The largest expanse of pristine wilderness in the United States, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), is at risk of becoming a staging ground for heavy machinery, with oil drilling projects threatening to displace and damage wildlife and natural ecosystems.
A rider slipped into Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 lifted a decades-long bi-partisan ban on oil and gas leasing in ANWR, marking one the most egregious examples of the Trump administration’s short-sighted focus on so-called “energy dominance” over rational policy.
This rider, if allowed to stand, would usher in irreparable harms to wildlife and untouched ecosystems, while achieving paltry, if any, benefits. A recent study conducted by Yale researchers found approximately 70 percent of American voters support protecting ANWR. But the rushed Tax Act rider sought to bury the unpopular and consequential environmental policy within the budget resolution process, which affords limited opportunity for debate and no opportunity for public comment. Action by the new, soon-to-installed Congress is now the best hope for preventing permanent harms to our public lands.
The ban was lifted as part of the Republican-led tax reform package. The new legislation directs the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to hold two lease sales, of not fewer than 400,000 acres each, within the Coastal Plain of the Refuge within 10 years. In the year since this policy coup d’etat, the Interior Department is attempting to fast-track efforts to develop the area.
For decades, ANWR has been off limits to oil and gas development. In 1960, Republican President Dwight Eisenhower established the Arctic National Wildlife Range to preserve the undisturbed wildlife and wilderness in the Arctic region. In 1980, Congress expanded the area to almost 19 million acres and gave it permanent protection as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. At the time, Congress set aside a 1.5 million-acre expanse known as the Coastal Plain, prohibiting any oil and gas development there unless authorized by an act of Congress. For six decades, all efforts to open the Coastal Plain to oil and gas have met with defeat in Congress.
ANWR is home to polar bears, grizzly bears, wolves, wolverines, muskoxen, porcupine caribou, and myriad other species. Among its grandeurs, the unspoiled…
