02.02.05

Cantwell Co-Sponsors Bipartisan Legislation Protecting Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

Designation would block oil drilling on Refuge's coastal plain

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senator Maria Cantwell today joined a bipartisan coalition of Senators, led by Senator Joe Lieberman (D-CT), in introducing legislation to protect the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) from oil exploration. The legislation would protect ANWR by designating it a federal wilderness area. Cantwell, a member of the Senate Energy Committee, has cosponsored similar legislation every Congress since becoming a member of the Senate in 2001.

"Reducing America's dependence on foreign oil is an urgent priority," Cantwell said. "But the answer isn't in the ground. It's in our heads. We have to apply some American ingenuity and use our technological know-how to achieve energy independence, not put off important investments in the hopes of finding oil deposits under the Arctic Refuge.

"Is it worth forever losing a national treasure, one of our country's last great wild places, for oil that would not reach refineries for seven to ten years?" Cantwell continued. "We should be developing a smart, forward-looking strategy to wean our economy off its addiction to foreign oil without sacrificing our country's wild places. Arctic Refuge drilling would have no discernable short or long-term impact on the price of oil or in curbing our increasing dependence on oil imports."

The legislation introduced today would designate the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as wilderness, thereby placing it off-limits to oil development.

Last week in Seattle, Cantwell outlined principles of a strategy designed to wean America from its dependence on foreign oil and promote domestic renewable energy technologies while rejecting the false promise of Arctic drilling. "A real energy independence plan," she said, "should improve national security, give consumers and companies energy efficiency incentives, and set ambitious -- yet achievable -- national oil savings goals."

Established by President Eisenhower in 1960, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska is a diverse and fragile ecosystem. Proponents of drilling want to open up the most biologically diverse part of the Refuge, the coastal plain, to oil exploration. This area serves as a critical habitat for caribou, muskox, swans, snow geese and numerous other species. It is also home to the 150,000 animal Porcupine caribou herd, critically important to the culture and the subsistence lifestyle of the Native American Gwich'in tribe in Northeast Alaska and Canada.

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