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Dear Audubon Advocate,
The ocean waters along Alaska’s northern coast provide vital habitat for extraordinary wildlife, including polar bears, walruses, ice-dependent seals, endangered bowhead whales, and millions of migratory birds. The Arctic Ocean can also be phenomenally harsh: broken ice covers the water for much of the year, storms with hurricane-force winds can whip up 20-foot seas, and it is entirely dark for half the year. The federal government recently released a proposed Five-Year Program (2012-2017) for oil and gas leasing that could open up pristine new areas in the Arctic Ocean offshore of Alaska to oil drilling. The oil industry has never successfully demonstrated the ability to clean up an oil spill in the harsh conditions of the Arctic Ocean.
 Speak up for the birds and wildlife of the Arctic Ocean! Please tell the Department of the Interior that the Arctic Ocean should remain off-limits to oil and gas drilling.
An oil spill in the Arctic Ocean could be disastrous for marine mammals such as polar bears, Bowhead whales, walruses, and seals. It would also harm birds such as the Spectacled Eider, Steller’s Eider, and Yellow-billed Loon, all three of which are on the Alaska WatchList.1
Even without the threat of oil and gas development, the Arctic is subject to rapid climate warming at a rate that is twice the rest of the earth. Changes due to warming are already having significant negative impacts on Arctic people and ecosystems. Additional oil and gas activities in the Arctic would only add to existing impacts.
Tell the Department of Interior that you oppose new drilling in the Arctic Ocean. Submit your public comments today.
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Sincerely,
David Yarnold
President & CEO
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1 Audubon Alaska Watchlist: http://ak.audubon.org/alaska-watchlist
For more information about the Arctic Ocean and its wildlife: Arctic Marine Synthesis: Atlas of the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas
Trouble with the “Take Action” links in the message? Try cutting-and-pasting
this link into your web browser: www.audubonaction.org/site/Advocacy?id=1189
  
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