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Located in northwest Alaska, the Bering Strait Region (also referred to as the Seward Peninsula, the Norton Sound District, western Alaska, or the Nome area) is found between latitudes 63º 30' and 66º 30', south of the Arctic Circle. The Region extends from the village of Shishmaref on the northern shore of the Seward Peninsula to Stebbins on the southern coast of the Norton Sound, and includes villages on St. Lawrence Island, King Island, and Little Diomede. The area contains 570 miles of coastline that includes all of Norton Sound, and portions of the Bering Sea and Arctic Ocean.

The primary land owners in this Region include the federal and state governments, Alaska Native corporations and Alaska Native tribes (conveyed through the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act [ANCSA]), and individual Native allotments (through the 1906 Allotment Act and the 1926 Township Act). In 1971, the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act altered ownership and control of land once held by Alaska's indigenous people under aboriginal title. Under provisions of the Act, village corporations were formed and received surface rights to all lands in their specified townships (additional allocated lands were based on village populations). Regional Native corporations, meanwhile, received subsurface rights to village corporation lands. The village corporations of Elim, Gambell and Savoonga opted to take fee simple title to surface and subsurface lands amounting to 316,000 acres for Elim and 1.2 million acres for Savoonga and Gambell, and were excluded from land claim monies.

Section 17(d)(2) of the Act also authorized the Secretary of the Interior to reserve 80 million acres for possible inclusion in units of the National Park System, National Wildlife Refuge System, National Forest System, or National Wild and Scenic Rivers System. In the northern section of the Bering Strait Region, the National Park Service created the Bering Land Bridge Preserve. The 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) established Conservation System Units (CSU's) throughout Alaska, including areas within the Bering Strait Region. CSU's in the Bering Strait Region include National Wildlife Refuge and National Park Systems and Public Lands under the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).