An order would presume hunting is allowed on Alaska's federal land

Roughly 92 million acres of federal land in Alaska would fall under a new presumption that hunting is allowed unless an agency can justify closing it, under an executive order President Trump signed Thursday.

Nothing changes yet. The order gives the secretaries of the Interior, Agriculture, War and Commerce 180 days to propose the rules that would carry it out. "We will apply a presumption of accessibility to federally managed lands," it states, while directing that access policy still preserve restrictions needed to protect wildlife or sensitive lands.

In Alaska the reach is mostly the Tongass and Chugach National Forests — together more than 21.9 million acres of National Forest System land, including about 14.7 million acres of inventoried roadless area — and the roughly 70 million surface acres the Bureau of Land Management says it administers in the state. National parks and monuments are excluded, with one narrow exception: Interior has 90 days to allow hunting of non-listed species at Castle Mountains and Craters of the Moon, two Lower 48 monuments.

The order never mentions Alaska, subsistence, tribes or rural residents.

That omission matters less than it might, because the protection governing most rural harvest isn't administrative. Since 1980, ANILCA has required that taking fish and wildlife on federal public lands for nonwasteful subsistence uses "shall be accorded priority" over other uses. That is a statute. The order is to be carried out consistent with applicable law and states that it creates no right enforceable in court. Undoing the subsistence priority takes Congress.

What the proposed rules would change is the default. Agencies can still close specific hunts on resource grounds, and they do — the Yakutat District Ranger closed part of this year's federal subsistence goat hunt in Unit 5A effective July 24. Under the order, a closure would need justification rather than being the starting point. Interior separately proposed in March aligning hunting regulations in Alaska's national preserves with state practices.

The 180-day proposals would also permit traditional lead ammunition and tackle, authorize assistive technology at hunting locations, prioritize voluntary easements, land exchanges and cooperative agreements, and allow access infrastructure. Shorter deadlines set a 60-day Forest Service review of high-demand river-access lotteries — to prioritize U.S. citizens and bar automatic computer entries — a 90-day Interior proposal on migratory game bird hunting authorization, and 90-day Labor and Education guidance on federal funding for school archery and hunter education.

Separately, the Agriculture Department has proposed rescinding the 2001 roadless rule, which bars road building and logging across those inventoried roadless acres, roughly 9.3 million of them in the Tongass plus roadless land in the Chugach. Comments had been due Sept. 21; the deadline was extended Sept. 11 and now closes Oct. 6.