THANKS FOR HELPING! PLEASE SEND A LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Writing a letter to the editor (LTE) to your local or regional newspaper is an effective and easy way to reach a large audience with your message. This is an important tool for organizing — especially now! LTEs are published on a newspaper or news website opinion page, which is one of the most read sections overall. The Biden administration needs to hear from people across the country! Congressional staffers also tell us that members of Congress keep a close eye on media coverage, including LTEs in their local papers, so they can keep a “pulse” on issues of importance to their constituents.

ACT NOW: Write an LTE to thank President Biden for his recent announcement for increased protection for America's Arctic

President Biden has recently announced a suite of actions to protect diverse landscapes across America’s Arctic, recognizing the importance of Alaska’s public lands and waters for communities, biodiversity and our global climate. This announcement is an essential step toward addressing the threat of oil and gas development across the Western Arctic — a region that provides some of our nation’s last remaining opportunities to protect ecosystems at a landscape level. This announcement comes at a time when the climate crisis has never been more profoundly felt across the globe.

Please write a letter-to-the-editor today. Use these talking points and the ideas in the sample LTEs below or craft your own letter, letting your passion and own experiences come through!

Three sample letters:

1. Big News for the Arctic! 232 words

It's great to hear that the Biden administration has recently released a final conservation rule that will help protect 13 million acres of America’s Arctic from oil and gas development. This announcement will provide stronger protections for lands within the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska in the Western Arctic and is a critical step that will strengthen protections for “Special Areas” in America’s Arcticand set the stage for even more protections. This decision is a significant step in addressing the global climate and biodiversity crises.

The Reserve is the largest single unit of public lands in the nation, spanning nearly 23 million acres. Vast and diverse, the Reserve contains vital habitats for wildlife like polar bears, muskox, and millions of migratory birds. It is also home to three caribou herds. Within the Reserve the designated Special Areas have significant ecological significance – these amazing places are Teshekpuk Lake, Utukok Uplands, Colville River, Kasegaluk Lagoon, and Peard Bay.

This decision helps protect the unique and fragile Arctic ecosystems. We should all join in celebrating this critical step towards protecting wildlife habitat and supporting cultural and subsistence traditions of the Alaska Native communities who have relied upon and stewarded these lands for millennia. Reassessing the environmental impacts of previous oil and gas leasing and taking steps to protect millions of acres of habitat in the western Arctic are indeed significant moves toward safeguarding these vital landscapes.

2. Huge step forward for the promise of America the Beautiful  194 words

The announcement by the Biden administration to protect diverse landscapes across Alaska is significant and comes at a crucial time. This region is home to immense cultural and biological richness. America’s Arctic presents an unparalleled opportunity to protect public lands on an unprecedented scale, prevent climate change, and prioritize the biodiversity that sustains Indigenous communities.

The administration's commitment to increased protections for over 13 million acres in the Reserve represent substantial progress towards the administration's goal of protecting 30 percent of the nation's lands and waters by 2030, which is crucial for addressing climate change and safeguarding biodiversity.

It's important to note that while this announcement should be celebrated, there is more work to be done to align the management of Alaska's lands and waters with our nation's climate goals. This is not the final step. While this announcement means that 13 million acres of designated Special Areas could remain free from oil and gas development, MORE protections and MORE Special Areas should be established to prevent threats from current and future projects like ConocoPhillips’ Willow project. We must not stop until we see an end to oil and gas development in America’s Arctic.

 3. Celebrating a historic Arctic announcement! 226 words

Last year President Biden was contacted by millions of people during the fight against ConocoPhillips’ Willow oil drilling project in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. Recently he announced exciting plans to protect 13 million acres in Alaska’s Arctic! This much needed step forward is a shift in management direction, where public lands north of Alaska’s Brooks Range are better protected and recognized for their role in addressing climate change going forward. It's encouraging to see the impact public engagement and advocacy efforts have had in influencing this decision.

