🛑 Stop the Arctic Giveaway: No Rubber Stamps for Corporate Polluters!

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR)-Lisa Hupp, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service-2019-public domain (25).jpg

A tale as old as time: Corporate polluters want more access to the Arctic to drill for more fossil fuels and even more profit. Typically, there is process and protection to field these demands. Not under this administration.

Last spring, a corporate polluter asked the Trump Administration very nicely to loosen the rules for oil and gas development in Alaska's Western Arctic -- and it only took 3 days for the Department of the Interior to rewrite the process.

Now, the Trump administration has released its new proposed rule, and the details show just how low the new system is willing to go.

The new proposal would:

Replace some project-by-project permitting with a streamlined rubber stamping for major oil and gas facilities
Cut out the public input and basic environmental review.
Expedit approval on as fast as a 60-day decision timeline. '

That's right. The Trump administration wants to cut out you from the process, leaving no time for public participation and no time for edits.

Just one big rubber stamp of approval.

And the stakes for development are high. Western Alaska encompasses roughly 23 million acres of public land and includes important habitat for caribou, polar bears, migratory birds that live around the world, and other wildlife.

Send in your comment today! Tell the Bureau of Land Management: Stop the Arctic Giveaway!

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Do Not Implement the Production Site Development in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska

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Dear Director Pearce, The new rule governing permitting in the NPRA, requested by oil and gas lobbyists, is irresponsible and does a disservice to the public and the communities that surround the NPRA. It should not be implemented. Creating a single approach to complex problems will leave unanswered questions and lead to unpredicted impacts on wildlife that depend on the NPRA and communities that depend on that wildlife. This approach cuts out the rigorous scientific review that helps inform the public on what is being proposed on our public land. Given the size of the NPRA, the unique nature of the environment, and the varying scale of oil and gas projects, project specific analysis remains the best way to understand and permit proposals in a way that poses the least risk to our resources and the people who live in the area. Oil and gas drilling in the Arctic region has impacts. This is a sensitive, quickly warming environment. To pretend that we can fast track these permits with no real project specific analysis that accounts for the actual plan is absurd. This rule benefits no one but oil and gas companies at the expense of the American people. The vibrant Western Arctic is American Public Land that includes tundra, wetlands, rivers, coastal habitat and areas used by caribou, migratory birds, polar bears and local Indigenous communities. Places such as Teshekpuk Lake and other Special Areas deserve particular protection. BLM's proposed rule treats areas open to leasing as all the same, and ignores the unique realities of a cherished and important region. And even though BLM has not disclosed how this regulation will harm the environment, it has admitted that the development it seeks to unleash threatens the Teshekpuk Lake caribou herd and subsistence practices that have flourished in the region for millennia. Do not implement this rule. There is simply too much at stake to rush.

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Photo by Lisa Hupp, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service | Image of snow-covered mountains of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge