Protections Stripped from 13 Million Acres in the Western Arctic

The Department of the Interior has moved to eliminate long-standing safeguards protecting 13 million acres of ecologically sensitive "special areas" within the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, the largest remaining stretch of intact public land in the country, and has since proposed opening even more of the region to drilling. These protections were designed to safeguard calving grounds for one of North America's largest caribou herds, along with polar bears, beluga whales, and migratory bird habitat relied on by dozens of Alaska Native communities.