Opening the Arctic Pandora’s Box—Interior’s Retreat from Conservation in Alaska
Interior Department moves to open up 82% of National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska to drilling
On June 17, 2025, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced its intent to re-open as much as 82% of the National Petroleum Reserve–Alaska (NPR-A)—nearly 19 million acres—to oil and gas leasing.
Framed as a triumph for energy independence and economic growth, the move was touted as a rollback of what the agency now calls “overreaching” protections imposed just last year.
But this announcement is more than a change in land management policy. It is a profound retreat from decades of progress in public lands stewardship, Indigenous consultation, and climate accountability.
The Arctic doesn’t need more oil rigs—it needs protection. What we’re witnessing is not responsible governance. It’s the reanimation of a fossil fuel agenda that risks irreversible damage to one of the most ecologically and culturally significant landscapes in North America.
A Fragile Arctic Frontier
The NPR-A, established in 1923 as Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 4, is the largest block of public land in the United States.
Located on Alaska’s North Slope and managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), it spans 23 million acres—an area roughly the size of Indiana—and includes a vast web of tundra, wetlands, rivers, and coastal habitat that supports an astonishing array of wildlife:
The Teshekpuk Lake Special Area provides vital breeding grounds for millions of migratory birds, including threatened species like the spectacled eider.
Several large caribou herds, including the Western Arctic and Teshekpuk herds, rely on these lands for calving, foraging, and migration.
Marine and coastal mammals like polar bears, walruses, and bowhead whales inhabit the adjacent Chukchi Sea and coastal zones.
Apex predators, from grizzly bears to wolves, roam its vast reaches.
Yet this Arctic biodiversity hotspot is also at the mercy of some of the most rapidly warming temperatures on Earth. Permafrost is melting. Wildfires are increasing. Traditional hunting patterns are being disrupted.
The idea of turning up the heat—both literally and politically—by expanding oil and gas leasing here should strike any rational observer as shortsighted at best and reckless at worst.
From Protection to Exploitation
In 2024, a Biden administration rule provided additional protections for the 13 million acres of Special Areas in the NPR-A, making them largely off-limits to new leasing and development.
These protections were supported by Indigenous groups, scientists, conservationists, and the general public.
They reflected an effort to balance development with preservation—a legal and ethical mandate under the Naval Petroleum Reserves Production Act, which requires safeguarding “surface values” such as subsistence, wildlife, and ecological health.
Learn more about the five Special Areas within the NPR-A, including their wildlife, ecosystems, cultural value, and threats, on the website of the Alaska Wilderness League.
Interior Secretary Burgum already rescinded the Biden administration’s rule designating these Special Areas on June 2, 2025.
And now, citing an “emergency need” for energy security and legal overreach, the Department of the Interior is proposing to return to a version of the Trump-era leasing strategy that would leave only about 18% of the reserve protected.
This is not a reset. It’s a rollback. And its implications are enormous.
Allow me to point out that most of the NPR-A would also be eligible for future sale to corporations, developers, private interests, and even foreign governments under Mike Lee’s absolutely atrocious Senate budget bill.
This includes those four vast Special Areas, which are supposed to be protected from oil and gas drilling.
As the BLM map below clearly shows, the only areas not eligible for sale under Mike Lee’s Senate bill provisions are those that already have drilling on them, as well as a few local communities. All the rest will be up for grabs.
Opening up 82% of the NPR-A would effectively mean that pretty much the entire reserve would be eligible for drilling.
“Alaska’s public lands are still on the chopping block—not because it’s good policy, but because billionaires want another tax break. This budget bill would greenlight a massive public land giveaway, privatizing some of the most iconic and ecologically vital places in Alaska. We’re appalled to see the Western Arctic and Ambler Road added back to the Senate version of the bill, proof that no place is safe when Big Oil and the ultra-wealthy are calling the shots in Washington, D.C. Privatizing public lands at any scale is a massive, irreversible mistake and every American deserves better than watching what belongs to all of us handed over in a billionaire land grab.” - Andy Moderow, Senior Director of Policy at Alaska Wilderness League
The Climate Contradiction
Approving new oil development in the NPR-A flies in the face of America’s own climate targets. The United States has pledged to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 and reduce greenhouse gases by 50% below 2005 levels by 2030.
Yet the scale of development now back on the table in the NPR-A threatens to lock in hundreds of millions of metric tons of CO₂ emissions over the coming decades.
The Willow Project, already approved within NPR-A under the Biden administration—and, strikingly, in direct conflict with that administration’s climate goals—is projected to emit 278 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent over its lifetime.
If further leasing proceeds under the revised plan, that number could multiply significantly.
Interior officials say they are constrained by laws and courts. But climate leadership means using every available tool to prevent climate catastrophe—not hiding behind legal technicalities to expand fossil fuel infrastructure.
Here’s a fantastic piece about global warming and climate change by Bill McKibben over at The Crucial Years:
Indigenous Voices Overlooked
The Iñupiat people have lived in and around the NPR-A for thousands of years, relying on the land for food, culture, and identity.
