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Along Alaska's fragile northern coast, offshore and onshore unchecked oil and gas development and the accelerating effects of global warming are threatening whole populations of whales, polar bears, and other imperiled wildlife. To block this onslaught, NRDC escalated multi-year campaigns of courtroom and public pressure and scored several key victories on behalf of America's Arctic.

After the Bush administration granted the Shell oil company a permit to begin drilling off the spectacular coastline of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, NRDC and an environmental coalition raced to court and won a temporary injunction blocking all drilling activity through the end of the year. The administration's own experts have predicted that drilling in Alaska's Beaufort sea would cause at least one oil spill -- a spill that could spread into the migratory routes of the endangered bowhead whale, blanket the shores of the Arctic Refuge where polar bears give birth, and wipe out hundreds of thousands of migratory birds. With no known method for cleaning up a spill in the Beaufort's icy waters, the coast of the refuge could be turned into a long-term toxic waste site. Thanks to NRDC's quick response, the Refuge is safe from oil companies for one more year.

In a separate victory, NRDC court action stopped the Bush administration from issuing oil and gas leases for the extraordinary Teshekpuk Lake region of the Western Arctic Reserve for at least another year. In 2006, NRDC joined with Earthjustice and other partners and won a temporary injunction blocking the lease sale of some 600,000 acres of this unspoiled caribou calving ground and molting and nesting area for thousands of migratory birds. The latest reprieve came after the administration released a court-ordered study of the cumulative impact of oil and gas development on protected wetlands and other sensitive wildlife habitat. The Bush administration is still pushing to lease these critical wildlife habitats before it leaves office in January 2009. NRDC will continue to fight in court to ban destructive oil drilling in fragile areas of the Western Arctic Reserve and in the offshore waters of the Arctic Refuge. In support of these legal efforts, NRDC BioGems Defenders and other activists have sent tens of thousands of messages urging the Bush administration and the oil and gas industry to protect these vital wildlife habitats.

Meanwhile, in the face of alarming new scientific data on the rapid decline in Arctic sea ice, NRDC mobilized hundreds of thousands of activists to urge the Bush administration to protect threatened polar bears under the Endangered Species Act. When the Bush administration missed its January deadline to reach a decision on polar bear protection, we joined forces with the Center for Biological Diversity and other groups and prepared to challenge the administration in court. The announcement of the delay came just before a scheduled oil and gas lease sale in critical polar bear habitat in the Chukchi Sea, off the coast of northwest Alaska. If the polar bear is granted federal protection, however, all proposals to lease or drill its habitat will be subject to heightened government review, as long as the protection precedes the leasing decision. We will continue our fight in and out of the courtroom to protect polar bears and the other imperiled wildlife of America's Arctic from destructive oil and gas development.

See the complete Saving Endangered Wildlife and Wild Places section of this report (in pdf format, 284k) for more about our work, including more NRDC BioGems victories.

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