An Alaska Native nonprofit is suing the Interior Department for rescinding a village’s ability to protect and access a key caribou herd for subsistence hunting in the National Petroleum Reserve.
Nuiqsut Trilateral says Interior’s Bureau of Land Management improperly revoked the 1 million acre right-of-way as the Trump administration seeks to expand fossil fuel drilling in the North Slope. The nonprofit corporation comprises the city and tribal government of Native village Nuiqsut, as well as the Kuukpik Corporation, an Alaska Native corporation.
The nonprofit said BLM notified it of the move in a letter last month. The agency’s decision “jeopardizes decades of collaboration with local communities and is unlawful several times over,” Nuiqsut Trilateral told a federal district court in Washington in a filing Wednesday.
The nonprofit is asking the D.C. district court to issue an injunction blocking the Trump’s administration’s revocation of the right-of-way.
