TAKE ACTION

Take Action today to help protect America's Arctic!

The Department of the Interior is collecting public comments on its plan to rescind Special Areas protections in the Western Arctic (NPR-A). We have until August 4, 2025, to let them know Americans support protecting the Arctic.

Add your name to our letter below! We'll deliver it to the Department of the Interior to oppose removing Special Areas in the Western Arctic.

To Secretary Doug Burgum:

I am voicing my opposition to the Department of the Interior’s proposal to strike down protections for Special Areas in the Western Arctic. Special Areas are designated to provide “maximum protection” for areas of critical ecological, recreational, and subsistence value and were established through the Naval Petroleum Reserves Production Act of 1976. Removing protections for Special Areas is inconsistent with the original intent of the law.

The economics of opening up more of America’s Arctic to oil and gas development simply don’t add up. As the Trump administration guts energy efficiency standards and shuts down renewable energy programs, Americans are paying all-time-high prices for gas products while corporations rake in record-breaking profits.

Removing protections for more than 13 million acres of public land will only benefit the oil and gas industry and do little to help Americans pay less at the pump and on their monthly energy bills. Americans deserve a common-sense, economically sound energy strategy. This is not it.

I urge the Department of the Interior to maintain the common-sense protections for Special Areas in the Western Arctic.

Sincerely,

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America's Arctic is at risk of being sold off to the highest bidder. DOI is trying to remove Special Areas protections from the Western Arctic while the Arctic Refuge and Western Arctic face at least 9 mandated oil and gas lease sales over the next decade.

This is a real moment of crisis for American public lands in the Arctic. The budget bill signed into law on July 4, 2025 guts protections for the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and the Western Arctic (NPR-A). The law mandates extensive leasing for resource extraction while Secretary Burgum has announced his plans to strip Special Areas protections from the Western Arctic (NPR-A).

Why? The same reason the Administration is trying to slash programs like Medicaid, SNAP, and education grants - so they can "afford" to fund massive tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy and fast-track corporate interests.

But the numbers don’t add up. A recent congressionally mandated Arctic lease sale raised zero dollars and added $1 billion to the deficit. In addition, it can take up to a decade before new projects in the Arctic produce even a drop of oil. At that point, the vast majority of revenues from new Arctic oil projects required under this proposal wouldn't even go to the US Treasury. In fact, after 2035, the bill would create a new revenue split that sends 70% of all revenues from fossil fuel development on federal lands in America's Arctic to the State of Alaska.

The Administration's willful disregard for common-sense economics and pandering to Big Oil corporate donors is an all-out assault on one of America’s wildest and most fragile ecosystems - millions of acres of public land that impact every single person on Earth.

WHAT'S GOING ON? | America's Arctic is at risk in multiple ways. Currently, you can take action to let Secretary Burgum know you don't support rescinding protections in the Western Arctic.

American taxpayers are already $1 BILLION in the hole on President Trump’s previous attempt to sell off the Arctic Refuge (ANWR) to the highest bidder. In Trump’s 2017 Tax Act - which gave nearly $2 trillion in tax cuts to the country’s wealthiest individuals - Congress mandated two lease sales in the Arctic Refuge which they claimed would help taxpayers recoup $1 billion of the massive handout in corporate welfare and billionaire tax cuts. Instead, the two lease sales have earned exactly $0, and the most recent lease sale - held in January 2025 - received ZERO bids.

Despite this record of economic failures, Congress passed a new budget bill - signed into law on July 4, 2025, to further expand and deregulate Arctic drilling as a way to purportedly rause money to fund the Administration's policy priorities.

Except if you look closely, they are actually directing 70% of any future revenues from new oil and gas drilling to the State of Alaska’s coffers, with just 30% flowing to benefit the country as a whole after 2035, which is when any new production facilities are likely to come on-line.

WHO IS DOING IT? | Currently, the Secretary Doug Burgum and the Department of the Interior

It's critical that the DOI hears from people like YOU so they know America's Arctic matters to citizens.

WHY DOES IT MATTER? | America's Arctic is too important to Planet Earth to be gifted to corporate interests.

FIRST, oil and gas profits are already at record highs. The administration's push to drill the American Arctic while derailing renewable energy projects and removing solar and wind power from federal energy programs is a blatant corporate handout at the expense of everyday Americans. Our federal agencies have a responsibility to ensure the government works FOR its citizens. instead, it's actively helping one of the wealthiest and most polluting industries in the world at the expense of the American people...

SECOND, the Arctic is warming 4x faster than the rest of the planet. A healthy Arctic stabilizes the jet stream, reducing extreme weather events like the recent fires in California and catastrophic storms in South Carolina. It's an enormous carbon sink for the entire planet, mitigating the worst impacts of climate change all around the globe. It is the ancestral homeland of Indigenous Peoples who depend upon access to clean water and unpolluted resources for traditional livelihoods and food security. And it is vital habitat for American wildlife like polar bears, bowhead whales, caribou, and wolves.

Watch the video below to learn more on how America's Arctic impacts everyone on Earth, and and explore the entire 5-part series of 1 minute videos for how the Arctic impacts global biodiversity, economies, climate and food webs.

OK! WHAT CAN I DO ABOUT IT? | Add your name to the letter on our Take Action page and then help spread the word on social media.

Use the form above to SIGN the public comment by August 4th! FOLLOW up on social media at @ProTheArctic and help spread the word.