Urge Your Representative to Cosponsor Bill to Stop Seismic Exploration in the Arctic

From the Alaska Wilderness League (http://www.alaskawild.org):

Imperiled polar bears denning and rearing their young on the Arctic Refuge coastal plain just received a terrible blow.

The Washington Post¹ reported that the Trump administration is considering a plan to conduct 3-dimensional seismic exploration across the entire 1.6 million-acre coastal plain in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, beginning as soon as December 10 of THIS YEAR.

Please go to https://act.alaskawild.org/sign/coastal-plain-protection-act_signon/ and tell your Representative to co-sponsor the bill to repeal Arctic Refuge drilling. We must not cause further harm to threatened polar bears already under stress from climate change, or any of the wildlife that rely on the Arctic Refuge.

Seismic testing would occur during winter polar bear denning season, threatening to disturb already stressed polar bears as they birth and rear their cubs on the most important onshore denning habitat in the United States.

If this plan moves forward, on top of leaving permanent physical scars across the entire coastal plain, crews of people and vehicles will drive across the tundra and create extensive noise, vibration and disturbance.

This sort of activity can frighten mother bears from their dens, leaving abandoned cubs to perish. With fewer than 900 Southern Beaufort Sea bears remaining, such a blow could severely harm the region’s polar bear population.

Please tell your Representative to co-sponsor the bill to repeal Arctic Refuge drilling – the Arctic Cultural and Coastal Plain Protection Act!

^{1 “Companies take first steps to drill for oil in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge“}