FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE / October 6, 2026 Updated October 5, 2026 MORE THAN JUST PARKS PUBLISHES "THE AMBLER ROAD, TAKEN APART," AN INTERACTIVE INVESTIGATION OF THE 211-MILE PRIVATE MINING ROAD ACROSS ALASKA'S BROOKS RANGE Fifteen sourced chapters, a visual story, a mile-by-mile flight, an atlas of all 2,932 water crossings, and the federal stake in the mining company, from the SEC filings. Link: https://morethanjustparks.com/ambler-road/ Press kit: https://morethanjustparks.com/ambler-road/press/ From the publisher, Will Pattiz: We're back from the Ambler Road country. Here's what we found. Subtitle: A 211-mile private mining road, taken apart document by document, with photographs of what it would cross. In August we spent six days in Gates of the Arctic, in the country the Ambler Road would cross, and then we went home and spent weeks reading the government's, the State of Alaska's and the mining company's own documents about it. The result is live now at morethanjustparks.com/ambler-road. There are three ways into it: the story, eighteen scenes in our photographs and the government's own numbers; the road itself, which you can fly mile by mile on the terrain with the record's figures under every mile; and the map, every one of the 2,932 water crossings and every claim, which you can filter and interrogate yourself. Behind those are fifteen chapters, a searchable record of 106 documents, a media room of photographs, and a press kit. The short version of what's in it runs like this. The Ambler Road is a proposed 211-mile private industrial gravel road from the Dalton Highway west to the Ambler Mining District, built and owned by AIDEA, a public corporation of the State of Alaska, and closed to the public by staffed gates at both ends, though the federal review says it "eventually may be opened to the public." It would cross Gates of the Arctic National Preserve for 26 miles. It exists to reach four mineral deposits, and the 2024 record of decision says in one sentence that no mine has been developed and no plan is pending. That has since changed for one of them. Ambler Metals applied for the Arctic mine's federal Clean Water Act permit in 2026 (April 20 by the company's account, a complete application on May 19 by the Corps' count), and the Corps is taking public comment on the mine's environmental review until November 2. We counted every water crossing on the applicant's own engineering centerline and got 2,932, the same total the 2020 Joint Record of Decision gives ("approximately 2,932 streams"). By our count, 28 of those are on water in the state's catalog of fish streams. The other 2,904 are on water that isn't in the catalog, which isn't the same as water without fish. The federal review projects 121 to 1,010 accidents involving trucks carrying hazardous materials on the new road over its life, and 317 to 2,644 counting the Dalton Highway leg. Along the corridor the State of Alaska carries 5,122 active mining claims on 649,057 acres, and two thirds of them were staked after AIDEA applied for the road in 2015. Five hundred and four were staked in the five weeks after the President's decision of October 6, 2025. The number that circulates in most coverage, about 1,700 claims, is a 2018 snapshot of a smaller box. The money is the part worth reading closely. On October 6, 2025, the day the President ordered the permits reissued, the Department of War agreed to take roughly ten percent of Trilogy Metals, the Vancouver company that owns half the ore, for about $35.6 million, and that investment closed on September 11. It also carries the right to 12,323,356 more shares at one cent each, in two pieces. The 6,161,678 warrants unlock on the earliest of three events: Phase 1 of the road complete, as determined by the engineering firm or AIDEA; ten trucks carrying ore concentrate on the road in any ten-day period; or a change of control of the company. The other 6,161,678 are an option on South32's shares that Trilogy describes as exercisable on Phase 1 or a change of control; the text of that option isn't public. The agreements also let the government name an independent director to Trilogy's board until October 2028, put an observer inside the joint venture, and require its written approval, not to be unreasonably withheld, for borrowing above a billion dollars until 2029. The department also committed to work in good faith to help facilitate the financing for construction. We read the executed agreements Trilogy filed with the SEC and quoted them. Meanwhile the federal estimate to build the road is $672.4 million, with $77.7 million more to take it down. In 2026 prices, with the interest on the 30-year bonds AIDEA plans to sell, fifty years of upkeep and removal, the road's life-cycle cost comes to about $2.2 billion, by our calculation (the method is on the money page). AIDEA's auditors record, as of June 30, 2025, that the parties have not entered into a road use agreement. The company has already booked its reserves on an assumed toll of $8.04 a tonne, and the $20.7 million Ambler Metals advanced for permitting can become credits against future tolls under an agreement that AIDEA's FY2025 statements say terminates December 31, 2025. The Western Arctic Caribou Herd was more than 490,000 animals in 2003 and 121,000 in the 2025 census, and in December 2025 the herd's working group set its management level at Critical, Declining. Forty miles of the route lie in ground that was winter range in 13 of the 16 years the federal review analyzed. The government's own record says the road could delay and deflect the migration and hinder the herd's ability to recover, and at the one comparable road in Alaska, the haul road to Red Dog, 8 of 28 collared caribou that met it showed large alterations in their movements and took an average of 33 days to cross. In June 2024 the Bureau of Land Management denied the road because it could not find that restricting the subsistence of thirty named communities was necessary, the finding BLM said federal law requires before public land can be used this way. The President revived the road in October 2025 under a separate ANILCA appeal provision, section 1106(a), on his own findings, and conservation groups are challenging the reinstated permits in federal court in Anchorage. Three Tribes have voted for it in writing, two of them only if access is limited to the mining companies, local communities and residents, and we hold the resolutions; High Country News counted some 89 northern tribes and First Nations, across a far wider region, that passed or supported resolutions against it. Both of those are true at once, and the chapter on the case for the road states the supporters' side in their own documents, without a foil. We're against this road and we say so on the front page, so every figure on the site is cited to a document you can open, and there's a page, How We Know, that lists what we got wrong. The photographs are ours, from the August trip. The Army Corps is taking comment on the Arctic mine's environmental review until November 2 at 11:59 pm Alaska time. You can write yours, with the sources built in, at https://morethanjustparks.com/public-lands-action-network/7293. And if the reporting is useful, send it to one person who has never heard of the Ambler Road, at morethanjustparks.com/ambler-road. --- ABOUT MORE THAN JUST PARKS More Than Just Parks is a public lands advocacy organization. Its mission is to protect America's public lands, the forests, deserts, canyons and coastlines that belong to every American in common, and it does that with evidence: reporting from the ground, a public record anyone can check, and tools that put a federal decision in front of the people who care about the place while there is still time to act. PLAN, the Public Lands Action Network, reads the Federal Register the day a decision is published and helps the public write the comment; the Public Lands Scorecard holds every member of Congress to their votes on public land. It was founded by Will and Jim Pattiz, is funded by its readers, and takes no money from the industries it covers. The Ambler Road investigation was reported from the corridor in August 2026 and built from a record of 106 documents; its methods and corrections are at morethanjustparks.com/ambler-road/how-we-know.html. CONTACT: ask@morethanjustparks.com