The U.S. Interior Department on Friday essentially rejected the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority’s proposal to build the Ambler Road, a 211-mile industrial road that would have cut through Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve to access copper and zinc deposits in Northwest Alaska.

The Interior’s Bureau of Land Management chose a “no action” option in its environmental analysis, effectively ensuring AIDEA would not receive a right-of-way to build the road across federal lands. The Biden administration said the road, also known as the Ambler Access Project, would cause irreparable damage to wildlife including caribou, which many local people rely on for food.

The administration also announced stronger protections for 13 million acres inside the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, a vast swath of oil-rich — but environmentally sensitive — federal land in the Arctic.

Both Alaska senators, Republicans Dan Sullivan and Lisa Murkowski expressed outrage even before the decisions were formally announced. They said the decisions hamper the state’s economy and domestic resource development.

“It’s more than a one-two punch to Alaska. When you take off access to our resources, when you say you cannot drill, you cannot produce, you cannot explore,” said Murkowski in a press conference on Thursday. “This is the energy insecurity that we’re talking about.”

Environmentalists and some Indigenous rights groups meanwhile, applauded the decisions.

“The regulations announced today will benefit the Western Arctic’s wildlife and subsistence resources and the Indigenous communities that depend on them, as well as provide greater resilience against climate change,” said Meda DeWitt, the Wilderness Society’s interim state director. “This rule is good news for everyone who cares about America’s public lands.”

RELATED: Murkowski and Sullivan rail at federal moves to block Ambler Road and preserve parts of NPR-A

JUNEAU, Alaska — The Biden administration said Friday it will restrict new oil and gas leasing on 13 million acres (5.3 million hectares) of a federal petroleum reserve in Alaska to help protect wildlife such as caribou and polar bears as the Arctic continues to warm.

The decision — part of an ongoing, yearslong fight over whether and how to develop the vast oil resources in the state — finalizes protections first proposed last year as the Biden administration prepared to approve the controversial Willow oil project.

The approval of Willow drew fury from environmentalists, who said the large oil project violated Biden’s pledge to combat climate change. Friday’s decision also cements an earlier plan that called for closing nearly half the reserve to oil and gas leasing.

A group of Republican lawmakers, led by Alaska U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, jumped out ahead of Friday’s announcement about drilling limitations in the National Petroleum-Reserve Alaska even before it was publicly announced. Sullivan called it an “illegal” attack on the state’s economic lifeblood, and predicted lawsuits.

“It’s more than a one-two punch to Alaska, because when you take off access to our resources, when you say you cannot drill, you cannot produce, you cannot explore, you cannot move it — this is the energy insecurity that we’re talking about,” Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski said.

The decision by the Interior Department doesn’t change the terms of existing leases in the reserve or affect currently authorized operations, including Willow.

In an olive branch to environmentalists, the Biden administration also Friday recommended the rejection of a state corporation’s application related to a proposed 210-mile (338-kilometer) road in the northwest part of the state to allow mining of critical mineral deposits, including including copper, cobalt, zinc, silver and gold. There are no mining proposals or current mines in the area, however, and the proposed funding model for the Ambler Road project is speculative, the Interior Department said in a statement.

Sullivan accused the administration of undermining U.S. national security interests with both decisions. Alaska political leaders have long accused the Biden administration of harming the state with decisions limiting the development of oil and gas, minerals and timber.

President “Joe Biden is fine with our adversaries producing energy and dominating the world’s critical minerals while shutting down our own in America, as long as the far-left radicals he feels are key to his reelection are satisfied,” Sullivan said Thursday at a Capitol news conference with 10 other GOP senators. “What a dangerous world this president has created.”

Biden defended his decision regarding the petroleum reserve.

Alaska’s “majestic and rugged lands and waters are among the most remarkable and healthy landscapes in the world,” are critical to Alaska Native communities and “demand our protection,” he said in a statement.

Nagruk Harcharek, president of Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat, a group whose members include leaders from across much of Alaska’s North Slope region, has been critical of the administration’s approach. The group’s board of directors previously passed a resolution opposing the administration’s plans for the reserve.

The petroleum reserve — about 100 miles (161 kilometers) west of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge — is home to caribou and polar bears and provides habitat for millions of migrating birds. It was set aside around a century ago as an emergency oil source for the U.S. Navy, but since the 1970s has been overseen by the U.S. Interior Department. There has been ongoing, longstanding debate over where development should occur.

