{"id":330808,"date":"2025-10-25T05:02:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-25T05:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/330808\/"},"modified":"2025-10-25T05:02:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-25T05:02:11","slug":"trump-adminstration-opens-alaskas-arctic-national-wildlife-refuge-for-drilling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/330808\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Adminstration Opens Alaska\u2019s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for Drilling"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Trump<\/p>\n

Drill, baby, drill? Sigh. Photo: National Wildlife Refuge<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Alaska\u2019s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) has been approved as the site of oil and gas drilling by the Trump administration.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The move, which prompted widespread criticism, was announced on Thursday by the interior secretary. Over a million acres of ANWR\u2019s coastal plains \u2014 home to countless animals like polar bears, caribou, whales and seals \u2014 will be open for business. It upends the Biden administration\u2019s 2024 decision to increase the reserve\u2019s federal protections.<\/p>\n

It was also announced that permits have been issued to build the Ambler Road Project, a 211-mile gravel road through Alaska\u2019s Izembek national wildlife refuge.\u00a0According to The Guardian<\/a>, \u201cthe road would endanger more than 200,000 migratory birds that cross through the refuge annually, among other wildlife, according to the National Wildlife Refuge Association. The project would also threaten multiple Indigenous tribes that rely on the area for hunting and fishing. At least 39 of Alaska\u2019s interior villages and 37 tribes oppose the road.\u201d<\/p>\n

The road is being built to allow access to a copper deposit worth somewhere around $7 billion, not to mention the various other cobalt and zinc deposits also in the region.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom day one, President Trump directed us to unlock Alaska\u2019s energy and resource potential while honoring commitments to the state and local communities,\u201d said Doug Burgum, the U.S. interior secretary \u201cBy reopening the coastal plain and advancing key infrastructure, we are strengthening energy independence, creating jobs and supporting Alaska\u2019s communities while driving economic growth across the state.\u201d<\/p>\n

Environmental groups, however, are outraged at the proposals. The area is extraordinarily important, not only for research purposes, but for the sake of protecting wild lands from our relentless need for more of everything.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Arctic refuge is the crown jewel of our public lands system,\u201d said the Alaska Wilderness League. \u201cDuring a government shutdown, when everyday Americans are left without basic services, President Trump has chosen to double down on failed policies that prioritize oil corporations over people. Opening the entire coastal plain of the Arctic refuge to drilling would destroy one of the most ecologically significant landscapes on earth \u2013 the birthing grounds of the porcupine caribou herd, vital habitat for polar bears and migratory birds, and sacred land for the Gwich\u2019in people who have stewarded its resources for millennia.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an already fragile ecosystem, made more fragile by our rapidly changing climate.<\/a> \u201cThese decisions will collectively wreak havoc on fragile Alaska ecosystems in the most disruptive way possible, causing long-term environmental damage, all to boost the bottom lines of CEOs,\u201d The Sierra Club wrote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Drill, baby, drill? Sigh. Photo: National Wildlife Refuge Alaska\u2019s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) has been approved as…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":330809,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[934,164179,69,3345,159,277,67,132,68,837],"class_list":{"0":"post-330808","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-alaska","9":"tag-arctic-national-wildlife-refuge","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-oil-and-gas","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-trump","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-wildlife"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115433055839999651","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330808\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/330809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}