Recognizing Southeast Alaska as a mining district
Published 1:30 am Thursday, March 12, 2026
Many Alaskans and folks Outside, including in Congress, do not realize that the Tongass National Forest is a Volcanic Mass Sulfide area the size of West Virginia and, accordingly, a major Alaska mining district. Patricia Roppel’s 1991 book, “Fortunes from the Earth,” catalogues over 120 legacy non-gold mines (copper, zinc, barite) throughout Southeast Alaska that were mined from the 1890s forward. The legacy gold mines throughout the Region (like the AJ and Treadwell mines) increase that number.
The Forest Service’s 2008 Tongass Land Management Plan Amendment estimated the values of discovered and undiscovered minerals on the Tongass as follows: discovered minerals: $37.1 billion (expressed as 1988 dollars) in the 1990 U.S. Bureau of Mines study, and undiscovered minerals: $28.3 billion (expressed as 1988 dollars).
I applaud Randy Ruaro, executive director of the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, for organizing and holding a meeting on Dec. 19 to take a hard look at the Tongass as a mining district. The meeting participants heard from multiple technical experts about new technologies for extracting minerals from ore. These technologies hold the potential of being less expensive and more environmentally friendly than current extraction techniques. The speakers discussed applying these technologies to legacy mines in the Tongass as a means of cleaning them up and obtaining value by processing the ore at a central site. AIDEA’s plan should be aggressively executed because it will result in increased mining in Southeast Alaska.
AIDEA’s plan works hand in glove with the Dunleavy administration’s equally important efforts to obtain a legislative exemption for the Tongass from the 2001 Roadless Rule. In an Oct. 27 letter to the president, the governor correctly pointed out that the Roadless Rule remains in effect on the Tongass today due to a stay of the state’s litigation against Biden’s 2023 reimposition while the current administration’s 2025 nationwide rulemaking goes forward. The nationwide rulemaking is scheduled to be completed in the fall of 2026. The governor is rightly concerned that the litigation and appeals that will follow completion of the rulemaking could last beyond the Trump administration’s term and be rescinded again.
The governor explained: “We have water access to the archipelago of islands that make up the Tongass. We just need the certainty of road access to move drills and heavy equipment across the beach into the interior of those islands to access the mineral deposits. Legislation to make that happen would provide the certainty that investors need to fund the access to critical and rare earth minerals so important to America’s national security.”
On Dec. 19 the Resource Development Corporation sent a letter to Alaska’s Congressional delegation asking its members to support the governor’s request for a legislative exemption from the rule.
The governor and RDC are right. It takes 15 to 20 years to explore and develop a mine. A legislative exemption is needed to provide investors with confidence that the rules will not be constantly changing depending upon which administration holds office.
The ping-pong effect of attempting to exempt the Tongass through rulemaking has created uncertainty in the investment community. For example, the first Trump administration exempted the Tongass from the Roadless Rule through rulemaking on October 29, 2020. The Biden administration signed Executive Order 13990 on January 20, 2021, directing the U.S. Department of Agriculture to review the Trump I Exemption. On June 11, 2021, USDA announced that it would repeal the Trump I Exemption through rulemaking, which it completed in January 2023. President Trump returned the favor on January 21, 2025, in paragraph 3(c) of Executive Order 14153, “Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential.”
The AIDEA and Dunleavy initiatives should be aggressively followed up by the state and governor with the president and with the delegation because the Tongass National Forest is the most accessible of the mining districts in Alaska and could support exploration and development the soonest. We just need to obtain a more permanent exemption from the Roadless Rule than can be obtained from rulemaking. More mines in Southeast could help offset the anticipated decline in the state’s revenue. It could also help offset the decline in working age adults and their families in Southeast Alaska.
Frank H. Murkowski is a former U.S. senator and Alaska governor.
