OPINION: Ambler Road is a pathway to a better future

Recently, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) announced that it won’t allow the Ambler Road to be built. Now, more than ever, I am worried about the future for my community and the communities across Alaska.

The Ambler Road is a pathway to a future full of opportunities for my people. And we need the opportunities that this road would provide now more than ever. I have lived in the region that would be serviced by the Ambler Road for my entire life. The BLM says this project will hurt the environment and the subsistence lifestyles that Alaska Native communities like mine depend on to survive. This is a common view of out-of-state activists and bureaucrats who don’t understand rural Alaska.

Life in Interior Alaska is hard. We have some of the harshest weather on earth and pay some of the highest costs anywhere in the United States for goods we need to survive, including food and fuel. There is no road connectivity to most of our communities, and goods must be flown into our villages at great expense to those who live here. The cost of building a small two-bedroom home in Allakaket can cost upward of $650,000. Keep in mind that these homes do not have flush toilets or running water. We need to build out our infrastructure to be able to have a better quality of life for our people, and the Ambler Road will allow that to happen. It is a constant struggle here just to keep our homes warm in the winter. A load of firewood costs $80. Heating oil is $8 per gallon. And fuel to keep our snow machines and four-wheelers running is $11.50 per gallon. Many rural Alaskans spend half of their yearly income on fuel. We have to work to earn money to survive, but jobs are hard to come by in rural Alaska.

In my region, the unemployment rate is 18%, and 61% of families live below the poverty line. The lack of jobs is forcing many of our young people to leave our region in search of work. They often don’t come back. Building the Ambler Road will create local jobs in construction and eventually in the mines themselves. Those mines will produce critical minerals that are needed for clean energy and national defense — as well as generate revenues that will help sustain our schools and provide community services. We know this will happen because we have seen the Red Dog Mine provide crucial jobs and revenue in Northwest Alaska for more than three decades — while also safely producing minerals. When that mine closes in the next decade, unemployment in rural Alaska will only get worse.

The Ambler Road would also help sustain our customary and traditional practices and lifestyles. This remains incredibly important to our people but can be maintained only if we have the equipment and tools to practice it. We need jobs to pay for boats, guns, ammunition, fuel, snowmachines and four-wheelers. BLM’s decision will only make it harder for us to continue our ways. We should not be influenced by outsiders who don’t know the struggles our communities face. They don’t know what it’s like to struggle to heat our homes, fill our freezers, build homes, and find opportunities for training and employment. They don’t feel the pain when our young people have to move hundreds of miles away just to find work and survive. They don’t understand that the Ambler Road will create jobs for us. That it will provide economic growth and stability, and lower the cost of shipping goods to our region and finally allow us to build-out the infrastructure that nearly all Americans enjoy and take for granted.

Thank you to our congressional delegation for continuing to fight for us to build the Ambler Road. I hope the BLM will reconsider their decision and allow this road to be built. Our future depends on it.

Stanley Ned is an elder and former chief from Allakaket.

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