The Dalton Highway is the sole artery connecting Alaska’s road system with its Arctic Coast. The 414-mile highway parallels the trans-Alaska oil pipeline and carries semis to and from the oilfields at its northern terminus.
East and west of the Dalton, the landscape remains largely unbroken — black spruce hills rising into mountains and rolling into tundra. This vast, intact habitat sequesters carbon and supports large caribou herds, salmon, moose and bear. Dozens of remote communities — including Koyukon, Iñupiat and Gwich’in villages — live in relationship with these animals and rely on them for food.
Now, a change in the highway corridor’s ownership threatens all that the surrounding landscape sustains.
Before the road and pipeline were built in the mid-1970s, the Interior secretary set aside federal land for their route and blocked other uses that could conflict with their construction via Public Land Orders 5150 and 5180. The orders also prevented transferring the land to the state or to Alaska Native corporations. As federal land, the corridor remained under federal laws that protect historic sites and rural subsistence hunters and fishers. Federal laws also require proposed projects to undergo public environmental review and tribal consultation.
In February, however, the Trump administration rescinded both orders from 2.1 million acres of Bureau of Land Management property in the corridor north of the Yukon River. The state, which was still owed 5 million acres under its statehood act, claimed two-thirds of it. Once land is in state hands, hunting and access rights change. There are fewer layers of oversight, and challenging proposed projects is riskier, because in state court the loser pays legal fees.
“This is an incredibly destabilizing moment,” said historian Philip Wight, co-author of a 2024 paper about Dalton Highway corridor development. A lawsuit to restore the orders was partially dismissed, but environmental groups appealed on Aug. 11. Whatever the outcome, activists resolve to keep fighting.
“The first, last, and only defense against climate crisis is intact ecosystems,” said April Monroe, Native lands manager for the Tanana Chiefs Conference, a consortium of 42 tribal nations and villages that opposed rescinding the orders. “The fate of the world rests on whether they can be protected.”
“The first, last, and only defense against climate crisis is intact ecosystems. The fate of the world rests on whether they can be protected.”
New roads and mines
Alaska wants to develop access north, east and west from the Dalton, connecting the highway to state lands and mineral resources. The transfer includes land that the controversial Ambler Road, a proposed private industrial highway, must cross. The new route would enable mining on claims spanning the southern Brooks Range.
Disrupted migration and spawning
Caribou are sensitive to habitat fragmentation, and the Western Arctic herd has declined 75% since 2003. Studies suggest the Ambler Road could deflect or delay the herd’s fall migration, already creeping later due to climate change. The road would also cross thousands of waterways and facilitate mining, threatening struggling salmon runs, sheefish and whitefish.
Destabilized permafrost
The Ambler Road and associated development would cross permafrost, hastening its thaw. This would release sediment and minerals into waterways, along with metals that harm fish. It could also cause land subsidence and release vast stores of carbon from the frozen soil as greenhouse gases.
Fossil fuel extraction
By consolidating the corridor’s ownership in state hands, the transfer may simplify construction of a proposed 800-mile natural gas pipeline that would parallel the Dalton on its way to connect North Slope deposits to a proposed Kenai Peninsula export terminal. The up-to-$70 billion price tag remains a major obstacle, but even small wins over decades improve a megaproject’s prospects. If built, the pipeline would increase Arctic drilling and related development, possibly within the Porcupine caribou herd’s embattled calving grounds.
Compromised food security
Habitat fragmentation hinders food access in a region where residents get their protein from the landscape. Rural residents — both Alaska Native and non-Native — also lose priority hunting and fishing rights when land is transferred out of federal hands. In Wiseman, for example, instead of being allowed one moose each winter on nearby land, local hunters must now either travel to federal land or compete for limited tags in a lottery open to all Alaskans as well as to guides serving out-of-state clients.
Expanding disturbance
Until now, locals hunting or collecting firewood were among the only users allowed to snowmobile within five miles of the Dalton, provided they were on federal land. Once ownership shifts to the state, they lose that exception. So Alaska will allow snowmobile travel on 10 historic routes for residents to access adjacent federal lands, and it is working on additional motorized easements. But since these routes and easements will be open to all Alaskans, pressure on land and wildlife will increase.
Sources: Bureau of Land Management, State of Alaska, Center for Biological Diversity, NANA Regional Corporation, University of Alaska, Western Arctic Caribou Herd Working Group. Features are approximate, stylized and not comprehensive.
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This article appeared in the September 2026 print edition of the magazine with the headline “Arctic Alaska at a crossroads.”
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