Wildlife in focus after Alaska oil approval

ANCHORAGE, Alaska－The administration of US President Donald Trump on Monday gave final approval for a contentious oil and gas leasing plan on the coastal plain of Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR, where critics worry about the industry's impact on polar bears, caribou and other wildlife.

The next step, barring lawsuits, will be the actual sale of leases. Development－should it occur－is still years away.

Environmentalists have promised to fight opening up the coastal plain, a 631,300-hectare swath of land along Alaska's northern Beaufort Sea coast after the United States Department of the Interior approved an oil and gas leasing program.

US Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt signed the Record of Decision, which will determine a program for where oil and gas leasing will take place.

"The establishment of this program marks a new chapter in American energy independence," Bernhardt said during a conference call with reporters.

"Years of inaction have given way to an informed and determined plan to responsibly tap ANWR's energy potential for the American people for generations to come," he said.

Over the past four decades, Republicans have attempted to open the refuge to drilling. Then-president Bill Clinton vetoed a Republican bill to allow drilling in 1995, and Democrats blocked a similar plan 10 years later. But Trump insisted Congress include a mandate providing for leasing in the refuge in a 2017 tax bill, a key pillar of his agenda to expand fossil fuel production. However, lease sales in the state have been weak for most of the last decade, and statewide production has dropped steadily for the past 30 years.

If found, oil production could begin in the ANWR in about eight years, Bernhardt said, with activity lasting about 50 years.

The 7.7 million hectares refuge is home to wildlife populations including porcupine caribou and polar bears and has been off-limits to drilling for decades. In recent months, several big US banks have said they will not finance oil and gas projects in the Arctic region.

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has vowed to protect the refuge.

"His plan released last year made clear that he will permanently protect ANWR and other areas impacted by President Trump's attacks on federal lands and waters," his spokesman Matt Hill said.

Environmental groups immediately assailed opening the refuge and promised litigation.

"The Trump administration's so-called review process for their shameless sell-off of the Arctic refuge has been a sham from the start. We'll see them in court," said Lena Moffitt with the Our Wild America campaign of the Sierra Club.

"This administration has done nothing but disrespect the indigenous peoples that have occupied these lands," Gwich'in Steering Committee Executive Director Bernadette Demientieff said.

The coastal plain serves as calving grounds for the porcupine caribou herd, which includes about 200,000 animals. "Our ways of life, our food security, and our identity is not up for negotiation. The fight is not over," Demientieff said.

Alaskan oil production has dwindled in the last three decades. The state currently produces roughly 500,000 barrels per day of crude oil, down from more than 2 million bpd in 1988, according to US Energy Department figures.

Agencies Via Xinhua