President Trump moved quickly to remove Biden administration blocks to mining, energy development, and hunting in Alaska/NPS file

The partisan divide over natural resource protections took a hard shift to the right with the inauguration of President Trump, who reversed moves the Biden administration took to protect natural resources in Alaska from mining and energy development and hunting bears with baits,

With an executive order the Republican granted most, if not all, of the requests made by Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy made in December, removing a block on a 211-mile road through wilderness and parts of Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve to reach a copper deposit at Ambler; reversing a National Park Service ban on baiting of bears to bring them within range of hunters; opening of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oilfield development, and; moving to remove the roadless rule that blocks roads from being built in areas of the Tongas National Forest, among other reversals.

"The State of Alaska holds an abundant and largely untapped supply of natural resources including, among others, energy, mineral, timber, and seafood," Trump wrote in the order signed Monday. "Unlocking this bounty of natural wealth will raise the prosperity of our citizens while helping to enhance our nation’s economic and national security for generations to come.

"... Unleashing this opportunity, however, requires an immediate end to the assault on Alaska’s sovereignty and its ability to responsibly develop these resources for the benefit of the Nation.  It is, therefore, imperative to immediately reverse the punitive restrictions implemented by the previous administration that specifically target resource development on both State and Federal lands in Alaska."

Among the critics of the president's order was Earthjustice, a nonprofit law firm that represents environmental interests.

"Alaska is warming four times faster than the rest of the planet, a trend that is wreaking havoc on communities, ecosystems, fish, wildlife, and ways of life that depend on healthy lands and waters,” said Carole Holley, Earthjustice’s managing attorney for the Alaska Office. “That reality requires us to create economic opportunities that respect the lands and people of Alaska and benefit all. The Trump administration’s agenda for Alaska would destroy valuable habitats and subsistence hunting and fishing grounds while furthering the climate crisis. Earthjustice and its clients will not stand idly by while Trump once again forces a harmful industry-driven agenda on our state for political gain and the benefit of a wealthy few.”

At the Sierra Club, Athan Manuel, director of organization's Lands Protection Program, said Trump's efforts to lift the roadless rule on the Tsongas National Forest is a move "to give it away to corporate interests. That means giving up our clean air and clean water to pad the bottom lines of big timber companies. These actions put America’s wettest and wildest national forest at risk, and could be an opening salvo against forests across the country. Trump wants to chop down the legacy we leave future generations.”

Trump's efforts to "unleash" fossil fuel production "means letting fossil fuels totally rule over our public lands and overshadow all other uses," Lydia Weiss, senior director for government relations for The Wilderness Society, said late Monday. "That isn’t what most people want. We cannot lift communities up and improve people’s lives by worsening climate change, drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or making it cheaper and easier to pollute our air and water.

"... America’s public lands are part of what makes us great as a nation. They are a key part of our shared heritage and can unite us when so much is threatening to tear us apart," she added. "Today’s actions are a dire threat to this common ground. We depend on public lands as places to hunt, hike and play; havens for hallowed ancestral and cultural sites; and refuge for threatened wildlife. People in this country want wild nature protected and passed down to future generations in good shape. We will stand arm-in-arm with congressional champions and others to ensure that happens.”