
Alaska News Brief January 2025–Hello, 2025. We’re ready for you.
Throughout 2024, we threw parties and shared funny and true stories about people, Alaska, and the long arc of our lawsuits over 50 years of doing this work. We celebrated the vision of our founders and revisited the many triumphs and challenges we faced while playing our part in protecting Alaska places, ways of life, and communities. Our 50th anniversary gave us a chance to look back and memorialize our past.
Now we need to look ahead.

Rainbow in the Arctic Refuge, Photo by USFWS.
Already in 2025 we got great news when the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge lease sale earlier this month drew zero bids—zip, zilch, nada. This means we start the year with no leases in the Arctic Refuge!
The lack of industry interest in Arctic Refuge leases represents a triumph for the Gwich’in Nation and the many allied groups and individuals who have worked for decades to protect the Arctic Refuge. We collectively set a goal of ending 2024 with no leases in the Arctic Refuge and that goal was met.
What a tremendous testament to the power of working together!
It’s hard to make room for joy when you can see threats and chaos coming around the corner, but we joined many, many people in making space for that joy this month. We will need that collective feeling of accomplishment in the days ahead.
New threats already bang the doors of 2025. The push for deregulation and unfettered industrialization, no matter the cost to natural places and people’s health and lives, will only accelerate. Inauguration day will be filled with signs of things to come. There will be a deluge of executive orders that we’ll have to weed through to determine if and how they will impact Alaska and our work.
We’ve seen the blueprint in Project 2025 and Alaska Gov. Dunleavy’s wish list sent to the Trump transition team, and these written documents reveal an aggressive plan to exploit Alaska, disregard human rights, and undermine the climate policies necessary to mitigate the impacts of climate change on people around the state, country, and world.
We know from President Trump’s first term that he and his administration will not follow to the law, which should give us leverage in the court battles ahead. The rule of law is what this country was founded on and court rulings that uphold the law help hold the line.
We expect confirmations to move quickly and it’s unlikely there will be much opposition to them, despite many of these appointees having little experience or being industry hacks or loyalists who do the bidding of political and corporate agendas no matter the laws and promises broken or the common good ignored.
We know we will see distractions and destruction: the call for changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico, making Canada a state, even a tacit threat of U.S. military action in Panama and Greenland. It used to be funny to say things like “you can’t make this stuff up,” but this is our reality now.
Soon, we could be living more deeply in the dystopias imagined in books like “1984” or “The Handmaid’s Tale” or “The Parable of the Sower.” We will certainly be more entrenched in the realities reported on and unpacked in books like “Fire Weather” and the “End of Eden.” Just look at the devastation of the Los Angeles fires that have yet to be contained.
What we don’t yet know, and can only speculate about based on what we’ve seen and already know, is exactly how far the absurdities will go, how dangerous they will make the world for many people, how much volatility people will endure and accept, and how our collective care and action will influence where the lines get drawn. If the economic progress that folks voted for doesn’t come to fruition quickly, a simmer may reach boiling point.
Here at Trustees, we will do what we always do—stay engaged, stay focused, stay vigilant—as we collaborate with partners. We will advocate for our clients. We will provide strategic guidance and support. We will call out corruption. We will stand with Alaskans protecting the places vital to their livelihoods and ways of life. We will sue.

Vicki and Tracy getting a tour of where “Rub with Love” spices get made in Seattle during a fundraising trip in 2019.
Part of my role as executive director is to make sure Trustees has the resources we need to keep doing the work. I’ve been immensely fortunate to work with Tracy Lohman in doing just that—asking for support and having immensely caring relationships with donors who commit so much of their lives to the health of Alaska’s natural places.
Tracy is a dear friend, a passionate advocate for Trustees and Alaska, and a person who connects with others, including the starlings and hummingbirds! She has decided that the time is right for her family and herself to retire at the end of April. We know we can’t possibly replace Tracy because she’s one of a kind, but we know there are other dedicated and talented people out there who want to contribute to the work we do.
So, this month, I have one ask of you. Please share this job posting for the position of development director with anyone you know who, like Tracy, has the skills, experience, and commitment to take Trustees into 2025 and beyond.
It’s going to get bumpy, and though hope can’t always smooth the path ahead, it can make it matter because of the depth of the relationships, the purpose, the vision for Alaska.
Hello, 2025. We’re ready for you.


PS. Thanks to supporters like you, we can continue fighting to protect Alaska’s land, water, air, wildlife and people.
Good news for the Arctic Refuge–no bids in latest lease sale

President Carter skippering a boat in Kenai Fjords in 2005 during the 25th anniversary of ANILCA. Courtesy Deborah Williams