Raise Your Voice: Protect the Arctic Refuge by Writing a Letter to the Editor (LTE)
Photo Credit: Paxson Woelber
Writing a Letter to the Editor (LTE) for your local or regional newspaper is one of the most effective ways to share your message with a wide audience. With the current threats to our environment, this tool is more crucial than ever for organizing and advocacy. Opinion pages, where LTEs are published, are among the most widely read sections of newspapers and news websites. Even more importantly, members of Congress and their staff closely monitor these pages to gauge the concerns and priorities of their constituents.
Why Now?
With the passage of the budget reconciliation bill that includes leasing for oil and gas in the Arctic Refuge it is clear - congress, and the administration need to hear from people across the country about the risks of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. By submitting an LTE, you can help spotlight this critical issue and show lawmakers that Americans are paying attention.
ACT TODAY: Write an LTE to make it clear that drilling in the Arctic Refuge is a financial failure and an environmental disaster. Let’s remind our congressional decision makers that millions of Americans stand against the reckless plan to do seismic exploration and drilling for oil in our wildest Refuge.
The Truth About Arctic Refuge Drilling
In 2017, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was opened for oil and gas development as part of Trump’s Tax Act, under the guise of reducing the federal deficit. This legislation mandated two lease sales, initially projected to generate $1.8 billion. However, the first sale fell dramatically short, raising just 1% of the promised revenue. The Department of the Interior canceled the second lease sale after it received no bids from oil and gas companies - at all. These unrealistic budget estimates have now been tested twice, and the results are undeniable: the American public was lied to.
The Newest Threat of Seismic Exploration Must be Stopped.
The Trump administration has reinstated 9 lease tracts that were held by the state corporation AIDEA (the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority) from a previous lease sale. All oil and gas leases in the Arctic Refuge that were issued under Trump’s previous leasing program, were cancelled under Biden, honoring the decades long fight of the Gwich’in Nation and Inupiat allies to protect their subsistence resources and cultural homelands. We now face a critical threat from seismic exploration - a process to locate where liquids exist under the ground.
What is Seismic Exploration?
Seismic testing is a method used to locate underground oil and gas reserves by sending powerful vibrations (shockwaves) into the earth from heavy “thumper” trucks. To conduct a seismic exploration program, convoys of specialized vehicles drive across the fragile tundra, including giant bulldozers that tow temporary buildings to house hundreds of workers. Once in location, 90,000-pound ‘thumper’ trucks would transect the coastal plain tundra in a grid pattern, stopping every few hundred yards to thump the ground. These impactful shockwaves travel underground and bounce back to the surface, helping oil extraction companies create maps for future drilling.
Take Action: The World Is Watching
It’s time to put Congress and industry on notice. Drilling in the Arctic Refuge is financially unnecessary, reckless, and opposed by millions of Americans. Republicans in Congresss inserted Arctic Refuge drilling into the budget reconciliation process once again - now is the time to put them on notice!
Your voice matters. Write an LTE today to urge your Congress members to protect this irreplaceable landscape and ensure that future generations inherit a planet where such unique ecosystems still exist. Use our talking points and sample LTE below to get started, or craft your own letter infused with your passion and personal experiences. Let's stop the newest threat of seismic exploration in the Arctic Refuge. Together, we can make a difference.
Sample letters:
Option 1. Say NO to seismic in the Arctic Refuge 208 words
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge presents an unparalleled opportunity to protect vast public lands, prevent climate change, and prioritize the biodiversity that sustains Indigenous communities. This region is home to immense cultural and biological richness. The Arctic is warming four times faster than the rest of the globe and is incredibly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Fossil fuel development in this area could have magnified impacts, exacerbating the climate crisis and damaging fragile ecosystems.
That’s why I’m outraged to learn that the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority—a state funded entity—has submitted a proposal for seismic exploration in the Coastal Plain of the Refuge. This industrial process uses 90,000-pound thumper trucks that pound 64,000 pounds of pressure into the ground, supported by tractor trailers hauling equipment and hundreds of workers on round-the-clock shifts. Crisscrossing the tundra in tight grids, right where polar bear mothers are denning, this machinery could disrupt and endanger wildlife.
Where millions of Americans see a priceless, intact landscape—home to polar bears, caribou, and countless migratory birds—industry only sees nothing more than a resource to strip for short-term profit. Now is the time to stand firm, hold the line, and say a resounding NO to seismic in the Arctic Refuge.
