The Interior Department has launched the process of holding lease sales for oil and gas drilling in the 1.6-million-acre coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Despite decades of fierce resistance from Democrats and conservation groups, pro-drilling Republicans were able to realize their goal of opening the refuge after quietly including the measure […]
In a stunning reversal, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said it is suspending its effort to reverse an Obama-era plan to restrict mining in Bristol Bay, Alaska based on a controversial mine project’s risks to the region’s important salmon fisheries and natural resources. The unexpected move from President Trump’s pro-business administration was a blow […]
The Interior Department has reached a deal with a remote Alaskan village to construct a controversial road through a national wildlife refuge. Local officials from King Cove in the Aleutian Islands said last week that the Interior Department has approved a land swap that would allow the village to build a 12-mile gravel road through […]
New research shows that the Alaska Range receives an average of 18 feet of snow per year—that’s more than double the average of eight feet per year from 1600-1840. The likely culprit, according to researchers from Dartmouth College, the University of Maine and the University of New Hampshire, is none other than climate change. “We […]
The pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) faces a looming threat from oil and gas drilling. The little known provision, proposed by Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, was quietly included in the House and Senate Republicans’ compromise tax bill. The bill “contains the single most important step I believe we can take to strengthen our […]
By Taryn Kiekow Heimer An U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator under every Republican presidential administration since the EPA was created, except the Ford administration, whose administrator is deceased, have joined forces to make a statement in opposition to the Pebble Mine proposed in Bristol Bay, Alaska. Their statement appeared Tuesday as a full-page ad […]
The U.S. Senate has passed a Republican tax-reform package that contains a provision to authorize oil drilling on the coastal plain of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, placing the biological heart of one of our last pristine, untouched places in severe peril. “This vote to deface and pollute one of the nation’s last pristine and […]
Ryan Zinke‘s Interior Department is working behind the scenes to build a controversial and long-contested road through the heart of Alaska’s Izembek National Wildlife Refuge, documents show. The refuge was established more than 30 years ago to conserve wetlands and habitats for migrating birds, brown bears and salmon and other wildlife. 300,000 of its 315,000 […]
By Jessica A. Knoblauch A decades-long fight over a landmark rule protecting wild forests nationwide took another successful–and possibly final–turn last week after a U.S. district court threw out a last-ditch attack by the state of Alaska against the Roadless Rule. Adopted in the closing days of the Clinton administration, the Roadless Rule prohibits most […]