Story at a glance
- President Biden formally rescinded leases for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
- The embattled project was set to affect hundreds of thousands of acres, including ancestral tribal lands.
- Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland is expected to issue a formal order.
The Biden administration aims to suspend oil drilling leases along the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), halting a Trump-era deal that opened up hundreds of thousands of acres along its coastal plain for sale.
The Secretary of the Department of the Interior Deb Haaland is expected to publish a secretarial order calling off the leases previously issued to buyers under former President Trump, according to the New York Times, which cited two unnamed sources.
President Biden, who campaigned on a platform of harsher restrictions on drilling for oil and gas and pledged not to authorize any new drilling deals, initially halted drilling in the ANWR through an executive order signed hours after his inauguration.
The order placed a temporary moratorium on the Coastal Plain Oil and Gas Leasing Program in the ANWR and called for a review from the secretary of the interior on the environmental effects of the drilling.
Dozens of environmental activist groups lambasted the drilling projects as detrimental to the native flora and fauna in the ANWR ecosystem, and Indigenous communities decried the sales as harmful to their sacred lands. These complaints ultimately led to at least one injunction filed against the Trump administration and its drilling project.
Proponents of the drilling operation saw it as a way for the U.S. to achieve more energy independence outside of foreign sources.
“Now more than ever, we must rise to meet the challenges of environmental degradation, climate change, and inequitable access to nature,” Biden said in recent comments marking Great Outdoors Month. “Ensuring that we maintain healthy ecosystems and a resilient planet is not just a matter of environmentalism. It is also critical to our health, our safety, the security of our families, and the strength of our economy.”
FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 3,000 YEARS, TASMANIAN DEVILS HAVE BEEN BORN ON AUSTRALIAN MAINLAND
‘EXTINCT’ GIANT TORTOISE FOUND IN GALAPAGOS
CONSERVATIONISTS THRILLED AS ‘EXTINCT’ WILD RIVER PREDATOR POPS UP
KIA INTRODUCES NEW ELECTRIC VEHICLE THAT CAN CHARGE IN LESS THAN 20 MINUTES
changing america copyright.
