A new technical and scientific report released on April 21 highlights the ecological and cultural significance of the Western Arctic – including 23-million acres that conservationists contend faces a threat of repeal of protections assured by Congress in 1976.
The assessment of ecological and cultural values within the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A), first published on April 8 in the universal open access research repository Zenodo, could not be timelier, according to officials with The Wilderness Society.
On March 20, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced plans to open as much as 82% of NPR-A to oil drilling. On April 9, President Donald Trump directed federal agencies to repeal all regulations deemed to exceed their authority. On April 14, the Interior Department sent to the White House a proposed rescission of the NPR-A management rule, which is intended to protect critical values in the Western Arctic.
In the Naval Petroleum Reserves Production Act of 1976, Congress mandated that lands of high cultural importance and valuable wildlife habitat within the NPR-A be identified and protected.
“It is one of the most intact landscapes remaining on the planet, hosting an unmatched diversity of wildlife species – including three major caribou herds, migratory birds and marine mammals, and more than 50 species of fish,” said Tim Woody, communications manager for The Wilderness Society in Alaska. “Iñupiat people living in the North Slope have relied on the resources of this region for millennia. And it may be one of North America’s critical climate refugia for wildlife in the future, yet it is under constant threat from oil and gas development.”
The Wilderness Society said the Trump administration’s expected move, to be made with no advance public notice or opportunity for public comment, is part of the president’s effort to deregulate industry and sell off national public lands to allow oil companies to exploit those lands without safeguards for local communities and Alaska Native people.
With the significant impact of climate change on the Arctic, protecting the reserve is crucial for the health of the land, animals and people, the published report said.
The report noted that caribou, the most abundant large land mammal in the Arctic, have experienced sharp global declines across most of their range raising concerns about their future. Caribou use the Western Arctic year-round for critical calving, post-salving, insect relief, and migratory and winter habitat, the report said.
Whitefish species are an important subsistence and cultural resource for Arctic Inupiat communities surrounding the NPR-A. The report notes that developing durable watershed protections to maintain Broad Whitefish spawning and rearing habitats is essential for conservation of Arctic subsistence fish resources.
The report further notes that the nation’s entire yellow-billed loon breeding population is found only in Alaska, primarily in the Teshekpuk Lake special area and surrounding areas of the Western Arctic. Reproductive success is limited to a tight window each year and can be disrupted by oil field infrastructure, the report said. The NPR-A is of worldwide importance to breeding shorebirds, with some of the highest densities and diversity of breeding shorebirds in the circumpolar Arctic.
On April 18, the environmental entity Oceana raised concerns over an Interior Department announcement to develop a new five-year plan for offshore oil and gas lease sales on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf, a plan that could open significant national coastlines for oil drilling, including a new proposed area calling the “High Arctic.”
“We know oil spills wreck economies and businesses, kill wildlife, and devastate coastlines,” said Oceana Campaign Director Joseph Gordon. “These consequences are why there is a strong bipartisan tradition to protect our oceans from drilling.”
More than 7,300 oil spills occurred in federal waters between 2010 and 2022, an average of more than one spill every day.
