Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) is the northernmost wildlife refuge in the United States. The area in the coastal plain of the North Slope in northeast Alaska was protected in 1960 by Fred A. Seaton, Secretary of the Interior under Dwight D. Eisenhower, and was enlarged in 1980 by the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act to a total of 78,053 km² by now, of which with the Mollie Beattie Wilderness approximately 32,374 km² are designated as Wilderness Area. The protected area is listed by the World Conservation Union in Category IV (Biotope and Species Protection Area).

It is a unique ecosystem with 45 species of marine and terrestrial mammals, 36 species of fish and 180 species of birds. The area is called Izhik Gwats'an Gwandaii Goodlit (place where all life begins) by the Gwich'in (the northernmost group of Athabascan Indians) because it is where the 152,000-head Porcupine caribou herd gives birth. To this day, the Indians are primarily economically dependent on this herd.

The eastern edge of the refuge forms the border to the Canadian territory Yukon, where the two national parks Vuntut and Ivvavik directly follow.

Up to 16 billion barrels of oil are believed to lie beneath the ANWR. The exploitation of these reserves has been the subject of controversy since 1977. In 1982, a moratorium on exploration and exploitation was imposed, which was extended in 1990 by an executive order from President George H. W. Bush. In 2005, Ted Stevens in the Republican-dominated U.S. Senate tried to allow exploitation; he narrowly failed. Since then, the Gwich'in have been fighting to protect the area. In 2008, President George W. Bush lobbied the United States Congress to allow its use. He argued with the energy security of the USA.

Because of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, any commercial use of the area must be authorized by Congress itself. In 2017, when Republicans held majorities in both the Senate and the House, Congress authorized oil and natural gas development in up to 8% of the area and directed the Department of the Interior to set the framework for it. In August 2020, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt unveiled a timeline. Companies received the first drilling rights in the final days of Donald Trump's presidency.

Shortly after his inauguration in January 2021, Joe Biden, with an eye toward the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, ordered no more new drilling rights to be auctioned off for federally owned lands and waters. In June 2021, a federal district court in Louisiana ruled that only Congress could impose such a halt because it was he who had opened federal lands to such action.

See also: Alaska's history: controversy over drilling in the Arctic Refuge

·         Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

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Mountain lake

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Tundra

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River Delta


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