ACT NOW: Congress joins the assault on the Arctic

Take action to protect the Arctic Refuge!

Dear folks, Arctic wildlife are already in a race against time living at ground zero for climate change but now their troubles could intensify. As if the Trump administration’s demands to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas development weren’t enough, now Congress is threatening to desecrate these incredible lands and waters by trying to sneak drilling authorization into the budget bills of both houses of Congress. Tell Congress to stop all attempts to ransack the Arctic Refuge! The president has made no secret about where his loyalties lie in his unrelenting drive to open the Arctic Refuge to Big Oil – he has even tried to use secret and illegal tactics to speed his agenda. The one barrier to the Trump administration’s greedy push to put profit above wildlife and habitat in the Arctic Refuge is that it still takes an act of Congress to allow drilling in the coastal plain. But now, anti-wildlife members of Congress are using the budget process to clear that roadblock. The House budget resolution already includes a provision paving the way for Arctic drilling, and now the Senate Budget Committee is also trying to bury it in its own budget resolution. Take Action: Don’t let Congress put a price on the wildlife we love. The Arctic Refuge is a place of unparalleled beauty that supports a vast array of unique and imperiled wildlife - from polar bears and brown bears to musk oxen and arctic foxes. It is also the principal calving grounds for the Porcupine Caribou herd, one of North America’s largest caribou herds. Contact your members of Congress today and demand they protect the Arctic Refuge for its treasured beauty and for the wildlife that depend on it. The decision to open one of the world’s largest intact ecosystems, a place of breathtaking beauty and vast, rugged wilderness, to oil and gas development should not be treated as a mere footnote in an unrelated budget process. The Arctic Refuge deserves better. Wildlife deserves better. And the American people who overwhelmingly support keeping the Arctic Refuge free from destructive drilling deserve better. Sincerely, Robert Dewey Vice President, Government Relations & External Affairs Defenders of Wildlife

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