Trump Auctions Off Arctic Refuge Land to Oil Companies
ANCHORAGE, Alaska, January 14, 2020 (ENS) – The Trump administration has begun to auction off roughly one-third of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling. It is no coincidence that this lease sale was announced with only a few weeks left in the Trump presidency, as President Donald Trump is eager to kickstart Arctic oil drilling before leaving the White House on January 20.
The refuge is home to some of the most diverse and spectacular wildlife in the Arctic, according to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. “The refuge’s rich pageant of wildlife includes 42 fish species, 37 land mammals, eight marine mammals, and more than 200 migratory and resident bird species,” the USFWS says.
A polar bear walks across rubble ice. | Mike Lockhart/USGS/AP
WASHINGTON Occasionally, the nation’s corporate capitalists in this case, its six dominant banks do something right. And their refusal to lend big oil any money to “Drill, baby, drill!,” in former GOP Gov. Sarah Palin’s words, in the ecologically vital Arctic National Wildlife Refuge may stop lame-duck GOP Oval Office occupant Donald Trump’s last-minute scheme to let the oil giants do so.
And if the banks’ decision doesn’t stop degradation of ANWR, home to polar bears, caribou, elk, and other vital species in a pristine environment, an earlier lawsuit by Alaskan native peoples, environmental groups, and even the neighboring Yukon provincial government in Canada could end it, too.
In this undated photo, caribou from the Porcupine Caribou Herd migrate onto the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in northeast Alaska. The refuge takes up an area nearly the size of South Carolina in Alaska's northeast corner. More evidence of the ongoing downsizing of the oil industry. Arctic under severe threat, but…
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