The Alaska Wilderness League (AWL) is a nonprofit organization that works to protect Alaska's most significant wild lands from oil and gas drilling and from other industrial threats. Founded in 1993, AWL has its main office in Washington, DC, with additional offices in Anchorage and Juneau, Alaska.
For the past ten years, AWL has taken the lead in the fight to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from being opened to oil and gas development, and its leadership has made a significant impact in this area. The organization has rallied public support and successfully stopped numerous attempts by Congress to open the refuge to development.
In 2001, AWL and its supporters helped fund photographer Subhankar Banerjee's ground-breaking winter field photography in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The photos he took were published in the book Seasons of Life and Land. [1] Banerjee's photographs of the Refuge were exhibited at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History, and controversy erupted when his captions for the photos were altered and the exhibit was moved to a far corner of the museum. Some charged that Alaska Senator Ted Stevens had used political pressure to remove the exhibit from the spotlight because Senator Barbara Boxer had held up Banerjee's book during a Senate floor debate over oil drilling in the Refuge, but the museum maintained the changes were made "for artistic reasons". [2]
Starting in 2004, AWL expanded its work to include ecologically significant areas of Alaska's vast National Petroleum Reserve, the Tongass National Forest, and the outer continental shelf areas of the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas.
AWL's work has had long-standing support from President Jimmy Carter, who served as its Honorary Chairman of the Board of Directors until his death in 2024.
Andrew Revkin: Who's Backing Gingrich's ‘Drill Here' Push? (NY Times)
 | This Alaska-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
 | This article about an environmental organization is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or Arctic Refuge is a national wildlife refuge in northeastern Alaska, United States, on traditional Iñupiaq and Gwich'in lands. The refuge is 19,286,722 acres (78,050.59 km2) of the Alaska North Slope region, with a northern coastline and vast inland forest, taiga, and tundra regions. ANWR is the largest national wildlife refuge in the country, slightly larger than the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge is administered from offices in Fairbanks. ANWR is home to a diverse range of endemic mammal species; notably, it is one of the few North American locations with all three endemic American bears—the polar bear, grizzly bear, and American black bear, each of which resides predominantly in its own ecological niche. Besides the bears, other mammal species include the moose, caribou, wolves, red and Arctic fox, Canada lynx, wolverine, pine marten, American beaver, and North American river otter. Further inland, mountain goats may be seen near the slope. Hundreds of species of migratory birds visit the refuge yearly, and it is a vital, protected breeding location for them. Snow geese, eiders and snowy owls may be observed as well.
The Alaska North Slope is the region of the U.S. state of Alaska located on the northern slope of the Brooks Range along the coast of two marginal seas of the Arctic Ocean, the Chukchi Sea being on the western side of Point Barrow, and the Beaufort Sea on the eastern. With the exception of the highway connecting Fairbanks to Prudhoe Bay, the region is disconnected from the rest of the Alaskan road system and relies mostly on waterways and small airports for transportation due to the Brooks Range secluding the region from the rest of the state.
The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) is a United States federal law signed by President Jimmy Carter on December 2, 1980. ANILCA provided varying degrees of special protection to over 157 million acres (640,000 km2) of land, including national parks, national wildlife refuges, national monuments, wild and scenic rivers, recreational areas, national forests, and conservation areas. It was, and remains to date, the single largest expansion of protected lands in history and more than doubled the size of the National Park System.
The Gwichʼin are an Athabaskan-speaking First Nations people of Canada and an Alaska Native people. They live in the northwestern part of North America, mostly north of the Arctic Circle.
The question of whether to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) has been an ongoing political controversy in the United States since 1977. As of 2017, Republicans have attempted to allow drilling in ANWR almost fifty times, finally being successful with the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.
The Porcupine caribou is a herd or ecotype of the mainland barren-ground caribou, the subspecies of the reindeer or caribou found in Alaska, United States, and Yukon and the Northwest Territories, Canada.
Teshekpuk Lake is the largest lake in Arctic Alaska, at 22 miles (35 km) width on the Alaska North Slope within the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, South of Pitt Point, 12 miles (19 km) east of Harrison Bay, 80 miles (130 km) east of Point Barrow. The Teshekpuk Lake region is considered one of the most productive, diverse, and sensitive wetland ecosystems in the entire Arctic, habitat to a variety of arctic wildlife, including the resident Teshekpuk Lake caribou herd of 64,000 animals, large numbers of shorebirds and migratory waterfowl, for whom it is an essential part of the East Asian–Australasian Flyway site network.
