Explore, Enjoy, and Protect the Planet

Protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from oil and gas drilling!


We’ve waited over fifty years for this moment: to permanently protect the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as wilderness. We need every American to get behind protecting America’s most iconic wilderness.

The Arctic Refuge is about its unique wildlife, wilderness and recreational values, not its development potential. Oil and gas drilling in the Arctic Refuge would harm the unique wildlife and wilderness even as the region faces global warming. Once this wilderness is destroyed, it’s gone forever.

But even now, Big Oil wants to drill in the coastal plain and change this magical place forever. Take this historic opportunity to protect the wildlife and wilderness of the Arctic Refuge.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) just released a draft revised Comprehensive Conservation Plan (CCP) for the Arctic Refuge. It is an important milestone in that USFWS is formally considering a Wilderness designation for the Refuge's Coastal Plain – the biological heart of our nation’s wilderness icon. Write your comment to USFWS urging it to recommend a wilderness designation for the Arctic Refuge’s Coastal Plain to protect it from oil and gas development.

Submit your comment:

By email to:ArcticRefugeCCP@fws.gov
By fax to:907-456-0428
By mail to: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Arctic NWR - Sharon Seim
101 12th Ave., Rm 236
Fairbanks AK 99701

SUGGESTED language, but please personalize it yourself:

Subject:
Comprehensive Conservation Plan: Designate the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s Coastal Plain as wilderness

Dear US Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe,

I urge you to recommend a wilderness designation for the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in order to permanently protect America’s greatest wild treasure from oil and gas development.

Already the warming Arctic is threatening the region and its wildlife so it is our job to defend the biological heart of the Arctic Refuge, its coastal plain. By protecting the Refuge we ensure critical habitat for caribou, polar bears, grizzly bears, musk oxen, Dall sheep, wolves, wolverines, and birds from all 50 states.

We cannot hand this wildlife refuge over to Big Oil. Drilling in the Arctic Refuge will not lower today’s gas prices or solve our energy crisis; it would only prolong it. Any oil drilling in the Arctic Refuge will disrupt and harm the fragile ecosystem and wildlife the USFWS Refuge system is supposed to protect.

Recommend Alternative C for a wilderness designation for the coastal plain. This is critical to keep this wildlife and wilderness icon protected for this and future generations.

Sincerley,
XXXX XXXXXXX

Thank you for taking action to protect this special place. To find our more information and to stay in touch please visit www.chillthedrills.org or ‘like’ us on Facebook, www.facebook.com/chillthedrills

Sent for Alaska Chapter chair Pam Brodie by Vicky Hoover, Alaska Chapter volunteer newsletter editor (vicky.hoover@sierraclub.org 415-977-5527)