State proposes giving North Slope Borough 320 acres in the Brooks Range foothills

The Alaska Department of Natural Resources proposed Wednesday giving the North Slope Borough about 320 acres in the Brooks Range foothills, part of the state land the borough has been entitled to since 1972. Fish and Game didn't object but says caribou migrate through the area and spend the winter there.

It is the second borough land claim the department has acted on in a week. On Oct. 22, it proposed giving the borough 583 acres in the Kuparuk River oil field while keeping land that holds field roads, pipelines and part of an operations center.

Under state law, boroughs are entitled to a set amount of state land, which they select and the state approves or rejects. The North Slope Borough's entitlement is 89,850 acres. It resumed selecting after the state adopted a new North Slope Area Plan in 2021, and about 64,533 acres of its entitlement have yet to be conveyed, about 16,335 of which it has already selected, according to the department's preliminary decision.

Since 2022, the department has issued decisions on borough selections near Deadhorse, east of Nuiqsut, at Point Thomson, along the Kavik River, at Franklin Bluffs near the Dalton Highway and in the Prudhoe Bay field. In 2023, the state approved 40 of the 2,140 acres the borough selected among Prudhoe Bay oil and gas infrastructure. It kept the rest, saying the state's land plan doesn't allow conveying it and that it includes areas the Division of Oil and Gas and others called critical to the industry.

The decision on the newest parcel doesn't say what the borough plans to do with it. The land sits where the Siksikpuk River meets Confusion and Tiglukpuk creeks, about 145 miles southwest of Deadhorse and 65 miles west of the Dalton Highway. The borough applied for it in July.

Fish and Game said the borough should coordinate with the department before developing the land, to set timing windows, limit habitat loss and avoid harming wildlife. "Considerations should be made to not impede fall caribou migration in October and November," it wrote.

"The Teshekpuk Caribou Herd utilizes the Siksikpuk during fall migration and overwintering grounds," the department wrote, in comments it said apply to four land selections. The Western Arctic herd also uses it.

Fish and Game said it's important that it can keep landing planes in the area to retrieve collars from dead caribou and to survey caribou, moose and muskoxen. It noted that the Ivotuk Airstrip is "one of the few places for aircraft to land in the area."

The state's North Slope Area Plan says authorizations for long-term uses there "are to consider potential impacts on caribou during migration periods and for protection of movement corridors."

State geologists said the site has low resource value for now, based on limited data, but that it's "conceivable that the area could someday attract attention, especially as a frontier natural gas area." The state would keep the mineral rights, including oil and gas. The borough would get the surface, with a 100-foot buffer and building setback along the Siksikpuk River and Confusion Creek, which Fish and Game catalogs as anadromous streams, and public access easements along all three waterways.

Once the decision is final, the borough could make conditional leases and sales, but it couldn't dispose of the land until it's surveyed at the borough's expense and ownership transfers.

Written comments are due by 4:30 pm Nov. 30. Only people who comment can appeal.