The Western Arctic includes extraordinary wildlife habitat and rich waterways, nourishing many communities, along with hundreds of thousands of animals like polar bears, bowhead whales, and herds of caribou. Birds from all four North American flyways and several international flyways, even shorebirds from as far away as Hawaii and New Zealand, migrate to the Reserve every year to raise their young. These diverse ecosystems, teaming with wildlife, show us the thriving, richness present in large intact environments.

We should celebrate and thank the president, but while this announcement means that 13 million acres of designated Special Areas could remain free from oil and gas development, MORE protections and MORE Special Areas should be established to prevent threats from current and future projects. We must not stop until we see an end to oil and gas development in America’s Arctic.

 

Additional background and talking points:
PLACES WE PROTECT: Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

• The Biden administration announced that the Department of the Interior is canceling the last remaining Trump-issued oil and gas leases on the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
• The leases, held by the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority (AIDEA) – a State of Alaska-owned corporation – were acquired in a rushed January 2021 lease sale that the Trump administration rammed through during his final days in office.
• The Biden administration’s decision to cancel AIDEA’s leases affirms what we have known all along: the Trump oil and gas leasing program in the Arctic Refuge is unlawful and the leases should never have been issued.
• This is a historic win for America’s Arctic and honors the rights of the Indigenous Peoples who have been working to protect their sacred lands in the Arctic Refuge for decades.
• 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.

PLACES WE PROTECT: National Petroleum Reserve Alaska

• The National Petroleum Reserve–Alaska (Reserve) is the largest single unit of public lands in the nation, spanning nearly 23 million acres across the western North Slope of Alaska. The Reserve includes some of our nation’s most vital natural resources — millions of acres of wilderness-quality lands with critical habitat for migratory birds, brown bears, caribou, threatened polar bears, walrus, and more.
• The Alaska’s Western Arctic is the next major front for fighting the climate crisis, and the Willow project is potentially the Biden administration’s biggest climate test to date. This 30-year development commitment that would pump more than half-a-billion barrels of petroleum from a fragile and rapidly warming ecosystem is incompatible with President Biden’s goal of setting the nation on a path to net-zero emissions by 2050.
• Iñupiat people who live in the Western Arctic, and whose families have lived in and moved through this region for thousands of years, rely on its animals, lands and waterways for their food, health, culture, and way of life.
• The Western Arctic includes extraordinary wildlife habitat and rich waterways, nourishing many communities within and adjoining the area’s boundaries, along with hundreds of thousands of animals like geese, loons, falcons, polar bears, bowhead whales, orcas and three herds of caribou. (Teshekpuk Lake, Western Arctic, Central Arctic)
• The Reserve provides habitat for the Southern Beaufort Sea population of polar bears, one of the most imperiled polar bear populations on the globe. Creating a project of Willow’s scale would fragment and destroy critical habitat they need to survive.
• Birds from all four North American flyways and several international flyways migrate to the Reserve every year to raise their young. Tundra swans from the Atlantic Flyway, white-fronted geese from the Mississippi Flyway, pintails from the Central Flyway, and brant from the Pacific Flyway converge on this summer destination each year. Even shorebirds from as far away as Hawaii and New Zealand find their way north to the Reserve.
• Alaska’s Western Arctic is the largest contiguous parcel of public land in the U.S. Nowhere else in the country is there the opportunity to protect threatened land at such a landscape level. Protecting this area is critical for the Biden administration achieving its “30x30” goal of conserving at least 30% of U.S. lands and waters by 2030. No other piece of land can do more to advance this mission. Likewise, no single project has more potential in the near term to set back the Biden’s administration’s 30x30 goals.

Follow these tips:

1. 1.

Respond to an article in the paper.

1. 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.

 

1. 2.

Follow the paper’s directions.

1. 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.

 

1. 3.

Share your expertise.

1. If you have relevant qualifications to the topic you're addressing, be sure to include that in your submission.

 

1. 4.

Refer to the legislator or corporation you are trying to influence by name.

1. If your letter includes a legislator’s name, in almost all cases staff will give him or her the letter to read personally.

 

1. 5.

Write the letter in your own words.

1. 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.

 

1. 6.

Keep your letter short, focused and interesting.

1. 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.

 

1. 7.

Include your contact information.

1. 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!