Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

Climate change is already affecting the Arctic.

﻿“The National Wildlife Refuge System is a promise to preserve wildlife and habitat for the benefit of all Americans.”&nbsp;- U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

This population may well be extirpated within in our lifetimes if we don’t act now. Every bear counts.

Recognizing the extraordinary wildlife values&nbsp;of the area, the Eisenhower administration designated 8.9 million acres as the Alaska National Wildlife Range in 1960.&nbsp;With the&nbsp;passage of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act in 1980, the area was doubled in size and renamed Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.&nbsp;

Join Defenders in the fight to make sure no development occurs on this treasured and iconic land. To learn more and take action, go to <a href="https://defenders.org/wild-places/arctic" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">www.defenders.org/arctic</a>.

The Marine Mammal Protection Act protects polar bears from human activities that may kill, injure, harass or disrupt essential behaviors like breeding, nursing, and sheltering.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Is any amount of oil and gas worth sacrificing a sacred place, the&nbsp;livelihood of a people, a threatened polar bear population and one of our planet’s most biologically unique and dynamic ecosystems?

The Endangered Species Act protects listed polar bears and their critical habitat and prohibits human activities that disrupt essential behaviors. In&nbsp;response,&nbsp;the federal government&nbsp;has&nbsp;designated 77% of the Refuge’s coastal plain as critical habitat&nbsp;(all critical habitat shown in purple) for&nbsp;this threatened species.&nbsp;

Wilson, R.R. and Durner, G.M., 2019, Seismic Survey Design and Effects on Maternal Polar Bear Dens, Journal of Wildlife Management 84, 2

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is home to over 300 animal species. The map at right shows the ranges of several of them, including four species protected by the Endangered Species Act (ESA) that depend on the Refuge: spectacled eiders, ringed seals, bearded seals and the most imperiled polar bears in the world, the Beaufort Sea population, which is listed as threatened under the ESA.&nbsp;It is also a destination for over 200 bird species, meaning the preservation of the Refuge is critical to ensuring healthy future wildlife populations around the globe.&nbsp;

The People and Wildlife of the Coastal Plain

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People and wildlife depend on the Arctic Refuge's coastal plain.

Polar bear denning habitat and behavior are&nbsp;impacted by&nbsp;rapidly warming temperatures&nbsp;and disappearing sea ice resulting from climate change.&nbsp;As these changes&nbsp;put additional stress on mother and cubs&nbsp;during an already sensitive time, it will be essential&nbsp;to&nbsp;preserve&nbsp;the most important onshore denning&nbsp;habitat&nbsp;for polar bears in America’s Arctic: Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Unlike other bears, polar bears are active throughout the long winter and do not hibernate. However, females practice a behavior called denning.&nbsp;In the fall, pregnant females dig large holes in the snow to create dens where they will give birth.&nbsp;When a polar&nbsp;bear&nbsp;mother and&nbsp;her&nbsp;new cubs emerge&nbsp;from their den, they rely on the Arctic coastal areas and sea ice to hunt&nbsp;for seals,&nbsp;their&nbsp;primary&nbsp;food source.

Over 9,000 Native peoples have been integrally tied to the Arctic landscape for thousands of years. Among them are the Inupiat of Kaktovik and the&nbsp;Gwich'in&nbsp;Athabascan Indians.&nbsp;&nbsp;

To meet biological standards prescribed under these conservation laws, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service&nbsp;cannot&nbsp;allow&nbsp;the death of a single Southern Beaufort Sea polar bear from oil and gas&nbsp;activities (<a href="https://wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jwmg.21800" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Wilson and Durner 2019</a>).&nbsp;&nbsp;

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge harbors the greatest biodiversity of any protected area north of the Arctic Circle. However, oil companies and the Trump administration are fighting to open an essential area of the Refuge to drilling:&nbsp;the coastal plain. A healthy coastal plain is integral to the persistence of indigenous peoples and wildlife.&nbsp;

Determined to start selling leases in the coastal plain by early 2020, the Trump&nbsp;administration has rushed initial assessments of the environmental and economic impacts of oil development.&nbsp;

The average global temperature has risen 1.5°C since the pre-industrial era, but the Arctic is warming&nbsp;twice as fast as the rest of the world. This is evident in the sharp decline in Arctic sea ice since 2005.

