Alaska Native Communities Ask BLM to Designate a New Nuiqsut Subsistence Use Special Area

During the Public Comment Period, Alaska Native Communities Also Urged More Co-Management and Tribally-led Stewardship

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

September 16, 2024

Press Contact: Abby Grehlinger, abby@team-arc.com, (865) 340-6656

(Nuiqsut, Alaska) – Today, the Biden Administration concluded its Request for Information on Special Areas in Alaska’s Western Arctic, in which it solicited public input on how to update protections in existing Special Areas, expand existing Special Areas, and create new Special Areas.

As a part of this process, Grandmothers Growing Goodness, Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic (SILA), and Native Movement submitted joint comments to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Their comments recommend that the BLM: 

• Designate a new Nuiqsut Subsistence Use Special Area, which would include an area that Native Alaskans rely on most for all of their subsistence uses;

• Manage this area through co-management and Tribally-led stewardship to provide Tribes a meaningful role in the decision-making for their lands; and

• Manage these lands to prioritize Inupiat subsistence, culture, and tradition.

• Prohibit industry’s use of the existing road during periods of high subsistence or caribou use, to ensure the safety and success of their hunters and the health of their herd. To help stem the ever-expansive web of development around Nuiqsut, additional permanent roads should not be built. 

“I hope the Administration will heed these recommendations and expand protections for new special areas in Nuqsuit to protect the areas my village depends on most for subsistence as well as the migration routes and wintering grounds of the Teshekpuk Caribou Herd,” said Rosemary Ahtuangaruak, Founder, Grandmothers Growing Goodness. “We have lived off of these lands and called this place home since time immemorial. To protect these places, it is essential that Indigenous Knowledge and our community’s needs are prioritized and meaningfully integrated with public lands management in the Western Arctic.”

People and wildlife need large, undisturbed areas. The no leasing and no infrastructure zones that are already in place in Teshekpuk Lake provide key protections for the caribou herd that calves there and the people of Nuiqsut who rely on these animals. The protection of these areas also helps provide climate resilience and natural carbon storage, and limits on oil production in these zones reduces the extraction of fossil fuels that is pushing against our transition to renewable energy.

Existing protections have proven to be important in safeguarding key subsistence resources, but further protection is needed to protect the region and the people and wildlife that live there. Especially as the Western Arctic is warming at a rate four times faster than the rest of the Earth.

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Grandmothers Growing Goodness is an Inupiat group dedicated to elevating the understanding and protection of Inupiat culture and people in the face of rampant oil and gas development and climate change. Its core purpose is to help support equity for communities facing significant environmental justice threats and to strengthen equity for the Inupiat.

Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic’s mission is to create space for healthy communities, spiritually, mentally, and physically; fostering the connection between people, culture and land. We are empowered as frontline communities and those who have inherent connection with the land and what it provides.