Backcountry Conversations - Ep. 3: Floating the Koyukuk Before the Ambler Road

This week on Backcountry Conversations, host Trey Curtiss is joined by two BHA staffers: Mary Glaves, BHA's Alaska Program Manager, and Jack Polentes, who works on federal policy out of Washington, D.C. They recently joined members of BHA's Alaska chapter on a five-day, roughly 53-mile float down the Middle Fork of the Koyukuk River to document a landscape at the center of one of Alaska's biggest conservation fights: the proposed Ambler Industrial Road. The 211-mile, gated industrial road would run west from the Dalton Highway to the Ambler mining district, crossing 11 major rivers and requiring more than 2,900 culverts across permafrost. Mary and Jack describe the drive north from Fairbanks, a moving launch ceremony on the river, finding safe gravel-bar camps during a a 24-hour rainstorm that flooded the river, and the signs of development they saw along the way, including 37 helicopters in five days, freshly cut landing zones near a proposed bridge site, and a reactivated mining camp. The conversation also covers what they heard from the people who live, work, and hunt in the region, including trappers and residents in Bettles and Evansville, a longtime big-game guide, and even a career mining surveyor who called the project "in the wrong place." Their concerns range from disrupted moose hunting and risks to bush-plane traffic to the road's lack of public access and a proposed hunting and trapping ban along the corridor. Jack contrasts these on-the-ground views with the conversation in Washington, D.C., where he sees a wide disconnect. Both guests explain why this corner of the Brooks Range deserves national attention and how listeners can stay informed and speak up, including through the Hunters & Anglers for the Brooks Range coalition and by taking action today at BHA's Safeguard the Brooks Range campaign.