August 24, 2020: Today, under representation from Trustees for Alaska and Sierra Club attorney Karimah Schoenhut, and alongside a broad coalition of Indigenous & allied groups, the Sierra Club filed a lawsuit against the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for their decision to finalize an illegal leasing program that would hand over the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to the oil and gas industry. The Trump administration rushed through the environmental review process, putting the ancestral homeland of the G’wich’in people at risk.
BLM released its Record of Decision on August 17, allowing the leasing of the entire Coastal Plain. This biologically rich, over 1.5-million-acre area serves as birthing and calving grounds of the Porcupine caribou herd, feeding and molting grounds for millions of birds, and denning grounds for an array of mammals such as wolves and endangered polar bears. The lawsuit charges BLM with failing to comply with laws governing agency processes and protecting land, water and wildlife, including the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, the National Wildlife Refuge System Administration Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the Wilderness Act. It also brings suit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) for its inadequate evaluation of BLM’s leasing program under the Endangered Species Act.
Sierra Club is represented by ELP staff attorney Karimah Schoenhut, who has been defending our public lands and imperiled wildlife with the Environmental Law Program since 2017. In 2018, when oil and gas interests rushed an application to BLM to conduct a pre-leasing seismic survey that year across the entire Coastal Plain during polar bear maternal denning season, BLM announced its expectation that the survey would have no significant impacts. Karimah sought out and worked closely with renowned polar bear expert Steve Amstrup to quantify the risks to cubs and mothers, and show there would be significant dangers. The resulting analysis raised concerns that spurred FWS to develop a whole new approach to assessing the impacts. Over two years later, that proposed seismic survey is still stalled. Karimah continued to work with Dr. Amstrup to identify serious problems with BLM’s environmental review of its leasing program. She submitted extensive technical and legal comments to BLM and FWS regarding the impacts to polar bears, as well as a
to sue detailing how BLM’s leasing decision has violated the Endangered Species Act. You can read more about her work on our website, and the full press release for today’s action here.