- Details
- By Chez Oxendine
- Energy | Environment
A nonprofit group in Nuiqsut has sued to block the Interior Department from canceling a conservation right‑of‑way created to protect the Teshekpuk Caribou Herd during development of the Willow oil project.
Nuiqsut Trilateral Inc. filed the complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The group represents the City of Nuiqsut, the Native Village of Nuiqsut and Kuukpik Corporation.
The right‑of‑way, issued by the Bureau of Land Management in 2024, covered about one million acres in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska. It barred new leasing and surface development in the area unless NTI agreed in writing that a proposal’s benefits outweighed impacts to the herd.
Interior Deputy Secretary Katharine MacGregor canceled the right‑of‑way on Dec. 19, saying the Naval Petroleum Reserves Production Act does not authorize rights‑of‑way intended to restrict oil and gas activity.
NTI argues that the cancellation violates federal law and leaves no mechanism to satisfy the protections federal courts cited when upholding the Willow project. The lawsuit says the herd is essential to subsistence practices in Nuiqsut.
“The future of Nuiqsut, its people and their way of life depends on the health of the Teshekpuk Caribou Herd,” the lawsuit says.
NTI is seeking declaratory and injunctive relief to restore the right‑of‑way.
Nuiqsut has secured economic benefits from oil development, including jobs and infrastructure improvements. But residents have lost traditional hunting grounds as infrastructure spreads across the tundra, and caribou no longer appear in areas where they once came by the thousands.
