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Oil and Gas Leasing Would Damage Alaska's Teeming Teshekpuk Lake Region
Planned lease sale threatens waterfowl, caribou, native lifestyles
Over the strong objections of Native people, wildlife biologists, sportsmen’s groups, and the general public, the Bureau of Land Management remains intent on leasing one of the most remarkable wetlands complexes on the planet. The place is the Teshekpuk Lake Special Area in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A), the largest single block of wild public land left in the United States.
We need your help in urging the new Interior Secretary to postpone the oil and gas lease sale for this fragile area that is now set for late September.
| Sample Letter for Campaign |
Subject: Teshekpuk Lake, Alaska
Dear [ Decision Maker ] ,
I am very much opposed to the Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) oil and gas activity plan for the Northeast Planning Area of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A). The plan, approved in January 2006, will open 100 percent of the area north and east of Teshekpuk Lake to leasing.
That would not only place the caribou and waterfowl populations there in serious jeopardy but would damage the important subsistence activities of a number of Native villages. The North Slope's residents have expressed strong opposition to the plan. So have sportsmen's groups, scientists, conservationists and the public at large.
The area around Teshekpuk Lake should remain what it is today: an irreplaceable, unbroken, core wildlife habitat for caribou, molting geese and millions of other birds and mammals and a place where generations of Alaska Natives have hunted, fished and pursued their subsistence ways of life.
I ask you to cancel the lease sale now tentatively planned for September 2006 in the Teshekpuk Lake Surface Protection Area. I also ask you to direct the BLM to protect the full range of the area's values, from subsistence to recreation to the health of fish and wildlife populations. It would also ensure strict adherence to environmental standards during every phase of oil and gas operations.
Such a decision would be a fitting way to begin your tenure as Interior Secretary, signaling not only a new face but a new day, one of careful environmental stewardship. Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
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Campaign Launched:
August 28, 2006
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Recognized for Decades as a Special Area
Beneath the scarcely evocative name of “National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska” is a stunning sweep of landscape, remarkable even in Alaska where a grand scale is the only scale. The NPR-A encompasses 23.5 million acres of wild land and exceptional habitat.
Some of the richest of all is in the Teshekpuk Lake area in the Reserve’s northeast corner, the 4.6 million-acre Northeast Planning Area. The area is one of the most important wetland complexes in the entire circumpolar Arctic. It provides essential molting-season habitat for nearly a third of all the brant in the Pacific Flyway. Millions of waterfowl, shorebirds and songbirds nest in the area. It also sustains the 45,000 caribou in the Teshekpuk Lake herd on which hunters from seven Native communities rely for subsistence harvests.
Petroleum: That, But Not Only That
President Warren Harding established the petroleum reserve in 1923. The Congress redesignated it as NPR-A in 1976 and transferred management of it to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in the Interior Department. Though “petroleum” is in the reserve’s name, the Congress and a succession of Interior secretaries have recognized Teshekpuk Lake’s surpassing natural values. Even James Watt, no friend of wild things and wild places, put 200,000 acres just north of the lake off-limits to oil and gas leasing.
In the Clinton years, Secretary Bruce Babbitt went further, establishing the Teshekpuk Lake Surface Protection Area of over 850,000 acres, and closing nearly 600,000 acres to leasing. The balance remained open to leasing without surface occupancy.
That decades-long record of special care for Teshekpuk Lake ended abruptly in January when the Bureau of Land Management decided to open the entire area to leasing. Till then, 87 percent of the area had been open to oil and gas leasing, but that wasn’t enough for the Norton Interior Department.
Opposition Broad and Deep
Conservation groups, Native communities, sportsmen and scientists oppose the plan. Even other federal agencies, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Environmental Protection Agency, have weighed in against it. The central fear is the inevitable habitat fragmentation oil and gas activity would mean in an area that should remain unbroken, core habitat for caribou, geese and other species.
Conservationists filed suit against the plan in May and the case is pending. Meanwhile, the BLM has tentatively scheduled a lease sale under the plan for this September.
Postponing the Sale
The only sensible thing for the Interior Department to do is to cancel the sale and re-evaluate leasing based on all these concerns and all the facts that support them. There is ample precedent for postponement: Secretary Babbitt scrubbed a Beaufort Sea lease sale to gather more information, including data on cumulative environmental effects. That is precisely what we urge now. As the new Secretary of Interior, Dirk Kempthorne has the perfect opportunity to take that step and every reason to do so: the continued opposition from Alaska Natives and wildlife professionals.
How You Can Help!
The North Slope of Alaska is our nation’s only arctic ecosystem. Surely we can take the time to carefully consider its future! Please ask Secretary Kempthorne to postpone this lease sale and carefully weigh its consequences for Teshekpuk Lake and the people whose very culture depends upon it. You can send that message immediately from the previous page.
Please consider taking the extra few minutes to compose your own letter; every letter counts, but personal letters count the most.
Contact Information
Secretary Dirk Kempthorne
U.S. Department of the Interior
1849 C Street NW
Washington, D.C. 20240
Web form: http://www.doi.gov/contact.html
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