Protect America's Refuge as Wilderness
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska is one of America’s most wild and unspoiled places. President Eisenhower's Administration set it aside from oil drilling in 1960, referring to it in as 'The Last Great Wilderness'.
Even after decades of being told 'no', the Bush administration and a few Congressmen try to open this place for oil companies. This year the Senate has drilling into their budget. In 2005 they tried to sneak it into the federal budget reconciliation bill, and then desperately tied it to military funding (that was stopped by a Senate filibuster just before Christmas). In 2003 they tried to put it into the federal budget. In 2002 they tried to put it in an energy bill. Through your good work, all of these schemes have failed.
There's a visionary, common-sense solution to this problem: protect it permanently. Instead of Congress fighting back drilling proposals every year, they could designate all of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as Wilderness. 90% of the Refuge is already Wilderness, designated by Congress in the 1970s. Oil companies demanded that 10% of it--the coastal plain, which is the most important area ecologically but also has oil fields--not be permanently protected. The Arctic debate is about this 10%. Maps and facts about the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
There is already significant support for the common-sense solution. Bills S261 and HR567 in Congress are co-sponsored by over a quarter of Senators and Representatives, including Minnesota's Mark Dayton, Betty McCollum, and Martin Sabo. Read the bills: House and Senate
Please call or email your Representative and Senator to thank them (or chastise them) for their votes, and ask them to support wilderness designation for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Call Congress at the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121, or click here to send an email.
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