Urgent: The Trump admin wants to sacrifice 23 million acres of Arctic wildlife habitat.

The Trump administration is proposing to end critical environmental reviews and fast-track oil and gas drilling across 23 million acres of public lands in Alaska's Western Arctic.

This move threatens Southern Beaufort Sea polar bears, among other wildlife. This fragile population has already seen their population decline by nearly 50% as sea ice, essential for their survival, melts away.

Send a comment to the Trump administration: We will not stand by while you fast-track dangerous oil and gas development in the Western Arctic!

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Defenders of Wildlife

Dear Director Pearce,

I’m writing to urge the Bureau of Land Management not to fast-track oil and gas development in America’s Western Arctic.

Formally the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, this area is a uniquely fragile and exceptional ecosystem on the frontlines of climate change. The Arctic is warming at a rate four times faster than the rest of the globe, and we are watching in real time as species are struggling to adapt to rapidly changing conditions. Defined by its stunning wetlands and patchwork system of wetlands and lakes, the Western Arctic is the life source of millions of migratory birds from across the entire globe. It provides the irreplaceable nesting grounds for federally protected species like Steller's eiders, and its tundra is heavy with species like the iconic snowy owl.

Pushed to the brink of extinction by a melting Arctic, Southern Beaufort Sea polar bears are one of the most imperiled populations of polar bears in the world, and have declined almost 50%. They are facing a double crisis: vanishing sea ice from fossil fuel emissions and industrial development activities closing in on their fragile snow dens at their most vulnerable time of life. They are losing critical habitat while oil and gas development projects physically threaten the success of mothers raising their cubs.

In the last several decades, caribou and reindeer populations have declined over 50% with science indicating climate change as a main driver of the population loss. Three different caribou herds, hosting hundreds of thousands of animals, call this area home.

Each new oil and gas development proposal should receive a full, project-specific environmental, and not a generic cookie cutter set of “general environmental reviews,” as it currently proposes. Each development project must carefully assess the risks of a project and consider the impacts of any new proposal, including especially the cumulative impacts from existing and future oil and gas infrastructure.

This proposal generated by the Alaska Oil and Gas Association would rubber-stamp regulations for development and is an unacceptable abdication of responsibility by the government to protect and steward our country’s most special and vulnerable ecosystems. Instead of fast-tracking exploitive development projects, the government should instead be considering improved protections for these remaining lands that have not yet been polluted and destroyed by development in the fragile tundra.

Sincerely,
{user_data~First Name} {user_data~Last Name}

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