From the Alaska Wilderness League (http://www.alaskawild.org):
As we all wait out the political dynamics playing out in Washington, DC around budget reconciliation and an Arctic Refuge leasing repeal, we wanted to let everyone know about some good news this week from another part of America’s Arctic! In the northwest corner of Alaska is our nation’s largest piece of public land – a vibrant landscape, unfortunately named the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (Reserve). The Reserve is under serious threat from massive oil and gas development projects and is the next major public lands front in our nation’s fight to stop the climate crisis. As we are working to legislatively protect the Arctic Refuge we are simultaneously urging the administration to prioritize a new management paradigm for the Reserve, one centered around conservation, communities and climate.
To that end, we took an important step forward this week when the Biden administration opted not to continue litigation defending a massive oil project within the Reserve. Alaska Wilderness League was one of six groups that won this Alaska District Court case in November 2020, under which the Trump administration’s authorization of Conoco Phillip’s Willow project was ruled illegal. This week, with no request for appeal from either the Biden administration or ConocoPhillips at the deadline, the court’s decision to nullify approvals and permits due to “serious errors” is final, sending the entire project back to the drawing board.
At nearly 23 million acres, the Reserve covers a biologically and culturally rich landscape approximately the size of Indiana. Situated to the west of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the Reserve shares many of the same unique and critical properties, including the importance to numerous species of wildlife and its key role in helping to assure food-security for dozens of Arctic communities who rely on the caribou herds and other thriving animal populations the Reserve supports.
America’s Arctic, which includes the Arctic Refuge and the Reserve, is ground zero for the climate crisis and we continue to fight back efforts that would allow for destructive and harmful oil development. Unlike the Refuge, the Reserve has seen oil and gas development occur within its borders and has unfortunately long had resource extraction on its list of management priorities. Projects like Willow, which would have produced 100,000 barrels of oil a day for the next 30 years and emitted hundreds of millions of metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere throughout its lifetime, are incompatible with meeting our nations long-term climate and environmental justice goals. Instead, the opportunities that lie within the Reserve could establish it as a model of climate-conscious public land management moving forward.
We see significant opportunities in the coming months and years to make the Reserve a critical part of how we can achieve our climate goals in such a way that we are protecting critical habitat for wildlife and supporting local communities. This will only be achieved by elevating the Reserve and telling the story of its resources and people, as we have done in collective partnership with the Arctic Refuge over the last few decades. We look forward to continuing to share the story of the Reserve over the coming months and working with you as we build out this campaign.
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