Alaska Wilderness League

Long before we strung together the words “national wildlife refuge,” people were already paying attention to what made Alaska’s northeastern corner extraordinary. They saw a landscape where rivers ran wild from the Brooks Range toward the Arctic Ocean, where vast herds of caribou moved across the tundra with the seasons, and where the coastal plain provided essential habitat for polar bears, migratory birds and countless other species. For the Gwich’in people, who have lived across what is now northeastern Alaska and northwestern Canada for generations, this landscape is also home—and the Porcupine Caribou Herd that migrates through it is central to their culture, food systems and way of life. 

That relationship with the land goes back thousands of years. Gwich’in communities have followed the seasonal movements of the Porcupine Caribou Herd across the region, relying on caribou for food and passing knowledge about the animals and their habitat from one generation to the next. The herd’s journey between its wintering grounds and calving grounds on the Arctic coastal plain is one of the great migrations of the North, and for the Gwich’in, the coastal plain is more than important wildlife habitat. It is sacred ground—a place where the caribou give birth and begin the next generation. 

That deep relationship is part of what makes the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge so extraordinary. The Refuge is not an empty wilderness waiting to be discovered or developed. It is a living landscape that sustains people and wildlife together, as it has for generations. 

The story of the Refuge is also part of a much larger American idea: that there should be places set aside not for development, but for wildlife. The National Wildlife Refuge System began in 1903, when President Theodore Roosevelt established Florida’s Pelican Island as the nation’s first wildlife refuge to protect birds from plume hunting. Over the decades that followed, the system grew into a network of hundreds of refuges protecting habitat across the country, from coastal wetlands and grasslands to forests, rivers and Arctic tundra. 

These places serve a simple but increasingly important purpose. Wildlife needs somewhere to live, and people need healthy lands and waters that can sustain them. 

For migratory species, that need is especially clear. A bird may spend one season in Alaska and the next thousands of miles away in another state or another country. A caribou herd may travel hundreds of miles across its range in search of food and suitable conditions. Protecting the places these animals depend on means recognizing that wildlife does not live according to the boundaries we have drawn on a map. 

The Arctic Refuge is one of the clearest examples of what that kind of protection can make possible. In 1960, President Dwight Eisenhower established the 8.9-million-acre Arctic National Wildlife Range after years of advocacy from conservationists including Olaus and Mardy Murie, who understood that the region’s extraordinary wildlife and wilderness values deserved lasting protection. Twenty years later, Congress passed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, dramatically expanding the protected area and creating the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge we know today. 

At nearly 20 million acres, the Arctic Refuge is larger than many U.S. states. Its landscape stretches from the Arctic Ocean across the Brooks Range and into boreal forests, encompassing mountains, rivers, wetlands and the coastal plain. It provides habitat for the Porcupine Caribou Herd, polar bears, muskoxen, Dall sheep, wolves and hundreds of species of birds, including migratory birds that travel thousands of miles to reach Alaska each year. 

For the Gwich’in, protecting this landscape has always been inseparable from protecting the caribou and the future of their communities. The Porcupine Caribou Herd ranges across Alaska and Canada, crossing an international border that means little to the animals themselves. Its annual migration has sustained Gwich’in communities for generations, and the health of the herd remains closely tied to the health of the lands and waters it travels through. The Gwich’in have therefore been among the strongest and most enduring voices defending the Arctic Refuge’s coastal plain from oil and gas development. Their opposition is rooted not only in concern for a particular ecosystem, but in a relationship with the land and caribou that reaches back thousands of years. 

That history matters because the Arctic Refuge is not simply a place we protect for wildlife that people might someday come to see. It is a place where wildlife continues to sustain human communities, where Indigenous knowledge and traditions remain alive, and where the relationship between people and the land is still visible across the landscape. 

Today, that relationship faces growing pressure. The Arctic Refuge has been targeted for oil and gas development for decades, and efforts to industrialize the coastal plain continue despite the risks to wildlife, ecosystems and the people who depend on them. Yet the reason the Refuge exists in the first place has not changed. This is a place where caribou need room to migrate, where polar bears need habitat to den, where migratory birds return each summer, and where Gwich’in communities maintain a relationship with the land that has endured for generations. 

National Wildlife Refuge Week is a chance to celebrate that idea. Across the country, refuges give wildlife habitat to survive while protecting the lands and waters that sustain communities. They preserve places that might otherwise be lost and maintain the ecological connections that stretch far beyond the boundaries of any single refuge. 

And nowhere is that responsibility more visible than in Alaska. 

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is part of a much larger story about what we choose to protect and what we choose to pass on. Its future belongs in the hands of the people, communities and wildlife who depend on it—not the oil companies that have spent decades trying to industrialize it. 

When we protect the Arctic Refuge, we are protecting more than a spectacular landscape. We are giving caribou room to migrate, birds a place to return, bears a place to raise their young and Gwich’in communities the opportunity to continue a relationship with the land that has sustained their people for generations. 

That is worth celebrating this National Wildlife Refuge Week and worth protecting for generations to come. 

Photo credit: Dave Shreffler

It has been a hard-fought year for Alaska’s public lands, and few places have felt the pressure more intensely than the Western Arctic. 

Stretching across more than 23 million acres of federal public land, what is formally known as the National Petroleum Reserve–Alaska (NPRA) is one of the largest expanses of public land in the country. It is also one of the most ecologically important places in the Arctic, supporting caribou herds, migratory birds, fish, polar bears, and other wildlife, as well as the Alaska Native communities whose cultures, livelihoods, and traditions are deeply connected to these lands and waters.  

