Wiseman residents are facing an immediate and unacceptable crisis.
The recent revocation of land orders in the Dalton Highway Corridor has thrown long-standing local access into uncertainty, affecting lands that Wiseman families have relied on for harvesting firewood, fish, and wildlife.
Wiseman is located 63 miles north of the Arctic Circle in Alaska, where families depend on subsistence and land-based practices to meet basic needs. Residents heat their homes with woodstoves, harvest food from the land, and prepare months in advance for winter. These needs cannot wait while new regulations are developed, debated, and eventually put into place.
The State has acknowledged that access issues need to be addressed, but new state regulations can take up to a year. For Wiseman families, that timeline is not good enough. Winter preparation is already underway, and the land revocation has left an entire community questioning how they will feed themselves and survive the coming season.
A recent opinion piece by a Wiseman resident Mollie Busby in the Anchorage Daily News puts this crisis in personal terms: decisions made far from Wiseman are now threatening the basic ability of local families to feed themselves, heat their homes, and continue living on the land. Her words are a reminder that public land decisions have real consequences for the people and communities who rely on those lands every day.
This crisis could have been prevented.
When Public Land Orders 5150 and 5180 were revoked, community outreach happened only after the fact. Meetings held in affected communities were dominated by industry concerns, while questions about land use, subsistence, firewood harvesting, and local access were left largely unanswered by officials. Small communities should not have to justify their existence after decisions have already been made.
Wiseman needs our help now.
You can take meaningful action by signing the petition calling for Wiseman residents to be allowed to harvest moose and feed their families. Add your name today, then share the petition with friends, family, and anyone who believes rural Alaskans should be able to meet their basic needs.
Sign the petition here: https://forms.gle/fvPYpHXa4NnmJ9jQ9
Stand with Wiseman. Help protect food security, community survival, and the right of rural residents to continue living with and from the land.
Update on firewood access: Since this issue was raised, the Alaska Division of Forestry & Fire Protection has identified a permitting pathway for personal-use firewood cutting on eligible State lands through its Out-of-Area woodcutting permit process. This is an important step for Wiseman residents who rely on wood heat, but it does not resolve the broader crisis created by the Dalton Corridor land revocation. Permits are case-by-case, limited to eligible State lands, and do not address the urgent need for clear, reliable access to food, firewood, and subsistence resources before winter.