Communities like Nuiqsut, Utqiaġvik, and Atqasuk harvest caribou, fish, and birds that depend on healthy ecosystems. They have voiced concerns for years about the cumulative impacts of development: noise, air pollution, road-building, industrial traffic, and declining wildlife availability.
Although some village corporations benefit economically from leasing revenue, many tribal governments, elders, and residents have urged restraint.
Yet the Biden administration’s plan appeared to sidestep these concerns in favor of political expediency and energy boosterism. And now, under the Trump administration, when Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum proclaims that “Alaska is open for business,” what does that mean for the people who already live there?
Listening to Indigenous communities means more than hosting public comment sessions. It means respecting Indigenous sovereignty, co-management, and the right to protect ancestral lands from irreversible degradation.
Ecological Impact: Beyond Numbers
Interior’s new proposal includes a draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, but it is unlikely to fully account for the ecological consequences of widespread industrialization.
The Arctic is a delicate system. Infrastructure fragments habitat, pipelines disrupt migration routes, and flaring pollutes air and water in places where cleanup is difficult, dangerous, and often delayed.
Consider this: Teshekpuk Lake is a Ramsar-designated wetland of international importance. Allowing drilling nearby places global bird populations at risk. Likewise, seismic exploration in winter harms denning polar bears, a species already on the brink.
Once development scars the tundra, it takes decades—if not centuries—for it to heal. And with climate change accelerating, many damaged landscapes may never recover.
Legal Challenges Likely
The Interior Department’s plan will not go unchallenged. Conservation groups such as Earthjustice, NRDC, Alaska Wilderness League, and Trustees for Alaska are almost certain to provide legal responses.
Lawsuits over the Willow Project alleged violations of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), Endangered Species Act, and Administrative Procedure Act—and similar challenges are likely for this broader leasing scheme.
In 2020, a federal court struck down a similar attempt to expand drilling, ruling that the BLM failed to adequately assess impacts to climate, subsistence, and wildlife. The new plan could suffer the same fate, especially if it repeats previous errors in environmental analysis or ignores mounting climate science.
If anything, the legal pathway should remind us that just because a policy is possible doesn’t mean it is permissible.
“This is a full-scale assault on the Western Arctic. It ignores science, silences local voices, and sacrifices Alaska’s public lands and our climate future for the greed and profits of oil executives. This is not just about a management plan, it’s about whether we treat the Western Arctic as a living, breathing ecosystem, or as a sacrifice zone for the benefit of Trump’s billionaire friends.” - Kristen Miller, Executive Director at Alaska Wilderness League
A False Energy Promise
Supporters of expanded leasing argue that new development in the NPR-A will create jobs, reduce gas prices, and strengthen U.S. energy independence. But these claims don’t stand up to scrutiny:
Jobs: Oil and gas development is increasingly automated, with relatively few long-term positions created in remote Arctic operations.
Prices: Oil from the NPR-A won’t hit the market for years, and even then, global oil prices are driven by far larger forces than North Slope output.
Independence: In an era of accelerating climate disruption, true energy independence means reducing reliance on oil—not finding new wells.
The real beneficiaries here are the oil companies who receive cheap federal leases, limited oversight, and long-term private profit from public lands. Meanwhile, the American people inherit the costs—rising seas, disappearing species, and eroded trust in democratic environmental governance.
A Vision for the Future
There is a better path forward. Interior can—and should—abandon the proposal to reopen 82% of NPR-A and instead pursue the following:
Codify Special Areas as permanent protections, enshrined in law through Congressional action.
Phase out leasing in sensitive habitats, with priority given to caribou calving grounds, migratory bird corridors, and Indigenous use areas.
Develop a climate-screening mechanism for all future federal leases, aligning with national decarbonization goals.
Expand co-management with Indigenous tribes, including the establishment of Tribal-led conservation areas and wildlife corridors.
Invest in Arctic climate resilience, funding habitat restoration, monitoring programs, and community adaptation efforts.
Such steps would honor the region’s ecological value, respect Indigenous rights, and demonstrate real leadership in a time of planetary peril.
Conservation Is Not Optional
Interior’s June 17 press release may frame this leasing plan as a triumph of “common sense” and “American energy dominance,” but it is anything but.
It’s an abdication of the agency’s responsibility to steward lands for future generations. It’s a short-sighted giveaway of public resources to private industry. And it’s a glaring contradiction in the face of worsening climate emergencies.
The NPR-A is not a blank slate. It’s not a sacrifice zone. It’s a living landscape of incalculable value—a place where caribou still migrate, migratory birds still nest, polar bears still roam, and communities still thrive in rhythm with the land.
We have a choice. We can continue treating the Arctic as the last frontier for oil. Or we can recognize it as one of our last best chances to get it right.
The public comment period on Interior’s plan is open until July 1. Let your voice be heard. Because once the rigs move in and the roads are built, we cannot undo the damage. But we can stop it now.
You can review and comment on this plan in the BLM National NEPA Register by clicking on the “Participate Now” button.
Not 82%. Not even an acre more. Protect the NPR-A. Protect our future.