I have worked as an environmental advocate for thirty-five years specializing in federal public lands, Wilderness, national parks and Alaska. In the 1970’s I organized and led the Alaska Coalition pushing the Congress to pass the Alaska National Interest Lands Act of 1980 which created over a 100 million acres of national parks and wildlife refuges and an additional 56 million acres of Wilderness in the state. In addition, I was a leader in getting Congress to pass over 14 million acres of Wilderness in the Lower 48, fought former Interior Secretary James Watt over his exploitative policies, ran the Adirondack Council and have now worked at NRDC for 19 years on Alaska lands, national parks and a wide variety of public lands issues.
Posted June 7, 2013 by Chuck Clusen in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
What Happens in the Arctic Unfortunately Is Not Staying in the Arctic: The Arctic Ice Pack May Be as Important to Us People as to the Polar Bears. Its Melting Must Be Brought Under Control. Oil and Gas Activities Contribute...continued→
Posted January 11, 2013 by Chuck Clusen in Moving Beyond Oil, Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
Shell’s rush to drill in the Beaufort Sea off the coast of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and in the Chukchi Sea not only produced another blunder this month, when its Kulluk drill rig, carrying 150,000 gallons of diesel fuel...continued→
Posted January 8, 2013 by Chuck Clusen in Green Enterprise, Health and the Environment, Moving Beyond Oil, Reviving the World's Oceans, Saving Wildlife and Wild Places, Solving Global Warming
Special thanks to Jeff Benzak for helping draft this blog Royal Dutch Shell’s beaten and battered drill rig is currently anchored in a remote, pristine bay on the east side of Kodiak Island, Alaska. Pretty though it may be, Kiliuda...continued→
Posted December 19, 2012 by Chuck Clusen in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
Visiting Alaska’s Western Arctic Reserve is a most unique experience which I have had the great pleasure to do several times. It is the largest public land unit in the nation, extremely diverse, the most remote, and, no doubt, with...continued→
Posted October 17, 2012 by Chuck Clusen in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
NRDC’s OnEarth magazine has posted a fantastic article by Douglas Fischer that features amazing images by Gary Braasch showing just how close Shell’s drilling rig, the Kulluk, is to the shoreline of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Click here for...continued→
Posted October 16, 2012 by Chuck Clusen
In September, just days after the lowest ever Arctic sea ice minimum was recorded, Caroline Cannon participated on a panel at Greenpeace’s Polar Emergency event in New York City, bringing first-hand experience of the effects of Arctic melt to the...continued→
Posted October 2, 2012 by Chuck Clusen in Moving Beyond Oil, Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
It isn’t often that an oil industry executive speaks out against oil exploration. Yet last week, the Financial Times reported that French oil giant Total’s chief executive, Christophe de Margerie, claimed the risk of an oil spill in [the Arctic]...continued→
Posted September 27, 2012 by Chuck Clusen in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
Last month, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced the Bureau of Land Management’s preferred alternative, the “B-2” alternative, for the first area-wide Integrated Activity Plan developed for Western Arctic Reserve, formally known as the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. The Reserve...continued→
Posted September 20, 2012 by Chuck Clusen in Moving Beyond Oil, Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
Shell’s announcement that it will not drill into oil bearing zones this year comes as welcome news to those of us who work to protect the Arctic Ocean. Far too little is known about the ecosystems of this region. We must...continued→
Posted September 13, 2012 by Chuck Clusen in Moving Beyond Oil, Reviving the World's Oceans, Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
After nearly two months of delays, Shell began exploratory drilling of the Chukchi Sea floor in the pre-dawn hours of Sunday morning. By noon on Monday, encroaching sea ice had forced the company to halt drilling, disconnect from its well...continued→
Posted August 31, 2012 by Chuck Clusen in Moving Beyond Oil, Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
With BSEE’s (Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement) announcement Thursday that despite the company’s lack of a tested oil containment system on-site, it would allow Shell to proceed with preparatory well-site work and top hole drilling. The Obama Administration’s decision...continued→
Posted August 22, 2012 by Chuck Clusen
With the Department of the Interior considering whether to grant Shell permits to drill in America’s Arctic Ocean, and Shell scrambling to get started amid a flurry of problems, a new NRDC report details the huge risks that come with the rush...continued→
Posted August 17, 2012 by Chuck Clusen in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places, U.S. Law and Policy
This week, 61 members of the House of Representatives sent a letter to the Department of the Interior’s Secretary Ken Salazar urging protection of America’s Arctic Ocean from hasty oil and gas development. On the one hand, the letter praises...continued→
Posted June 22, 2012 by Chuck Clusen in Moving Beyond Oil, Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
The Environmental Risks For four years the focus of this blog has been to highlight the great risks of opening America’s Arctic, the Beaufort and Chukchi seas, to offshore oil development. We started by explaining the extreme fragility of...continued→
Posted May 24, 2012 by Chuck Clusen in Moving Beyond Oil, Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
The management for America’s largest unprotected tract of public land—also the most remote and wild—is being decided. The 23 million acre Western Arctic Reserve (the size of Indiana) which has the unfortunate formal name, National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (Reserve)—conjuring up an...continued→
Switchboard is the staff blog of the Natural Resources Defense Council, the nation’s most effective environmental group. For more about our work, including in-depth policy documents, action alerts and ways you can contribute, visit NRDC.org.
