Trump Administration ignoring public process to speed up lease sales
Conducting bird nest assessments in Arctic NWR by Danielle Brigida/USFWS
Today, the Bureau of Land Management stated that they are going to hold a lease sale on January 6, 2021 for oil and gas development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Oil and gas companies have been lobbying for access to this protected land ever since the creation of the Arctic Refuge 60 years ago. This step to hold a lease sale is the formal opening of the Arctic Refuge for development for the first time in history.
The wildlife refuges in Alaska are large and wild, with healthy wildlife populations. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is the largest and wildest: 19.6 million acres of wilderness stretching from the coastal plain along the Beaufort Sea to the Brooks Range. With oil and gas development common along the rest of the North Slope, it is our moral responsibility to preserve these Arctic Refuge lands as wilderness.
Arctic fox by Keith Morehead/USFWS
Starting November 17, 2020, the BLM opened a 30-day “Call for Nominations” period for receiving public comments. Yet BLM made it clear they were uninterested in hearing from the public regarding development plans. Not only did they restrict comments to mailed or hand delivered comments, which must be received, not postmarked, by the deadline, but they are asking for leasing bids to be submitted even before this comment period is halfway done.
They are forging ahead with leasing plans without any regard for any recent scientific data on impacts to polar bears, caribou herds, and the millions of migratory birds that nest in this refuge and without any acknowledgment of the public’s extreme opposition to destroying this iconic landscape. The incentive to these efforts to ram through drilling is the prospect of a Biden Administration, which has pledged to stop all drilling activity in the refuge.
Geoffrey L. Haskett, President of the National Wildlife Refuge Association issued this statement:
“The people have spoken loudly against drilling in the Arctic Refuge, and have been ignored during every step of this process. The Fish and Wildlife Service, just 6 years ago, recommended the coastal plain be preserved as wilderness in perpetuity due to its high wildlife value, and now we are facing irreversible damage and destruction of this area.
“Ever since the Tax Act of 2017 was passed, the BLM and the Trump Administration have done everything they can to ignore science, erode trust in the public commenting system, and bulldoze their way through the conservation legacy of the Refuge System established 117 years ago.
Arctic NWR by Andrea Medeiros/USFWS
“As the largest land-based refuge in the System, the Arctic Refuge is iconic, not only for its endangered polar bears and the majestic Porcupine caribou herd, but for the breadth of landscapes it covers. From the Beaufort Sea in the north down to Arctic Village in the south, millions of birds, mammals, plants, and other animals are dependent on this landscape. And we cannot overlook the importance of this land and the Porcupine caribou herd to the indigenous Gwich’in people, whose livelihoods and future are at peril should drilling go forward.
“We ask companies to take a pass on bidding for leases.”