From the Alaska Wilderness League (http://www.alaskawild.org):
In yet another attack on the Arctic, before the government shutdown, the Interior Department began an environmental review process to write a new management plan for Alaska’s Western Arctic, a home to the highest density of shorebirds in the Arctic.
There is no surprise why. On multiple occasions, Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management Joe Balash made it clear that their purpose is to open “millions more acres” to oil and gas leasing, including additional lands around the bird sanctuary Teshekpuk Lake.
Go to https://act.alaskawild.org/sign/reserve2019/ to add your voice in opposition before the comment deadline on Tuesday, January 22!
Teshekpuk Lake lies within a protected Special Area of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska that is crucial habitat for threatened spectacled eiders, king eiders, red-throated loons, dunlins and buff-breasted sandpipers. Many birds come to this area to molt, a vulnerable time when they cannot fly to escape threats.
You’ve seen the pictures, oil and birds don’t mix.
The Reserve’s varied Special Areas sustain a variety of wildlife including beluga whales, wolves, polar bears, musk oxen, caribou and peregrine falcons. These areas are facing new drilling threats thanks to the administration’s plan to re-do the Reserve’s management plan.
Current protections for Special Areas resulted from a thorough process that included input from stakeholders like the Western Arctic Caribou Herd Working Group, regional and local tribes in Alaska, and hundreds of thousands of Americans, including many of you who took action.
All of this consensus-building took years to achieve, and the current plan has been in effect for just a handful of years. It would be a mistake to revise it now.
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