“I am honored with the opportunity to lead an organization that has such a unique and important role in supporting Trust beneficiaries and the organizations that serve and support them,” says Wilson. “I look forward to working with the talented staff at the Trust Authority and the Trust Land Office who share my passion for improving the lives of Trust beneficiaries.”

Wilson grew up in Alaska and, in recent years, returned to the state following her medical career. She originally worked as a licensed pediatrician before advancing into leadership positions at Permanente Medical Group, including Executive Medical Director and President of The Southeast Permanente Medical Group in Atlanta. Wilson brings to the Trust extensive executive experience coupled with a thorough understanding of the systems of care that serve and support Trust beneficiaries.

One of the first Executive Orders from the Trump Whitehouse is to reverse environmental protections for federal lands in Alaska and hasten, expand, and encourage resource development.

Sec. 2.  Policy.  It is the policy of the United States to:

(a)  fully avail itself of Alaska’s vast lands and resources for the benefit of the Nation and the American citizens who call Alaska home;

(b)  efficiently and effectively maximize the development and production of the natural resources located on both Federal and State lands within Alaska;

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(c)  expedite the permitting and leasing of energy and natural resource projects in Alaska; and

(d)  prioritize the development of Alaska’s liquified natural gas (LNG) potential, including the sale and transportation of Alaskan LNG to other regions of the United States and allied nations within the Pacific region.

Trump appears eager to specifically negate all of President Biden’s conservation efforts in the state. It almost seems like a vendetta against Biden, as if he personally wants to wipe out any conservation efforts the former President enacted.

Trump’s order says: rescind, revoke, revise, amend, defer, or grant exemptions from any and all regulations, orders, guidance documents, policies, and any other similar agency actions that are inconsistent with the policy set forth in section 2 of this order, including but not limited to agency actions promulgated, issued, or adopted between January 20, 2021, and January 20, 2025;

OIL AND GAS DEVELOPMENT

Trump’s executive order rescinds any cancellation of oil and gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Trump orders the federal agencies to issue all permits, right-of-way permits, and easements necessary for the exploration, development, and production of oil and gas from leases within the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge;

However, Trump’s order goes well beyond the Arctic Refuge. He also wants to negate any protection for Coastal Plaine oil and gas leasing.

Trump also wants to expand oil development on the National Petroleum Reserve and to eliminate any special protected areas within the reserve.

Many Alaskan natives support the oil development proposals and other resource extraction in the state.

ROADS THROUGH WILDLANDS

AMBLER ROAD ACROSS SOUTHERN BROOKS RANGE

Trump also ordered the BLM to approve the Ambler Road corridor, which the BLM under Biden had rejected. This road would travel from the pipeline haul road (Dalton Highway) across the southern edge of the Brooks Range to access large copper deposits owned by Native Corporations in the headwaters of the Kobuk River.

The proposed road would cross the Gates of the Arctic NP and a number of Wild and Scenic Rivers. If the road is constructed, many fear this new access will increase the economic viability of other lands for potential mining and potential oil development.

IZEMBEK NATIONAL WILDLIFE ROAD THROUGH WILDERNESS

Trump orders that the proposed road across designated wilderness in the Izembek NWR be permitted to go forward. This road was opposed by the Obama and Clinton administrations, as well as Jimmy Carter who was President when the original Izembek Refuge was established.

Native people in the village of King Cove desire land access to the Cold Bay airstrip, providing year-round air travel.

This proposal negates the Wilderness Act and has much larger implications than this single road.

During the first Trump administration, the road proposal was approved, The Biden Administration under Sec of Interior Haaland also approved of the road, likely because Aleuts in King Cove also supported the road.

If the road is allowed to go forward across designated wilderness, then any Sec. of Interior could approve roads across any designated wilderness.

HUNTING AND TRAPPING

To its credit, the Biden administration tried to alter the worse hunting and trapping behavior permitted in National Park Preserves. While hunting and trapping are permitted in national preserves, the Biden ban outlawed baiting bears, killing wolf pups in dens, and shooting swimming caribou that were crossing rivers.

