President Trump’s Alaska executive order on public lands, signed January 20, 2025, as Executive Order 14153, directs every relevant federal agency to rescind, revise, or override Biden-era restrictions on resource extraction across Alaska and to fast-track oil and gas leasing, mining, timber harvesting, and infrastructure construction on federal and state lands. Titled “Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential,” it is one of the broadest single executive actions ever issued regarding a single state’s lands, and in the eighteen months since signing it has reopened millions of acres to leasing, moved a major mining road forward, and triggered a wave of lawsuits.
What the Order Actually Does
The order treats Alaska’s natural resources as a national strategic priority and reaches across oil and gas, mining, timber, fisheries, and transportation. Its central instruction is to agencies: identify regulations adopted between January 20, 2021, and January 20, 2025, that restrict extraction on federal and state lands in Alaska, and reverse them.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum followed up on February 3, 2025, with Secretarial Order 3422, which revoked the Biden-era pause on Arctic Refuge leasing, reinstated Trump-era management plans for the National Petroleum Reserve, and gave subordinates fifteen days to submit action plans. The agency work that followed is where the executive order has actually taken effect.
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Coastal Plain
The 1.56-million-acre Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has been the most politically charged piece. Congress authorized oil and gas leasing there through the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, but the Biden administration halted leasing in 2021 and issued a restrictive drilling plan in 2024.
The executive order directed Interior to withdraw the Biden halt, cancel the 2024 supplemental environmental review, and reinstate the 2019 environmental impact statement and 2020 record of decision that opened the entire Coastal Plain. It also ordered denial of a pending request to establish an indigenous sacred site there. By October 2025, the Bureau of Land Management had issued a new record of decision reopening all 1.56 million acres and restoring leases previously held by the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, the state’s publicly owned economic development corporation.
The first lease sale under the new regime took place on June 5, 2026, as mandated by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Industry response was limited. Of 58 tracts offered, only five received bids, covering roughly 10 percent of the available acreage, and total high bids came to approximately $3.74 million. AIDEA won three tracts; HEX Energy LLC, an Anchorage-based natural gas company that operates in the Cook Inlet, won two. No major international oil company participated. A previous sale held in the final days of the Biden administration had drawn zero bids.
AIDEA, which holds nine leases dating back to a 2021 purchase, approved a $190 million budget in May 2026 for Coastal Plain development, with up to $175 million earmarked for seismic testing. The resolution does not authorize actual drilling.
National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska
The 23-million-acre National Petroleum Reserve in western Arctic Alaska received comparable treatment. The order directed Interior to rescind a May 2024 Biden-era rule that had imposed new environmental protections and to reinstate a 2020 management plan allowing broader leasing.
In November 2025, BLM issued a final rule formally rescinding the 2024 protections. The following month it approved an updated Integrated Activity Plan reopening nearly 82 percent of the reserve to oil and gas leasing, reversing Biden-era restrictions around Teshekpuk Lake and the Colville River. BLM also sought nominations for the first lease sale in the reserve since 2019.
On November 26, 2025, BLM approved a ConocoPhillips seismic and exploratory drilling program in the reserve. Conservation groups and the Iñupiat organization Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic sued in the U.S. District Court in Anchorage in December 2025, alleging the approval was rushed through with only a one-week public comment period and failed to meet legal requirements for mitigating harm. The court denied a preliminary injunction on January 27, 2026, but the underlying case remains pending.
The Ambler Road and Mining Access
On October 6, 2025, Trump signed an executive order approving the Ambler Road, a proposed 211-mile industrial road connecting the Dalton Highway to the Ambler Mining District in northwest Alaska. The district contains large deposits of copper, cobalt, zinc, gold, silver, and other minerals classified as critical to national security. BLM, the National Park Service, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers were directed to reissue permits, and approximately 23,600 acres were conveyed to the State of Alaska for the road corridor. The route crosses 26 miles of Gates of the Arctic National Park Kobuk Preserve.
The project is led by AIDEA. The federal government invested $35.6 million in Trilogy Metals, a mining exploration company active in the district, acquiring a 10 percent equity stake with warrants for an additional 7.5 percent. The road is projected to support 2,730 construction jobs and generate over $1.1 billion in state revenues from mining taxes, royalties, and related activity.
The Biden administration had issued a 2024 supplemental environmental review effectively halting the project. The Trump executive order placed a moratorium on that review and reinstated the 2020 joint record of decision that originally authorized the road.
Tongass National Forest and the Roadless Rule
The 16.7-million-acre Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska is the nation’s largest and has been a recurring battleground over the federal Roadless Rule, which prohibits road construction and industrial logging in designated wilderness-character areas. The first Trump administration exempted the entire Tongass from the rule in October 2020. The Biden administration restored the protections in January 2023.
Executive Order 14153 directed the Agriculture Department to place a temporary moratorium on the 2023 restoration and reinstate the 2020 exemption. In June 2025, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced the administration’s intent to rescind the Roadless Rule entirely, which would affect 58.5 million acres of Forest Service land nationwide but has its most immediate impact on the Tongass’s 9.37 million roadless acres. A draft environmental impact statement and proposed rule were expected in March 2026. In February 2026, the Forest Service also gave notice of its intent to revise the Tongass land management plan to prioritize increased timber production.
