that very carefully.”

Other potential major ecological impacts from the road have to do with its potential effects on rivers and fish species. The road’s construction and use could negatively impact the already-struggling Pacific salmon stocks of the Yukon River Basin, as well as sport fish such as sheefish and Arctic grayling.

“The proposed mines would be open-pit sulfide mines,” said Kevin Fraley, a fisheries ecologist for the Wildlife Conservation Society. “You get a lot of tailings, which usually have to be contained in tailing ponds, that have high levels of chemicals, metals, and acidity. This can be flushed into rivers in big flood events.”

Fraley added that similarly catastrophic events could occur with trucks crashing along the roads, but beyond that, there will be a cumulative impact on fish health from dust released from the road surface. “This causes chemicals like mercury, zinc, and lead to get up in the air. They end up on the tundra or in the streams. Over the time, they build up in fish and invertebrates.”

While such a build-up of chemicals may not directly kill fish, it could impact their survival fitness and reproduction, as well as the health of the catch-and-keep anglers who consume them. Fraley and his team recently completed a study that assessed toxins in fish in the region and found very little contamination in the area of the proposed road compared to raised levels in waterways near the Dalton Highway—which, like the Ambler Corridor, was constructed to provide access for mining and energy development.

Another aspect of the Ambler Road stands to particularly impact migratory fish populations: culverts. The Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority (AIDEA), which will oversee the development of the road, has pledged to build and maintain appropriate culverts to support fish passage on around 3,000 stream crossings. In practice, the culverts will likely impede fish movement.

“During the winter, the water in the culverts can freeze solid,” Fraley said. “Because they’re shaded by the road, they thaw out late, and there will likely be buildups of water flowing over the road. After a couple of years of this, the culverts get pretty jacked up and broken, and it’s hard for anadromous fish like salmon and sheefish to get through them.”

As for larger waterways, the road stands to detrimentally impact the Alatna and Kobuk rivers. According to the National Wild and Scenic River System, the Kobuk is one of only two major spawning grounds in the region for sheefish, an aggressive game fish widely considered “the tarpon of the north.” A trip to fish for sheefish is considered a bucket list expedition for both gear and fly anglers.

“The Kobuk is basically the world’s best sheefish fishing area,” says Fraley. “I caught my first one there on a trip in 2019. It’s a very unique species only found in parts of Alaska, Canada, and Russia. They can live up to 40 years and grow up to 40 pounds. There are also these sea-run dolly varden in the area with these beautiful colors that are a symbol of the wilderness.”

In addition to fish and caribou, there could be adverse impacts to native vegetation, small game, grizzly bears, wolves, moose, musk ox, and other species. “The question is: are these risks worth it in one of our final areas that’s relatively untouched by man?” Fraley said. “As a scientist, as well as a fisherman and hunter, I don’t think so.”

In addition to its ecological impact, the proposed road and associated mines stand to drastically alter recreational experiences in the area, especially for consumptive users. This would impact not only the region’s Indigenous subsistence hunters but also sport hunters.

“The primary thing hunters and anglers need to be concerned about is the loss of the of a large, contiguous landscape,” says Nathaniel Kibbey, a caribou hunter from Fairbanks and the Vice Chair of the Alaska Chapter of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers (BHA).

Currently, to rifle hunt in the region, one must hike or be flown in at least five miles from the Dalton Highway. Doing so can be a logistically difficult but rewarding experience—one that could be degraded by the construction and use of a road and mines. “It’s a wilderness experience people come from around the world to enjoy,” said Barry Whitehill, a local of Fairbanks and board member of the Alaska Chapter of BHA. “But this road would be within sight and sound of the south side of the Brooks Range, releasing dust plumes and the noise of industry. It’s going to change the entire character of the area.”

As it’s currently proposed, the Ambler Road will be a “controlled access corridor” open only to approved industrial vehicles. While some people hope that one day it could be used by hunters to gain access to remote areas, as was eventually done on the Dalton Highway, which began as an industry-only road, this possibility is far from guaranteed. And if this were to happen, many outdoorsmen don’t consider it worth the cost.

“Even if it does open to hunters at some point, it will cheapen the experience and threaten the wildlife populations that exist in the area,” Kibbey said.

“Getting into the area right now isn’t easy. It requires sweat equity, planning, and vision. But if you do it, it’s amazing,” Whitehill concluded. “Our license plate says, ‘Alaska, the Last Frontier.’ When you put this road and mines in there, that area is going to be the lost frontier.”

Burgum said he expects construction of the road to begin in the spring during a White House press conference. “We’ll get it done in less than a year,” Trump added. However, the project still has quite a few hurdles to overcome before construction can even start. While there isn’t a public comment period open, you can certainly reach out to your representatives and voice your opinions on the Ambler Road.