The Department of the Interior (DOI) is trying to strip away protections for 13 million acres in the Western Arctic. We need your voice to help stop them.
This area has been the traditional home for Indigenous communities and supports critical habitat for wildlife including polar bears, caribou and millions of migratory birds.
Tell DOI that we do not want these critical public lands handed over to polluters for profit. Submit your comment by August 4th and get loud about protecting the Western Arctic.
Secretary Burgum,
I strongly urge the Department of the Interior (DOI) to not rescind the 2024 Bureau of Land Management rule entitled "Management and Protection of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska." Doing so would open critical areas across the Western Arctic that have been given Special Area designation because of their biological, ecological and cultural importance. I vehemently oppose striking protections for the Western Arctic.
These designated Special Areas protect essential wildlife habitat and are critical for the traditional subsistence practices of local people. The protections now being proposed for repeal were enacted after a lengthy public process that spanned nearly 10 months and resulted in more than 250,000 people calling for more Western Arctic lands to be protected from oil and gas development under the law.
The Western Arctic is home to endangered whales and polar bears, migratory birds, bears, America's largest caribou herd, and over 40 Indigenous communities. Taking away critical protections for 13 million acres in the Western Arctic would put this fragile ecosystem at risk of expanded oil and gas industrialization. Road-building, industrial traffic, and construction, as well as emissions associated with fossil fuel development, would disrupt caribou migration and worsen the impacts of climate change in a region already warming faster than anywhere else on the planet.
The Western Arctic is also the largest single unit of public lands in our nation, spanning nearly 23 million acres across Alaska's western North Slope. As such, it is your responsibility and duty to engage the public on this matter, especially those who have stewarded the land since time immemorial and maintain a subsistence lifestyle based on its living resources.
Keep the existing rule in place and manage the Western Arctic on behalf of people, not polluters.
[Your comment here]
Sincerely,
[supporter name]