These restrictions were opposed by many Alaskans, including the Alaska Federal of Natives, who claimed such a ban interfered with their traditional subsistence activities.

Shooting caribou swimming in rivers will again be legal due to Trump’s Executive Order. Photo George Wuerthner

Trump directs the National Park Service to rescind these rules.

Another provision of the Executive Order directs federal agencies to make all federal lands where hunting and trapping occur consistent with state land rules.

For instance, there has been legal debate over wolf trapping along the border of Denali National Park, with the NPS arguing that wolves should be protected while the state argues that wolf trapping is legal.

NAVIGABLE WATERWAYS

Trump ordered that the control of waterways, even in nationally protected lands like national parks or on Wild and Scenic Rivers, be “restored” to state authority.

This issue stems from a lawsuit about who controls “submerged lands” across Alaska. It stems from a lawsuit filed in 2007 dealing with a hunter who used a hovercraft to hunt moose on the Nation River.

The NPS bans hovercraft in the National Preserve. The state argues that it should control uses on these lands, including mining, use of motorized access, and other related issues.

ROADLESS LANDS

The Trump Executive Order places a “temporary moratorium on all activities and privileges authorized by the final rule and record of decision entitled “Special Areas; Roadless Area Conservation; National Forest System Lands in Alaska.”

This would reverse a restriction on logging and roadbuilding in Alaskan roadless lands implemented by the Biden administration in 2023 and reinstate the rule opening up these lands to development enacted during the first Trump administration.

It primarily affects the Tongass and Chugach National Forests in Alaska, which hold substantial amounts of carbon in old-growth forests and where there are substantial roadless lands that would qualify for wilderness designation.

The rest of the order has language exhorting federal agencies to avoid impeding or hindering any development in Alaska.

No doubt, lawsuits will be filed to stop or slow the implementation of these rules, and we can hope future administrations will recognize the value of Alaska’s wildlands.

In some cases, economic considerations may thwart Trump’s agenda. For example, several oil lease sales were authorized on the coastal plain of the Arctic Wildlife Refuge in 2024, but there were no bids.

The same is true for logging operations on the Tongass National Forest. Without federal subsidies, the cost of road construction is exorbitant, and the value of the timber doesn’t cover these costs.

Nevertheless, I suspect Trump would argue expanding resource exploitation in Alaska is in the national interest, and if subsidies are necessary to implement resource extraction, his administration will find a way to fund it.

Anchorage attorneys and advocates are preparing local immigrants without citizenship for a Trump administration that, in its first few hours on Monday, pushed ahead sweeping actions on immigration.

Under former President Joe Biden, immigration surged to its highest in American history, averaging about 2 million people per year, according to the Congressional Budget Office. In an executive order on Monday, President Donald Trump declared a national emergency at the southern border to address what the order called a “catastrophic immigration crisis.”

“There’s a lot of fear,” said Anchorage immigration attorney Lara Nations. “Having information is powerful, and empowers people take control of their own life, and helps address some of the fear.”

Local advocates say they have set out to meet what they say is a profound need among immigrant communities: the need for information.

In Alaska, about 8% of the state’s total population is foreign-born — close to 60,000 people, according to 2023 Census Bureau statistics. That population includes people with a wide range of statuses, including those who reside in the U.S. both lawfully and unlawfully. It includes: those who have become citizens through naturalization, green-card holders on a path to citizenship, a variety of visa holders, those with temporary protected status, refugees and asylees who have fled war or persecution in their home nations, and those without documentation, according to the Census Bureau.

Some of those immigrants may be vulnerable to deportation in an administration that’s proven unfriendly to them, said American Civil Liberties Union of Alaska executive director Mara Kimmel, referencing Haitian immigrants with legal status in Springfield, Ohio, who Trump has repeatedly called “illegal” and whose status he’s threatened to revoke.

But it’s hard to say exactly who will be at risk of deportation, or how many, she said.

That’s, in part, because it’s unclear which populations the Trump administration is prioritizing taking action against.