Option 2: Zero Bids, Zero Sense: Time to Protect the Arctic Refuge
Word Count: 212
The failure of the last Arctic Refuge lease sale—canceled after receiving zero industry bids—makes one thing clear: drilling in the Refuge is a financial dead end. Yet the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, a state-funded agency, is still pushing forward, submitting a proposal for seismic exploration in the Coastal Plain, the first potentially destructive step toward oil and gas development.
Picture caravans of 90,000-pound trucks pounding the earth with vibrating plates—potentially scarring the land for decades and disrupting the wildlife and communities that depend on this place. These machines could rumble right over polar bear dens, which could cause dens to collapse or scare denning mothers into abandoning their cubs.
The Arctic Refuge is where caribou give birth, polar bears den, and millions of migratory birds return to nest. It is also the cultural homeland of the Gwich’in Nation—a place that deserves the strongest protection we can give. Seismic testing and oil and gas development in the Arctic would not only accelerate the climate crisis already at our doorsteps but jeopardize one of the most spectacular intact ecosystems left on Earth.
Protecting the Arctic Refuge is more than conservation—it is a commitment to justice, to resilience, and to protecting a future where people and wildlife can thrive together.
Additional background and talking points:
PLACES WE PROTECT: Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
• The Arctic Refuge is home to iconic species like polar bears and caribou. These habitats are irreplaceable.
• Drilling risks catastrophic oil spills in one of the most extreme environments on Earth.
• Companies are already struggling with melting permafrost in the Arctic—an ominous sign of the Arctic’s fragility.
• The target area for the lease sale is known as the "biological heart" of the Arctic Refuge, the Coastal Plain is critical for polar bears, and migratory birds, and serves as the calving grounds for the Porcupine Caribou Herd. It holds profound cultural significance for the Gwich’in people, who call it Iizhik Gwats'an Gwandaii Goodlit (The Sacred Place Where Life Begins.)
• The first Arctic Refuge lease sale in 2021 was a disaster, generating less than 1% of promised revenue. Major oil companies largely stayed away, and the few corporations that did show up to bid in the lease sale later chose to pay millions of dollars to exit their leases or had them revoked by the Biden administration.
• There is widespread opposition: Gwich’in Nation and Iñupiat allies, environmental organizations, and millions of Americans oppose drilling in the Arctic Refuge. The risks to culture, biodiversity, and the climate are far too great.
• The refuge’s 19.6 million acres are home to an abundance of wildlife—musk oxen, wolves, caribou, and polar bears—and are the summer breeding grounds for millions of birds that migrate here from six continents and all 50 states. Its lands and waterways are also vital to the Gwich’in and other local Indigenous communities who have relied on these rich ecosystems for millennia. The debate over what to do with this landscape has raged for nearly a century, but now, in the midst of a climate crisis that’s wreaking havoc at every latitude but warming the poles at astonishing rates, there’s broad consensus that drilling the Arctic for fossil fuels is beyond a terrible idea.
Follow these tips:
- Respond to an article in the paper.
- Follow the paper’s directions. The best letters are those that are in response to an article that ran in the paper, and many papers require that you reference the specific article. Begin your letter by citing the original story by name, date and author. Some papers do occasionally print LTEs because of a lack of coverage on a specific issue. If this is the case, begin your LTE by stating your concern that the paper hasn't focused on this important issue.
- Share your expertise. Information on how and to whom to submit a letter-to-the-editor is usually found right on the letters page in your paper. Follow these guidelines to increase the likelihood that your letter will be printed.If you have relevant qualifications to the topic you're addressing, be sure to include that in your submission.
- Refer to the legislator or corporation you are trying to influence by name. If your letter includes a legislator’s name, in almost all cases staff will give him or her the letter to read personally.
- Write the letter in your own words. Editors want letters in their papers to be original. Feel free to use our messaging tips, but also take the time to write the letter in your own words.
- Keep your letter short, focused and interesting. In general, letters should be under 200 words — often 150 or less is best. Stay focused on one (or, at the most, two) main point(s) and get to it in the first two sentences. If possible, include interesting facts, relevant personal experience, and any local connections to the issue that you may have.
- Include your contact information. Be sure to include your name, address, and a daytime phone number. The paper will contact you before printing your letter.
Questions?
If you are interested in writing and submitting an LTE or have a question, contact Lois (at) AlaskaWild.org. If you send in an LTE, we'd love to hear about it so that we can keep an eye out for it. Or better yet, let us know when you get published!