Critics note that the Forest Service faces an $8.4 billion backlog in road maintenance nationwide and that national forests produce less than 10 percent of the country’s timber. A Taxpayers for Common Sense analysis found that federal timber sales on the Tongass cost taxpayers roughly $2 billion over four decades.
Land Transfers and the Izembek Road
On May 5, 2026, Interior transferred approximately 1.4 million acres of federal land along the Dalton Highway Corridor to the State of Alaska, one of the largest single land conveyances in state history. The lands, north of the Yukon River and adjacent to the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, include proposed routes for the Ambler Road and the Alaska LNG pipeline. The transfer was enabled by Public Land Order 7966, issued by Secretary Burgum in February 2026, which revoked 1970s-era withdrawals originally created for the pipeline corridor. The conveyance was executed under the Alaska Statehood Act, bringing the state to more than 96 percent of its 105-million-acre entitlement.
Separately, on October 21, 2025, Interior and the King Cove Corporation signed a land exchange conveying 490 acres within the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge to the corporation for construction of a road between the remote community of King Cove and the Cold Bay airport. The corporation added 1,739 acres to the refuge and relinquished selection rights to 5,430 acres of high-value wetlands within it. The road is framed as a medical emergency necessity; between December 2013 and June 2025, King Cove residents required 217 medical evacuations, according to Interior’s decision document. A 2013 record of decision had rejected the road, finding it would cause “significant degradation of irreplaceable ecological resources,” but the 2025 decision concluded that non-road alternatives like ferries were “prohibitively costly and/or insufficiently dependable.”
Three lawsuits were filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska in November 2025, alleging the land exchange violates the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, the National Wildlife Refuge System Improvement Act, and the Wilderness Act. As of June 2026, plaintiffs warned construction could begin as early as August 2026.
Legislative Backing: The One Big Beautiful Bill Act
Many of the administration’s Alaska actions received legislative backing through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed July 4, 2025. The law codifies mandatory lease sale schedules that go well beyond what executive orders alone could guarantee:
- ANWR Coastal Plain: at least four area-wide lease sales over ten years, each offering a minimum of 400,000 acres.
- National Petroleum Reserve: five lease sales within ten years, following the terms of the 2020 Integrated Activity Plan.
- Cook Inlet (offshore): six lease sales through 2032, each offering at least one million acres, with sales scheduled annually starting in 2026.
The legislation shifts the revenue split for all three regions to 70 percent for Alaska and 30 percent for the federal government starting in 2034, a significant increase over existing arrangements. It reinstates lower federal royalty rates of 12.5 percent, reversing a 16.67 percent floor set by the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, and creates an “Energy Dominance Financing” program within the Department of Energy to support projects like the Alaska LNG pipeline. Senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska played a prominent role in shaping the Alaska provisions.
Who Is Suing, and Over What
The administration’s Alaska policies face litigation on multiple fronts:
- ANWR leasing: a 2020 lawsuit, amended in 2026, brought by the Natural Resources Defense Council, Center for Biological Diversity, and Friends of the Earth challenges Interior’s Coastal Plain leasing program under the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, and other statutes. Parallel suits involve the Gwich’in Steering Committee and the Native Village of Venetie Tribal Government. A February 2026 AIDEA press release indicated one lawsuit seeking to stop ANWR development was dismissed, though other challenges continue.
- NPR-A leasing plan: the Center for Biological Diversity and Friends of the Earth, represented by Earthjustice, restarted a paused 2020 lawsuit in February 2026, challenging the updated Integrated Activity Plan that reopened 18.5 million acres. The suit alleges Endangered Species Act violations tied to polar bears, migratory birds, and the Teshekpuk Lake caribou herd.
- ConocoPhillips NPR-A exploration: filed December 2025 in Anchorage; preliminary injunction denied January 2026; case continues.
- Izembek road: three lawsuits filed November 2025, with plaintiffs seeking a ruling by mid-July 2026 before potential construction begins.
- Dalton Corridor land transfer: environmental organizations have challenged the conveyance; Alaska has moved to dismiss on sovereign immunity grounds.
Impact on Alaska Native Communities
The sharpest opposition to the ANWR program has come from the Gwich’in Nation, whose communities in northeastern Alaska and northwestern Canada depend on the Porcupine Caribou herd for subsistence. The herd calves on the Coastal Plain, and the Gwich’in consider the area sacred, calling it Iizhik Gwats’an Gwandaii Goodlit, or “The Sacred Place Where Life Begins.” Gwich’in Steering Committee Executive Director Kristen Moreland said of the February 2026 call for lease nominations: “We condemn these actions, and encourage officials in the Trump administration to acknowledge and accept what we as Gwich’in know — the Arctic Refuge is no place for drilling.”
The order’s reach extends beyond the refuge. It directs Interior to review all guidance on taking Alaska Native lands into trust and to rescind BLM guidance on protecting subsistence resource values in the National Petroleum Reserve. Approximately 80 percent of Alaska Native villages are located within 50 miles of the 28 million acres of public land whose longstanding protections the administration has moved to weaken, and 74 percent of those lands are federally designated as priority subsistence areas. More than half of the federally recognized tribes in Alaska have called for maintaining full protections. The Native Village of Venetie Tribal Government, Arctic Village Council, and Venetie Village Council have been parties to litigation challenging ANWR development since 2020.