Conservation Groups Sue Interior to Block Arctic Oil Drilling

Environmental groups are challenging the Bureau of Land Management’s decisions to claw back conservation plans and open more of Alaska’s Arctic to oil and gas development.

The Interior Department’s BLM “recently opened some of the most ecologically and culturally sensitive lands in the Arctic to oil and gas leasing by misreading its statutory authority, reversing years of factual findings without explanation, and conducting an environmental review that is incapable of supporting its decision,” Grandmothers Growing Goodness and the Wilderness Society said in ...