One of the largest intact ecosystems in the world, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is a place of breathtaking natural beauty and rugged wildness. These irreplaceable public lands in northeast Alaska are a global treasure − a haven for wildlife on a planet contending with increasing habitat loss and environmental damage. First protected more than half a century ago, this pristine landscape is a bequest of wildlife and wild lands to future generations that define our nation and the conservation values we share.
Now, this timeless treasure is at risk of destruction — from short-term, shortsighted oil drilling.
While the refuge and its defenders have overcome ominous threats in the past, the latest combination of congressional action and the Trump administration’s zeal for fossil fuel development represents the gravest threat that has ever faced the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Late last month, the administration launched its planning process to lease the coastal plain of the Arctic refuge to Big Oil.
The unconscionable is now moving toward reality. The refuge’s coastal plain — where polar bears den with their cubs, the Porcupine caribou herd calves its young and hundreds of thousands of migratory birds rest, feed and breed — could become an industrial oilfield. Revered as the “sacred place where life begins” by the indigenous Gwich’in people who have relied on caribou for millennia, the refuge’s coastal plain now could be lost forever.
Oil and gas development in the coastal plain would cause irreparable damage to these resources, upsetting ecological processes and imperiling entire wildlife populations. Crucial habitats so far untouched by development would be destroyed by a steel spiderweb of pipelines, dozens of well pads, airstrips, gravel mines, and other infrastructure.
The Trump administration intends to move quickly, offering oil leases as soon as 2019. The expedited planning process threatens to curtail public input, limit science-based review and reduce involvement of Alaska Natives in management alternatives.
Fortunately, drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is as patently unpopular as it is reckless. Efforts to open the refuge to oil and gas development were repeatedly defeated for decades with the strong support of the American public, and only passed on last year’s tax reform legislation through a closed-door process that used parliamentary maneuvering to bypass full and fair debate in Congress.
Overwhelming public opposition continues today. In fact, recent national polling shows that a large majority of American voters oppose drilling in the refuge.
Moreover, clean, cheap and efficient renewable energy sources are advancing quickly, gaining support from Americans across the political spectrum, and every day rendering fossil fuels less important. Drilling in the Arctic refuge is part of an outdated, destructive agenda that will only trap our nation in the past, compounding the threat of climate change in an area where temperatures are already rising at twice the rate of the rest of the country.
The coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is a place unlike anywhere else on Earth and deserves permanent protection as wilderness. There is still time to stop the Trump administration’s foolhardy plan to exploit these unparalleled public lands. We can, and must, restore protection for the coastal plain for good.
We, the Defenders of Wildlife, will defend our natural heritage and support the human rights of the Gwich’in nation in the courts, on Capitol Hill and in the corporate boardrooms, to ensure that this special place is preserved for future generations to cherish.
Jamie Rappaport Clark is the president and CEO of Defenders of Wildlife since 2011. He was the director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from 1997 to 2001.
