President Donald Trump's expansive executive order aimed at boosting oil and gas drilling, mining and logging in Alaska is being cheered by state political leaders who see new fossil fuel development as critical to Alaska's economic future and criticized by environmental groups that see the proposals as worrying in the face of a warming climate.
The order, signed on Trump's first day in office Monday, is consistent with a wish list submitted by Alaska Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy shortly after Trump's election. It seeks, among other things, to open to oil and gas drilling an area of the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge considered sacred to the Indigenous Gwich'in, undo limits imposed by the Biden administration on drilling activity in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska on the North Slope and reverse restrictions on logging and road-building in a temperate rainforest that provides habitat for wolves, bears and salmon.
