The Trump administration has finalised plans to allow oil and gas drilling in a national wildlife refuge spanning pristine Indigenous land in Alaska, reigniting long-simmering tensions about conserving one of the United States’s environmental jewels.

The US Department of the Interior announced at an event on Thursday that it plans to open up the coastal plain of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which sits on traditional Inupiaq and Gwich’in Indigenous land, to resource exploration.

In a news release, it said the move, which paves the way for lease sales within the refuge’s 1.5 million-acre (631,309-hectare) coastal plain, was part of a “sweeping package of actions to boost energy development, modernise land and resource management across Alaska”.

President Donald Trump and cong

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