The Wilderness Society is an American non-profit land conservation organization that is dedicated to protecting natural areas and federal public lands in the United States. They advocate for the designation of federal wilderness areas and other protective designations, such as for national monuments. They support balanced uses of public lands, and advocate for federal politicians to enact various land conservation and balanced land use proposals. The Wilderness Society also engages in a number of ancillary activities, including education and outreach, and hosts one of the most valuable collections of Ansel Adams photographs at their headquarters in Washington, D.C.
The National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPRA) is an area of land on the Alaska North Slope owned by the United States federal government and managed by the Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management (BLM). It lies to the west of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which, as a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service managed National Wildlife Refuge, is also federal land.
Celia Hunter was an American conservationist and advocate for wilderness protection in her home state of Alaska. She was conferred the highest award by the Sierra Club, The John Muir Award, in 1991. She was presented the highest award by the Wilderness Society, The Robert Marshall Award, in 1998.
Sarah Agnes James is a Neets'aii Gwich'in activist from Arctic Village, Alaska, USA, but was born in Fort Yukon "because that is where the hospital was. I grew up part of the time in Fort Yukon and Salmon River, but most of the time in Arctic Village, Alaska."James is a board member of the International Indian Treaty Council. She was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2002, together with Jonathon Solomon and Norma Kassi. They received the prize for their efforts to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) from plans of oil exploration and drilling. Oil and gas exploration would disturb the life cycle of the Porcupine caribou, which has been a foundation for the Gwich'in culture since approximately 18,000 BC.
The Alaska Department of Natural Resources is a department within the government of Alaska in the United States. The department has the mission of responsibly developing Alaska's resources by making them available for maximum use and benefit consistent with the public interest.
Subhankar Banerjee is a photographic artist, educator and activist whose images of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and other Alaskan wild lands have captured international attention.
The Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge is a protected wetland area in the U.S. state of Alaska. It encompasses most of the Yukon Flats, a vast wetland area centered on the confluence of the Yukon River, Porcupine River, and Chandalar River.
The Alaska Conservation Society was the first grassroots environmental conservation group in the U.S. state of Alaska. It was founded in 1960 to coordinate opposition to Project Chariot, a plan to blast a harbor at Point Hope, Alaska, using nuclear explosions. The group subscribed to environmental preservation and the principles of conservation. After the defeat of Project Chariot, the group decided to fight the proposed Rampart Dam project on the Yukon River. After succeeding, the society took a stance on the development of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, encouraging environmental mitigation during and after its construction. This led to the society becoming a major factor in environmental policy within the state. The group operated between 1960 and 1993 and was superseded by the Alaska Conservation Foundation, which was founded in 1980 and still operates today.
The Arctic policy of the United States is the foreign policy of the United States in regard to the Arctic region. In addition, the United States' domestic policy toward Alaska is part of its Arctic policy.
Braided River is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit publishing imprint of The Mountaineers Books based in Seattle, Washington. Braided River produces large-format photography books that address critical threats to wilderness. In addition to publishing works, Braided River collaborates with partner organizations to develop exhibits intended to reach diverse audiences.
Sharon Louise Gleason is an American lawyer and jurist who serves as the chief United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Alaska. Appointed by President Barack Obama in 2012, Gleason is the first woman to serve as a federal judge in the District of Alaska. She was previously a state court judge on the Alaska Superior Court from 2001 to 2012.
Oil on Ice is a 2004 documentary film directed by Bo Boudart and Dale Djerassi. It explores the Arctic Refuge drilling controversy in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and the impact of oil and gas development on the land, wildlife, and lives of the Gwich'in Athabascan Indians and Inupiat Eskimos.
Founded in 1980, the Alaska Conservation Foundation (ACF) is a nonprofit organization located in Anchorage, Alaska. Its focus is in finding ways to sustain Alaska's wildlife, coastlines, and mountains from the effects of climate change. ACF's largest contributions come from the funding that they provide for organizations around Alaska that follow a similar pursuit of environmental conservation. As of 2020, it is the only public foundation dedicated to conservation in Alaska. Through the support of individuals and foundations for nearly 40 years, ACF has awarded more than $52 million in grants to over 200 grassroots organizations and individuals working to protect and manage Alaska's natural resources.