Begich tells Jewell he’ll fight any move to put ANWR off-limits
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After a recent speech in which Interior Secretary Sally Jewell laid out the Obama administration’s vision for conservation, Alaska’s Democratic senator, Mark Begich, fired her a letter promising a fight.
Begich said he read accounts of the speech, delivered on Halloween at the National Press Club, with “interest and alarm.”
Although the prepared text of the speech, posted on the Interior Department website, made no direct mention of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Begich in his letter said Jewell made reference to ANWR, saying it “should remain off-limits to development.”
Begich said he also was concerned that Jewell indicated the administration would move on its own to protect certain public lands failing action by Congress.
“Proposing to lock up additional land within ANWR is short-sighted, poor public policy, and old-fashioned thinking in our new world of globalization and ongoing conflict over who controls energy resources,” Begich wrote in his Nov. 12 letter to Jewell. “It should be no surprise to you that I will fight any effort by the Obama Administration to make ANWR off-limits.”
‘Too special to develop’ Jewell, formerly chief executive of the outdoors retailer REI, is still relatively new as secretary, sworn in on April 12.
Her speech focused on the administration’s “conservation agenda.”
She chastised Congress for potential budget cuts to Interior agencies such as the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Land Management, and decried the “absurd, wasteful government shutdown.”
She noted the upcoming 100th anniversary of the National Park Service, and the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act. She quoted folk singer Joni Mitchell and Teddy Roosevelt, who said conservation is “a great moral issue.”
And Jewell said Congress, since 2010, “hasn’t acted to protect a single new acre of public land as a national park or a wilderness area.”
She continued: “We need a comprehensive public lands package that conserves our nation’s most special lands and waters — just like the one that President Obama signed into law in 2009 that protected more than 2 million acres of wilderness, designated more than 1,100 miles of wild and scenic rivers, expanded the national park system and established several new national conservation areas.”
Jewell suggested that if Congress doesn’t act, President Obama “is ready and willing.” She noted Obama had established nine national monuments over the past four years.
Energy development can proceed, she said. For example, in Alaska, the administration protected more than 13 million acres, including caribou habitat around Teshekpuk Lake, but made available for development “more than 72 percent of the estimated economically recoverable oil.”
But Jewell said “there are some places that are too special to develop.”
National monument status? Presidents, under the Antiquities Act of 1906, have the power to declare public sites or lands as national monuments. Such a designation can put lands off-limits to such activities as oil and gas development.
Some Alaska elected officials and oil industry players fear ANWR could be so designated, including the relatively small coastal plain considered highly prospective for oil.
An environmental group, the Alaska Wilderness League, has encouraged Obama to declare ANWR a national monument.
The Fish and Wildlife Service, as landlord for ANWR, also is considering whether to recommend wilderness designation for the coastal plain.
Begich, in his letter to Jewell, said trying to put ANWR off-limits through the Antiquities Act “would be strongly opposed by a majority of the residents of my state, and I believe by a majority of members of the U.S. Congress.”
ANWR legislation filed On Nov. 13, U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., introduced a bill to designate the coastal plain as wilderness. Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., is co-sponsor.
In a press release, Cantwell said the aim of the bill (S. 1695) is “to protect one of the last pristine public lands in America.”
Cantwell has long opposed oil and gas activity in ANWR. Since entering the Senate in 2001, she has sponsored legislation multiple times to permanently protect the coastal plain as a wilderness area.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said the “anti-Alaska legislation” would permanently ban oil and gas development on the coastal plain.
“I cannot understand how, given Alaska’s decades of responsible energy development, this is still viewed as a good idea or a necessary action,” Murkowski said. “At a time when our nation clearly needs more jobs, more revenues, and more domestic energy, this bill defiantly ignores all three.”
Murkowski is the top-ranking Republican on the Democrat-controlled Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
—Wesley Loy
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