It was announced on Monday that Trump administration would open up 1.5 million acres of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil and gas drilling, from the whole refuge area of 19.3 million acres.
The administration promises that this decision will lead to more jobs and help further eradicating unemployment crises, but green groups and wildlife activists argued that this will be harmful to the animals inhabited there and would worsen environmental conditions. The animals found in the aforementioned region are grizzly bears, polar bears, gray wolves, caribou, and arctic foxes.
Whereas “This plan will not only harm caribou, polar bears, and other wildlife, it is foolish in the face of rapidly advancing climate change,” said a statement from the Center for Western Priorities executive director Jennifer Rokala.
“Oil companies will have to harden their infrastructure to withstand melting permafrost and rising seas, leading to an even greater impact. Essentially, Bernhardt is approving a plan Reporters were told that “Over the course of this oil and gas program, it could create thousands of new jobs and generate tens of billions of dollars,” by the Interior Secretary David Bernhardt.
“We understand that Alaska has earned an almost mythological place in the minds of many Americans,” they wrote in The Wall Street Journal. “But we cannot be treated like a snow globe, to be placed on the shelf for viewing pleasure only.”
On the other hand, the government is hoping for a better future with this decision and promising it’s fruitfulness, while on the other hand, the potential damage to wildlife justifies the backlash it’s been receiving.
This statement was given by Lena Moffitt, the Sierra Club’s senior director of it’s Our Wild America campaign, “The Trump administration’s so-called review process for their shameless sell-off of the Arctic Refuge has been a sham from the start. We’ll see them in court.’’
Adam Kolton, executive director of the Alaska Wilderness League, stated that the administration ignored science and the law in making this decision.
Kolton reportedly said, “Our climate is in crisis, oil prices have cratered, and major banks are pulling out of Arctic financing right and left. And yet the Trump administration continues its race to liquidate our nation’s last great wilderness, putting at risk the indigenous peoples and iconic wildlife that depend on it, we will continue to fight this at every turn, in the courts, in Congress, and in the corporate boardrooms.”
According to these statements, there’ll be legal challenges to face for the government, and there has also been debate about how much oil sits beneath the refuge, which is thought to be the largest untapped trove of onshore oil in the U.S., no one can be sure if this would even be profitable.