Home to an estimated 900 polar bears, the Arctic Refuge along the Southern Beaufort Sea was declared a protected area decades ago. But in 2017, the Trump Administration approved opening the Refuge’s coastal plain to oil and gas drilling for the sake of profit by Big Oil.
Leasing these sacred lands to corporate oil giants will increase traffic, noise, and pollution in the Arctic — not only disrupting polar bears’ delicate habitat but interfering with their natural migration and denning patterns.
These beloved animals are already struggling to survive the harms of the climate crisis. We must demand federal action to protect polar bears from the dangers of Arctic drilling that threaten to send them closer to extinction.