For decades, the NPRA—or what we call the Western Arctic—has been a place where the public has fought to balance the demands of development with the extraordinary ecological and cultural values of the region. 

This year, that balance has been under relentless pressure. 

In March, the Administration held an oil and gas lease sale in the Western Arctic that was devastating to witness. Industry showed up with the money and interest to claim huge portions of this public landscape, with more than 1.3 million acres ultimately leased.  

Familiar names were among the bidders, including ConocoPhillips, which has previously talked about pursuing a “smaller footprint” in Alaska and has relinquished leases in the Western Arctic in the past. ExxonMobil also bid on tracts along the shores of Teshekpuk Lake, one of the most important and ecologically sensitive places in the entire Western Arctic. The largest spender at the sale was Repsol, a foreign Spanish oil company. 

For a region so often invoked in conversations about American energy independence, it is worth taking a close look at who is actually lining up to develop these public lands, and who stands to benefit from doing so. The companies placing bids may have different histories and different corporate strategies, but they share an interest in securing access to some of the most consequential public lands in the Arctic.  

You can read more details in our press release here.  

For those of us who care deeply about public lands, the lease sale was a crushing day. These places are more than mere acreage or parcels available for companies to acquire. The Western Arctic is a landscape of extraordinary scale and ecological importance, and decisions made there reverberate far beyond the boundaries of individual lease tracts. 

But we did not let the lease sale silence us. 

Instead, Alaska Wilderness League and our supporters launched a corporate accountability campaign aimed directly at the companies that had chosen to pursue oil and gas development in the Western Arctic. Thousands of people took to social media to make their views known, flooding corporate accounts with comments and questions and demanding that these companies answer for their plans in the Arctic. It was one way for people across the country to remind these corporations that public lands come with a public interest — and that the American people are paying attention to what happens on them. 

We’re still bringing that energy. Unfortunately, so is Big Oil. 

In July, the Bureau of Land Management proposed another major change that could have consequences across the Western Arctic. The proposal, developed with significant input from the Alaska Oil and Gas Association, would make it easier for companies to advance development projects in the Western Arctic while limiting opportunities for public oversight and participation. 

The proposal comes with the familiar trappings of public engagement: a 60-day comment period, public meetings, and virtual hearings. Those opportunities matter, and people across the country have made use of them. But the substance of the proposal raises much larger questions about what meaningful public participation looks like when the rules governing development are being rewritten to make development easier in the first place. 

The Western Arctic deserves careful review of major projects because the stakes are enormous. The region contains wetlands, rivers, lakes, coastal areas, migration routes, and critical habitat that sustain wildlife and communities across the Arctic. Changes to the way development is reviewed can affect far more than a single project or lease block, particularly when they reduce opportunities to evaluate cumulative impacts and hear from the people who know these lands best. 

So we showed up. 

Members of the public packed hearings and meetings, submitted comments, and made their voices heard. More than 80 people testified during the public hearings, calling in from across the country — from Alaska to Maine and communities in between. Their messages varied, but the concern was unmistakable: decisions about the future of the Western Arctic deserve meaningful public scrutiny, and people expect the federal government to listen before making changes that could shape this landscape for decades. 

Those comments have been submitted to the Bureau of Land Management, and the public comment period remains open through November 9. 

If you haven’t yet weighed in, you can take action here. 

The proposed BLM rule is only one piece of a much larger effort to change how development happens in the Western Arctic. 

The Administration has also moved toward codifying a categorical exclusion for certain exploratory activities in the Western Arctic, a step that could allow these efforts to move forward without undergoing the full environmental review typically required under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). 

Environmental review is one of the primary ways the public gets to understand what a proposed project could mean for wildlife, habitat, communities, and the broader landscape before decisions are made. It provides a process for identifying impacts, considering alternatives, and bringing information into the public record. 

Eliminating that review means reducing opportunities to ask hard questions before bulldozers, roads, drill rigs, and other industrial infrastructure arrive. 

Taken together, these changes point toward a broader shift in how the Western Arctic is being managed. Longstanding safeguards are being reconsidered or dismantled, opportunities for public participation are being narrowed, and the rules governing development are being rewritten in ways that could make it easier for industry to move forward. 

The Western Arctic has spent decades at the center of debates about how much development is appropriate on public lands and where the lines should be drawn to protect places that are especially important for wildlife and communities. Those debates are not going away, but neither should the public’s role in them. 

It can be easy, after another lease sale or another proposed rule change, to feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of threats facing Alaska’s public lands. But the scale of the challenge is also a reminder of why public engagement matters. 

The Western Arctic belongs to all of us. 

It belongs to the people who live closest to it and depend on its lands and waters. It belongs to the caribou that travel across it, the birds that migrate thousands of miles to reach it, and the fish and other wildlife that depend on its interconnected wetlands, rivers, lakes, and coastal waters. And as public land, it belongs to the millions of Americans who may never set foot in the Arctic but still have a stake in what happens there. 

That public interest deserves a voice in every decision that shapes the future of this extraordinary place. 

Sometimes that means showing up when the government hands us the microphone. Sometimes it means creating enough public pressure that decision-makers have to listen. Sometimes it means holding corporations accountable for the choices they make on public lands. And sometimes it means doing all three at once. 

The fight for the Western Arctic has been long, and this year has brought more than its share of difficult days. But across the country, people continue to speak up for these lands. They are submitting comments, showing up at hearings, calling out corporate actions, and reminding decision-makers that the Western Arctic is worth protecting. 

We are deeply grateful to everyone who has stood with us through this fight. 

There is still a long road ahead, and there is still plenty of work to do. But we’re here for it — and we’re not going quietly. 

Photos: © Florian Schulz / visionsofthewild.com