How You Can Help
Email your senator and tell them to oppose any efforts to drill in the Arctic.

Summary
The coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is truly one of America’s last wild places.

The Arctic Refuge is the calving ground of the 129,000-member Porcupine River caribou herd. For centuries, this vast herd has traveled hundreds of miles from Canada to the coastal plain to give birth to their young. The Arctic Refuge is the only conservation area in the U.S. where polar bears regularly den and is home to musk oxen, snow geese, Dall sheep, and migratory bird species that visit all 50 states.

Oil drilling would destroy the Refuge. Prudhoe Bay, an area west of the Arctic Refuge where drilling is allowed, has more than 1,500 miles of roads and pipelines and thousands of acres of industrial facilities. In 2004 approximately 550 oil spills occurred on Alaska’s North Slope–about one spill every 16 hours.

Moreover, drilling in the Arctic Refuge will not solve our energy problems or make us less dependent on from the Middle East. Opening the Refuge to drilling would increase global oil reserves by less than one-third of one percent—far too little to make America energy independent. Increasing the average fuel efficiency of cars and trucks by a mere two percent per year would save at least twice as much oil as is found in the coastal plain.

But the Bush Administration, powerful pro-drilling members of Congress, and oil companies like Exxon-Mobil want to open up the coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge for oil drilling. They want to ruin one of America’s last wild places for less oil than the U.S. uses in a year. More.

Our Coalition

Research:
Saving America’s Arctic: Dispelling Myths about Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
Watch a video about the Arctic.

Links:
Exxpose Exxon
Alaska Wilderness League
Natural Resources Defense Council
Northern Alaska Environmental Center
Sierra Club
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
The Wilderness Society

Saving the Arctic in the Boardroom