By: Cathy Gomez, December 6, 2025
The Earthjustice reports that the U.S. Department of the Interior under the Trump administration is aggressively moving to open vast, pristine regions of Alaska’s Arctic lands, many never before industrialized, to oil and gas drilling.
• Most notably, the administration has opened the entire 1.56-million-acre Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil and gas leasing. What’s at stake is not just land, but the sacred homeland of the Gwich’in people and the calving grounds of the Porcupine caribou herd, a species central to the Gwich’in’s subsistence, culture, and spiritual life.
• At the same time, protections are being stripped in the Western Arctic (also known as the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, NPR-A), which represents the largest intact tract of public land in the United States. The administration’s plan would allow drilling on roughly 82% of NPR-A, including ecologically sensitive “Special Areas” like Teshekpuk Lake and the Colville River region, areas vital to wildlife and the traditional subsistence and livelihoods of Indigenous Alaskans.
• The environmental stakes are severe. Alaska’s Arctic is warming 3–5 times faster than the global average, driving more frequent and destructive storms, permafrost thaw, sea-ice loss, coastal erosion, and other climate impacts already hitting local communities.
• From a climate-justice perspective, opening these lands to fossil fuel extraction today locks in decades more greenhouse-gas emissions, undermines momentum towards clean energy, and disproportionately risks the livelihoods, culture, and land rights of Indigenous communities, amplifying inequity.
• Even from a short-term economic lens, the promise of revenue appears hollow: previous lease sales in the Refuge have drawn little to no interest from major oil companies, suggesting that corporate entities themselves view drilling there as risky, unprofitable, or publicly untenable.
In sum, this is not just about land or resources. It’s about cultural survival, environmental justice and a shared global climate future. Opening these sacred lands for drilling, lands that belong to people, wildlife, and generations yet to come, is a decision with deep moral, social, and ecological consequences.
Texas Sweethearts DEI Forum 
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