Trump campaigned on the mass deportation of millions of unauthorized immigrants.

But many of the people without permanent status in the United States have permission to be here, said Nations.

That includes 2.5 million asylum-seekers awaiting their claims, hundreds of thousands of people granted humanitarian parole from countries like Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Ukraine and Afghanistan, and the half-million undocumented people brought to the U.S. as children who are protected under an Obama-era law, according to the Pew Research Center and National Immigration Forum.

Also, it’s not clear whether some of the new policies will survive the courts. On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order to end birthright citizenship in a move that’s already been challenged in federal court, then blocked by a federal judge on Thursday. In a statement this week, Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor said he didn’t have a position on whether Alaska may defend or oppose the order, but said that “it is important to address the crisis at the border and stem the tide of illegal immigration.”

“The truth is, we just don’t know (what will happen),” Kimmel said of immigration under the new presidency. “And so my big message in all of this is, if people are prepared and know their rights, that’s their best defense.”

Since December, the ACLU of Alaska has provided advice and information at two information sessions aimed at different populations in the state. In December, the group was invited to present on knowing your rights as a non-citizen for a Pacific Islander audience at an Anchorage gathering. Last week, Kimmel and her staff gave the same presentation to a different group in Anchorage, in partnership with Spanish-speaking immigration attorneys Lara Nation and Nicolás Olano of Nations Law Group to the Latino community.

The idea was to give noncitizens practical advice about how to interact with local police and immigration police, should enforcement crackdowns become more commonplace, said Olano, a U.S. citizen who immigrated from Colombia in 1999.

Attorneys advised attendees on how to respond to escalating scenarios, ranging from routine traffic stops, to an immigration police officer showing up at your door or place of work, to an arrest. ACLU recorded the event and plans to send to Latino communities throughout the state.

The purpose is to help people “realize how immigration police (can) approach them, on a practical level, without making it so abstract,” Olano said. “Like, ‘hey, (they could) show up at your house. They (could) stop you when you’re leaving your house, so they avoid the issues of needing a warrant to get in there.’ I think that we gave practical tools to people to know what to expect, and also how to protect their rights.”

If noncitizens can take one piece of advice on exercising their civil rights, Olano said, it’s this:

“Just be quiet and ask for a lawyer,” he said.

Nations advises undocumented or under-documented people contact an immigration attorney to get “accurate immigration advice … about their specific situation.”

The U.S. Constitution affords noncitizens, including undocumented immigrants, virtually the same rights as citizens, Olano said. That includes the right to due process, the right to remain silent, and the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure, according to the ACLU.

State police cannot ask a person for their immigration status in Alaska, but the same is not true for federal agents such as Customs and Border Protection at an airport or a border crossing, or Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.

“That doesn’t mean that you have to answer them,” Olano said. “They can ask you…and you can say, ‘I’m not talking without a lawyer.’”

In all scenarios, attorneys advise people dealing with any law enforcement officer or federal agent to remain calm and polite, and not to run away, lie, or give false documents.

They are also suggesting that families make emergency plans for themselves, and particularly their children, in the event a parent is detained, arrested, or deported.

A longtime advocate for the Latino community, Lina Mariscol, stressed the importance of emergency plans in that situation, including child care and power of attorney for children.

“Better safe than sorry,” said Mariscol, who immigrated from Mexico in 1983, and served as the honorary consulate of Mexico in Anchorage from 2000 through 2007 (the Mexican consulate in Anchorage closed in 2015). “It’s kind of like an advance directive. If you need it right now, it’s already too late.”

In an emailed statement this week, Alaska Republican U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan said he supported the president’s declaration of a national emergency at the southern border, and emphasized a need for legal migration.

Fellow Alaska Republican U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski in a Thursday interview said that while some of Trump’s new orders are “sending out a message…a very clear message, about where they wish to head on certain policies…the details of implementation of them are not clearly articulated.” In regards to birthright citizenship, Murkowski said the 14th amendment has “a long history, decades and decades, where that has been respected.”

Alaska Republican U.S. Rep. Nick Begich did not respond to requests for comment.

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