A 50th Birthday Present for ANWR? No More Drill Baby Drill
With the Drill Baby Drill crowd gloating after Election Day, Alaska conservationists are worried about renewed attacks on their wild lands.
But they aren't just hanging in the defensive zone, waiting. Instead, they are initiating a preemptive play to protect the grand prize for the Sarah Palin/Big Oil crowd: the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).
Spanning an area about the size of South Carolina, ANWR is the last great American wilderness. It's a place where grizzly bears and caribou roam and millions of the world's birds migrate and nest each year.
This December, the refuge, established in 1960 by the Eisenhower administration, will turn 50 years old. During that time it has survived new drilling attempts almost every time gas prices spike. But conservation advocates know the refuge will never be safe until it is given permanent protections on par with places like the Grand Canyon. Currently, much to the agony of oil companies, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is studying wilderness protections for parts of the refuge.
The refuge may be far removed removed from most U.S. residents in the lower 48. But as one 15-year-old in New Jersey knows, preserving the Refuge is an issue crucial no matter where you live.
Jake Calvitti has worked with the Alaska Wilderness League since he was ten and has already taken three trips to Washington to lobby against drilling for oil in ANWR. Now a high school freshman, he spent 2 weeks this summer on a fellowship in Alaska learning about the recovery since the Exxon Valdez spill. "The Arctic refuge already faces the challenges from global warming, which are effecting migration patterns of the wildlife. With the threat of industrialization, things will just get worse," Calvitti told a local New Jersey paper earlier this year.
In marking the 50th anniversary, the Alaska Wilderness League wants more Americans to show their support by building and flying their own Arctic kites in a symbolic migration of the millions of birds that are born in the Arctic Refuge's coastal plain and make their way across all 50 states and six continents before returning back to the Arctic to news.
By doing so, participants will be joining the League's push to get President Obama to declare the refuge a National Monument in honor of its Big 5-0, a move that would protect the refuge from drilling pushers in Congress and hopefully lead the way to an official wilderness designation through legislation. The League says that more than 60 percent of Americans support the idea of better protections.
Photo credit: US FWS Headquarters via Flickr
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Jess Leber
is a Change.org editor. She most recently covered climate and energy issues as a reporter in Washington, D.C
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