Oppose drilling in Arctic National Wildlife Preserve

Five years ago, on a trip across America with my daughter, I discovered the amazing network of National Wildlife Refuges in our great country. These refuges (there are more than 550 of them) provide much-needed conservation areas for fish, animals, plants, and perhaps most importantly, birds.

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in northern Alaska is a 1.5 million-acre region that is a critical breeding ground for hundreds of species of North American birds. Every state in the union has native birds that travel to this refuge to breed in the summer. Many, many of South Carolina’s beautiful birds make the journey north each year to breed.

The recently proposed fiscal year 2018 budget would allow for a fast track process to open up drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. I believe this would be a huge mistake. Putting aside the valid argument that this drilling is simply not needed (the world is in an oil glut, and there are significant oil reserves elsewhere in Alaska outside the refuge that remain untapped), drilling in this refuge will greatly impact the health of the arctic and add another obstacle to critical bird migrations that are already hurting badly.

I am a Republican voter but am getting very tired of our government’s terrible positions on our environment. I ask Sen. Lindsey Graham to oppose drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

There are some good videos on YouTube about this. This effects all of us.

This story was originally published October 7, 2017 at 12:48 PM with the headline "Oppose drilling in Arctic National Wildlife Preserve."