Most existing leases in the petroleum reserve are clustered in an area that’s considered to have high development potential, according to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which falls under the Interior Department. The development potential in other parts of the reserve is lower, the agency said.

The rules announced Friday would place restrictions on future leasing and industrial development in areas designated as special for their wildlife, subsistence or other values and call for the agency to evaluate regularly whether to designate new special areas or bolster protections in those areas. The agency cited as a rationale the rapidly changing conditions in the Arctic due to climate change, including melting permafrost and changes in plant life and wildlife corridors.

Environmentalists were pleased.

“This huge, wild place will be able to remain wild,” Ellen Montgomery of Environment America Research & Policy Center said.

Jeremy Lieb, an attorney with Earthjustice, said the administration had taken an important step to protect the climate with the latest decision. Earthjustice is involved in litigation currently before a federal appeals court that seeks to overturn Willow’s approval.

A decision in that case is pending.

Alaska last year broke a grim record: More people in the state died from an opioid overdose in 2023 than any previous year, the Alaska Department of Health reported.

Also, Alaska’s spike in overdose deaths between November 2022 and November 2023 was the highest year-to-year increase in the nation, according to preliminary data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The state saw a nearly 40% increase in deaths in 2023 compared to the previous year — the vast majority due to fentanyl, the highly potent synthetic opioid that’s ravaged the state. There were 342 fatal overdoses reported in 2023.

“This was a heartbreaking, historical high for the state of Alaska,” Lindsey Kato, director of the Alaska Division of Public Health, said Thursday.

She attributed the rise to increased prevalence of fentanyl in the drug supply as part of a deadly, recent wave in the Western U.S. that followed a similar spike on the East Coast.

After Alaska, Oregon and Washington reported the second- and third-highest increases in overdose deaths in the nation between November 2022 and November 2023, CDC data found.

Alaska’s overdose deaths have been high for several years: In 2022, 247 fatal drug overdoses occurred in Alaska, down from 255 in 2021, with fentanyl responsible for the majority of those deaths.

Alaska is “just now just seeing the real implications of fentanyl consistently in our illicit drug supply,” Kato said.

Fentanyl is popular because it’s cheap and produces a strong high. It’s easy to overdose on because of its extreme potency — it’s 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine. It is sold either as pills or added to street drugs like cocaine, meth and heroin.

Kato said Alaska’s prolonged surge in overdose deaths last year hit Anchorage the hardest — and that Alaska Native men between the ages of 35 and 45 saw the highest death rate.

She said that she had also anecdotally heard of a rise in emergency department visits related to opioid overdoses, and that the state would have additional data to share soon.

She said many of the overdoses involved more than one drug, with methamphetamines at the top of the list.

Alaskans involved in substance abuse treatment and prevention say that a focus has been on disseminating fentanyl test strips, as well as training on the use of naloxone, a nasal spray that can be used to treat a known or suspected opioid overdose.

Last year, the state’s Project HOPE distributed over 46,000 free naloxone kits, Kato said. The reversal drug is also available over-the-counter in most pharmacies for around $45, she said.

“Without those (kits) it’s hard to know how many overdose deaths would have occurred,” she said.

Kato said she was hopeful about the prevention efforts ongoing in the state.

[Swap funds or add services? Government use of opioid settlement cash sparks strong disagreements.]

Alaska is expected to receive around $58 million in national opioid settlement funds over the next two decades. Around $3 million of those funds are now available for nonprofits and local governments to apply to support opioid remediation strategies across the state, the department said Thursday.

More information about applying to the program was available on the department’s website.

Health officials say that Alaskans should not use more than the prescribed amount of a prescription opioid. Officials also say Alaskans shouldn’t mix opioids with alcohol, methamphetamines or cocaine, and should test any illicit substance for fentanyl using test strips.

Officials also recommend that Alaskans check in on friends or loved ones who use drugs regularly, and to always carry naloxone, which has been linked to a 93% survival rate for those experiencing overdoses.

If a person has overdosed, the person responding should call 911, administer CPR and then naloxone.

For a list of organizations that can distribute naloxone kits and fentanyl testing strips, click here or email projectHOPE@alaska.gov. To access help with treatment options in Alaska, call 988.

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