Obama administration moves to protect some of the most remote areas of Alaska

President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration may be nearing, but that doesn't mean President Barack Obama's Interior Department is finished making decisions about the future of the United States' vast natural resources and open spaces.

This week, the agency's Bureau of Land Management issued four plans to shape the management of some 6.5 million publicly owned acres of Alaska's eastern interior, a remote area stretching from Fairbanks to the Canada border that is filled with rivers, streams, forests, and very few major roads. Featuring key sections and tributaries of the Yukon River, it's more home to animals like grizzly bears, moose, and caribou than to humans, but is also the province of Native Americans including the Gwich'in, and substantial gold-mining interests in the Fortymile area near the Canada border.

The move is just one of many Obama era conservation moves in Alaska, including designating large parts of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as wilderness. However, it is not clear whether some of the plans' more contentions measures — involving lands available for mining — will stay in place, due to the presidential transition just weeks away and specific laws that govern land in the state of Alaska.

Most notable in the new plans, perhaps, is the new Draanjik Planning Area, which has never before been managed by the BLM and consists of 2,360,000 acres — the largest of the four areas whose management was decided on this week. The plans propose that 77 percent of that area be shut off to mining and key areas protected for salmon, bald eagles and native plants. (Draanjik is the Gwich'in name for what was previously called the Upper Black River, and was recently adopted by the U.S. Board of Geographic Names as the official name of the river.)

Read more: https://www.adn.com/nation-world/2017/01/05/obama-administration-moves-to-protect-some-of-the-most-remote-areas-of-alaska/