Action for Animals 5/13
The Arctic, voting, and the National Science Board
I will admit that the assault on our public lands right now has felt so overwhelming to me and fills me with such despair that it can be hard to see how we will preserve these places when this administration just presses forward with illegal behaviors to give wilderness away to their actual bosses, oil and gas.
But I am vibing on the Pe’Sla youth win. Over a week, Oglala Lakota youth chained themselves to the drilling pads operating at the sacred site Pe’sla and were supported by Indigenous leaders; nine tribal governments filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service; members of the public called the Forest Service relentlessly over the following weekend; AND THEY WON! The mining company Pete Lien & Sons wrote to the US Forest Service May 7th withdrawing their Plan of Operations and indicating they have no intention of trying to mine there in the future.
Brandi Morin writes on her incredible newsletter Indigenous Insider “it is not too late to turn back. The Lakota youth who locked themselves to those drills — who built prayer altars in the shadow of a broken federal promise, who held that sacred meadow for days while the world watched — they showed the world what it looks like to stand firm when everything is on the line, and win. That is a gift to every land defender from the Black Hills to the Amazon to every place on this earth where someone is standing between the sacred and the machine.
Pe’ Sla is still standing. Let that light the way.”
With that juice, on to our actions!
1. There are so many ways to tell corporations not to bid on drilling leases in the last intact wilderness in America when they go up for sale June 5th.
As Michael Khamis says:
🛢️ On June 5, the federal government will auction off 688,000 acres of the Arctic Refuge’s coastal plain to oil companies.
🦌 This is the calving ground for the Porcupine caribou herd, which the Gwich’in people have depended on for thousands of years.
When Congress authorized drilling here in 2017, forecasts promised nearly a billion dollars for taxpayers. Then the 2021 sale brought in just $16 million, with the State of Alaska as the main bidder because major oil companies stayed away. The 2025 sale drew zero bidders. The nonpartisan watchdog Taxpayers for Common Sense now projects the upcoming sale could bring in as little as 3 million.
🏔️ The drilling here may never happen. But the message is clear: one of the last intact landscapes on the continent is permanently for sale, and the asking price is a rounding error.
2. Meanwhile, also in the Arctic and in violation of a court order, this administration just gave tribal land to ExxonMobil.
ACTION: Call your reps and, as More Than Just Parks suggests, “ask them why they’ve done nothing while the federal government has knowingly violated an agreement with Alaska Native communities.” (202) 224-3121
Support Grandmothers Growing Goodness, an Inupiat elders group who live on the North Slope and are suing over this, and take their suggested action of writing to Doug Burgum to tell him NO!
3. I’m devastated over the violations of voting rights happening in the South right now, so I signed up this week to do a shift with the Environmental Voter Project, which gets registered voters who are inactive but who identify as voting over environmental issues to SHOW UP AT THE POLLS.
Feeling powerless, but it’s something…
4. Sign a petition to restore the National Science Board immediately!
Per the Resistbot at that link: “The White House fired all 24 members of the National Science Board on April 24, leaving the NSF without governance just days before its scheduled May 5 meeting.” This is….bad.
GOOD JOB I LOVE YOU!
Perrin