<li>Damaging&nbsp;polar bear denning sites during winter oil exploration and construction, destroying critical habitat and potentially killing bears by causing mothers to abandon their cubs.&nbsp;<li>Fragmenting habitat with infrastructure such as pipelines, access roads, drill pads, processing facilities,&nbsp;and other structures. Oil and gas infrastructure displaces&nbsp;polar bears from prime&nbsp;habitats and adds energetic demands to this already stressed population.&nbsp;</li><li>Disturbing other imperiled marine wildlife such as Arctic ringed seals with seismic surveys and ice road construction.&nbsp;</li><li>Contaminating habitat with toxic oil (on average, there are approximately 400 spills per year in the industrialized zone of Alaska’s Arctic&nbsp;located&nbsp;west of the&nbsp;Refuge!).&nbsp;</li><li>Displacing the Porcupine&nbsp;caribou&nbsp;herd from its calving grounds and impacting millions of migratory birds that&nbsp;fly&nbsp;to the&nbsp;Refuge from&nbsp;around&nbsp;the globe to nest in the coastal plain.&nbsp;</li><li>And many more...</li></li>

Drilling poses additional threats to wildlife and habitat.

Many animals can adapt or migrate to more habitable climates, but that is not the case for polar bears;&nbsp;as&nbsp;their habitat melts away, it&nbsp;disappears entirely. As the ice recedes and becomes increasingly thin, polar bears are forced onto land. Refuge&nbsp;lands provide key&nbsp;onshore denning habitat and will become even more essential to polar bear survival with increasing environmental changes and decreasing ice to hunt and roam on.&nbsp;However, polar bears constrained to the shore of the coastal plain&nbsp;now&nbsp;sit directly in the path of oil development. Introducing drilling could devastate species already facing major threats to survival, and the economic costs of accelerating rather than reducing emissions contributing to the climate crisis have not been analyzed.&nbsp;

Produced by Defenders of Wildlife, 2020

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The proposed development of the coastal plain threatens the&nbsp;&nbsp;survival of the&nbsp;Gwich'in&nbsp;people of Alaska and Canada and could devastate the most important site for terrestrial polar bear denning in America's Arctic. This proposed development also&nbsp;jeopardizes&nbsp;the calving grounds of one of Alaska’s largest caribou herds, the Porcupine&nbsp;caribou&nbsp;herd, and nesting habitat for millions of migratory birds.&nbsp;

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The Trump administration continues to pursue oil and gas development despite severe threats to wildlife.

In addition, sea ice is forming further from shore as a result of climate change, leaving fewer mother bears willing to travel out to the ice to build their dens. Pregnant female Southern Beaufort Sea polar bears are increasingly denning onshore, from 34% in the 1980s to nearly<a href="https://www.int-res.com/abstracts/meps/v564/p211-224" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> 55% today;</a> 34% of these are denning in Arctic Refuge's <a href="https://polarbearsinternational.org/media/2213/amstrup_jwm_58.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">coastal plain</a>.

The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) protected Arctic Refuge's coastal plain from oil&nbsp;and gas leasing, "until authorized by an Act of Congress." Protections were upheld as oil and gas exploration began along&nbsp;the northern shore of Alaska&nbsp;in the 1940s&nbsp;and&nbsp;led to development&nbsp;in the late 1960s.&nbsp;Then, in 2017 Sen. Lisa Murkowski added language to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act directing the Bureau of Land Management to develop an oil and gas leasing program on the&nbsp;Refuge’s coastal&nbsp;plain.&nbsp;

The U.S. Government has a responsibility to protect polar bears.

To the&nbsp;Gwichi’in, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (shown here in green) and its coastal plain (outlined in black)&nbsp;is "Iizhik Gwats'an&nbsp;Gwandaii Goodlit"—the sacred place where life begins.&nbsp;Self-identified as the “caribou people,” they&nbsp;rely on the Porcupine herd for 80% of their subsistence needs. As a result, the&nbsp;Gwich’in&nbsp;have&nbsp;settled within the range of the herd and near the coastal plain which serves as the birthing grounds of the Porcupine caribou.

Without sea ice, polar bears cannot access the seals that sustain them.

The expansion of oil and gas development into Arctic Refuge's coastal plain would have significant negative impacts on already imperiled Arctic species, including:

Durner, G.M., Fischbach, A.S., Amstrup, S.C., and Douglas, D.C., 2010, Catalogue of polar bear (Ursus maritimus) maternal den locations in the Beaufort Sea and neighboring regions, Alaska, 1910–2010: U.S. Geological Survey Data Series 568, 14

(The video to right depicts oil and gas drilling activity in Alaska’s Arctic, just west of the Refuge)

Industrializing the coastal plain of Arctic Refuge will only accelerate climate change impacts and drastically increase&nbsp;the strain on&nbsp;polar bears. Numbering approximately 900 polar bears, the Southern Beaufort Sea population of polar bears has experienced a 50 percent decline in the last three decades, with a 40 percent drop since 2000.&nbsp;

To learn more about Defenders' work to promote human-polar bear coexistence, <a href="https://defenders-cci.org/map/Coexisting_with_Polar_Bears/index.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" class="sm-text-color-clear-custom-color">click here</a>!