The U.S. Interior Department finalized a rule in 2024 C.E. designating approximately 13 million acres of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska as “special areas” where future oil and gas leasing is sharply limited — and banning new leases outright across more than 10 million of those acres. It is one of the largest federal land protection actions in recent American history, covering a swath of Arctic wilderness roughly the size of Indiana.
At a glance
- National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska: The roughly 23 million-acre reserve is home to tens of thousands of migrating caribou, polar bears, grizzly bears, walruses, and some of the most critical waterfowl habitat in the entire Arctic — including Teshekpuk Lake, where up to 100,000 geese converge each summer.
- Outright leasing ban: The final rule prohibits new oil and gas leasing across 10.6 million acres — more than 40 percent of the reserve — while protecting an additional 2.4 million acres under tighter restrictions.
- Ambler Road blocked: In a companion decision, the Interior Department recommended blocking a proposed 211-mile industrial road through northern Alaska that would have crossed 11 major rivers, fragmented caribou habitat, and threatened the subsistence activities of more than 60 Alaska Native communities.
Why these lands matter
The National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska sits at the top of the continent, one of the last largely intact wild ecosystems on Earth. Teshekpuk Lake alone functions as a continental waystation for birds that breed across the Arctic and winter as far south as South America.
For Alaska Native communities on the North Slope, the land is not wilderness in the abstract — it is food, culture, and survival. Residents of towns like Nuiqsut source roughly half their food through hunting caribou, and the fall bowhead whale hunt has defined Inupiat identity for thousands of years. Warmer temperatures, accelerated by the region’s status as one of the fastest-warming places on Earth, have already disrupted both caribou migrations and whale hunts.
“We want to protect our cultural traditions,” said Rosemary Ahtuangaruak, former mayor of Nuiqsut. “And we want to give future generations hope that they won’t be continually fighting to protect our way of life.”
The Ambler Road decision
Separately, Interior’s analysis found that the proposed Ambler Road — a 211-mile industrial corridor planned to reach a copper and zinc mining district — would cause irreparable harm to permafrost and caribou while threatening subsistence lifestyles across more than 60 Indigenous communities. That figure is more than double the 27 communities identified in a 2020 Trump-era analysis.
Twenty-six miles of the road would have run directly through Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, sending heavy industrial trucks through migration corridors that have been undisturbed for millennia. Interior’s “no action” recommendation effectively blocks the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority from obtaining a permit to build the road.
A contested but meaningful step
Conservation groups welcomed the rule while noting its limits. The decision does not touch ConocoPhillips’s Willow Project, a massive drilling venture already approved on Alaska’s North Slope that could produce up to 614 million barrels of oil over 30 years. That approval drew sharp criticism from climate advocates and cast a long shadow over these new protections.
“The approval of Willow was certainly disappointing to many of us who recognize the climate impact of oil and gas development,” said Rachael Hamby, policy director at the Center for Western Priorities. “With the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska rule, I think we see a more balanced approach to managing public lands for multiple uses, including conservation.”
Reaction from Alaska Native communities was genuinely divided. Doreen Leavitt of the Iñupiat Community of the Arctic Slope said the administration had not adequately consulted Indigenous communities about the economic benefits that oil and gas taxes have historically delivered — funding local schools, police, firefighters, and basic infrastructure in some of the most remote communities in North America. “We’re barely 50 years away from getting indoor plumbing, and that was brought by oil and gas,” Leavitt said.
That tension — between protecting a rapidly warming ecosystem and honoring the economic realities of the people who live there — is not resolved by this rule. Arctic conservation advocates have long argued that the two goals are not mutually exclusive, but the path forward will require continued, genuine partnership with Indigenous communities rather than decisions made on their behalf.
Fossil fuel companies have signaled they will challenge the rule in court, and Alaska’s congressional delegation has pushed back strongly. The rule’s durability into future administrations remains uncertain. But for now, 13 million acres of one of Earth’s most ecologically significant places has a stronger legal shield than it did before.
Read more
For more on this story, see: The Washington Post
For more from Good News for Humankind, see:
- Indigenous land rights recognized across 160 million hectares ahead of COP30
- Ghana establishes a major new marine protected area at Cape Three Points
- The Good News for Humankind archive on the United States
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