Top left, Caribou bulls swimming across Kobuk River, © AlaskaStock.com; top right, polar bear mother and cubs, Steve Amstrup, Alaska Image Library, USFWS; Wildlife Service; above, spectacled eider, Chris Dau, Alaska Image Library, USFWS.
In the wake of last summer's sky-high oil prices, Big Oil is escalating its campaign to open America's prime Arctic wildlands -- including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the Western Arctic Reserve and the Polar Bear Seas -- to massive oil development. Vast swaths of land and sea along Alaska's north and west coasts, the fragile home of polar bears, whales, caribou and millions of birds, will continue to fall into the hands of the oil and gas industry if policies put in place by the Bush administration are not reversed.
NRDC and BioGems Defenders helped stave off repeated attempts to drill in and just offshore the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and also helped win a temporary reprieve for the Teshekpuk Lake region, birthing grounds of the legendary Teshekpuk Lake caribou herd as well as rare yellow-billed loons, tundra swans and eiders. We are fighting in court to block planned oil exploration and development in the Chukchi Sea -- home to half of America's polar bears -- where the Bush administration sold 2.8 million acres of leases. We will continue campaigning in court, before the Obama administration and in Congress to save our greatest Arctic wildlife habitats from oil development and industrialization.
