AG Brown leads states’ brief opposing increased oil and gas development in Alaska’s Coastal Plain

Tundra swans in the Skagit Valley
Photo by Wayne Pridemore

Attorney General Nick Brown led a coalition with 13 other attorneys general in filing an amicus brief supporting three lawsuits challenging the Trump administration’s decision to authorize an oil and gas program that would maximize development of the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.

Washington’s brief argues that expansive, maximalist oil and gas development in an area previously untouched by industrial development will harm our states’ migratory birds and increase greenhouse gas emissions that worsen the devastating impacts of climate change in our states.

The coalition states argue that the Bureau of Land Management’s rushed and incomplete environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Secretary of Interior’s failure to comply with the National Wildlife Refuge System Administration Act (Refuge Act) illegally ignored more environmentally protective alternatives and disregarded legally required standards for public participation and transparency.

“Once again, this administration is breaking the law to prop up the fossil fuel industry, with no regard for the costs to our natural world,” said Attorney General Nick Brown. “The interests of oil and gas are not above the interests of the American people and our extraordinary ecology.”

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is our nation’s largest refuge. The Coastal Plain is a 1.6-million-acre national treasure at the heart of the refuge that provides habitat to hundreds of species, including threatened polar bears and caribou. 

Millions of migratory birds spend the summer on the Coastal Plain breeding and feeding before migrating southward across North America, including Washington, travelling upwards of 3,000 miles. 

For example, Tundra swans cross the continent to winter on the Atlantic coast. Brant, Pacific loons, and yellow-billed loons from the refuge winter primarily along the Pacific coast of North America.

AG Brown is joined on this brief by the attorneys general of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Vermont.