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The Trump Quickly Moves to Open Alaska Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to Oil Drilling
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/04/20/showing-total-disregard-indigenous-rights-and-public-wishes-trump-moves-open-alaskaDemonstrating a "total disregard for Indigenous rights and public wishes," the Trump administration on Friday moved to expedite oil and gas exploration in previously protected lands in Alaska.
The Interior Department published a notice in the Federal Register announcing a public comment period and plans to draft an environmental impact statement for creating a leasing program for the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). The filing follows legislation to enable the program that was tacked on to the tax law Republicans forced through Congress last year.
In response, critics who have spent several months fighting the drilling efforts expressed worries about how drilling will impact the region's native people as well as ANWR's wildlife; condemned the aggressive timeline for making leases available to fossil fuel companies; and vowed to file lawsuits.
Denouncing the "reckless dash to expedite drilling," Defenders of Wildlife president Jamie Rappaport Clark declared: "We will not stand by and watch them desecrate this pristine landscape. Drilling would threaten hundreds of species that depend on the coastal plain for survival. It would violate the rights of the Gwich'in people, and further exacerbate the increasing impacts of climate change."
The Gwich'in people—an indigenous tribe that lives along the migratory route of the Porcupine River Caribou Herd in northern Alaska and Canada—have long opposed drilling in the region.
The Interior Department published a notice in the Federal Register announcing a public comment period and plans to draft an environmental impact statement for creating a leasing program for the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). The filing follows legislation to enable the program that was tacked on to the tax law Republicans forced through Congress last year.
In response, critics who have spent several months fighting the drilling efforts expressed worries about how drilling will impact the region's native people as well as ANWR's wildlife; condemned the aggressive timeline for making leases available to fossil fuel companies; and vowed to file lawsuits.
Denouncing the "reckless dash to expedite drilling," Defenders of Wildlife president Jamie Rappaport Clark declared: "We will not stand by and watch them desecrate this pristine landscape. Drilling would threaten hundreds of species that depend on the coastal plain for survival. It would violate the rights of the Gwich'in people, and further exacerbate the increasing impacts of climate change."
The Gwich'in people—an indigenous tribe that lives along the migratory route of the Porcupine River Caribou Herd in northern Alaska and Canada—have long opposed drilling in the region.
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