100 Colo. Businesses Urge Senators to Protect America’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

Colorado’s Outdoor Industry Companies Seek to Protect National Treasure — The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

This summer more than 100 Colorado outdoor businesses, including Alpacka Raft, asked the Colorado congressional delegation to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge by leaving it closed to fossil fuel development. Senator Cory Gardner could be a crucial vote on protecting this stunning wild area. We encourage all Colorado-based packrafters and adventure lovers to ask him to keep the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge out of the Senate’s companion budget resolution. You can email him at his website: www.Gardner.Senate.com. We also hope all our fans and followers around the country will voice your support of the wildest place left in America. It’s the biological heart of the region, providing vital denning habitat for polar bears, and is the calving ground of the incredible Porcupine Caribou Herd that sustains the communities and culture of Alaska’s indigenous Gwich’in people. Plus it offers some stunning Packrafting opportunities. Check out the film, “Refuge,” by Fly Out Media; it offers stunning footage of the clear and scenic rivers, snow-covered mountains, and wide plans of ANWR.

Why are we worried? Because…

The Fiscal Year 2018 budget resolution was released on Wednesday, July 19, and the U.S. House of Representatives included instructions that would enable the House Natural Resources Committee to authorize drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge through the federal budget process. The U.S. House’s budget resolution instructs the Natural Resources Committee to generate billion over 10 years. These instructions are a veiled, but direct, attempt to drill in the Arctic Refuge. The House’s strategy is to use the budgeting process, which requires only a bare majority vote in the Senate, to enable drilling in the Arctic Refuge. Earlier this year the Trump administration has said that drilling in the Refuge is one of its top priorities.

We, at Alpacka Raft, feel this is a big mistake.

• .7 billion in wages and salaries,
• 229,000 direct Colorado jobs,
• billion in state and local tax revenue and over billion in consumer spending annually.

The Letter…

Dear Senator Cory Gardner and Senator Michael Bennet,

The undersigned Colorado businesses are writing to request that you protect and preserve the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge by leaving the Refuge closed to oil and gas drilling. Outdoor recreation contributes substantially to our economy. In Colorado alone, our industry generates over billion in wages and salaries, almost billion in state and local tax revenue and over billion in consumer spending annually.

Our contribution to our economy, including the number of jobs and the amount of consumer spending we generate, is significant. So is our voice. We are powerful and our need to protect our public lands is crucial to our bottom lines and our quality of life.

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is a national treasure. It is an inspiring, wild landscape stretching from the Brooks Range to the Arctic Ocean, and is home to polar bears, wolves, migratory birds, and the Porcupine Caribou Herd, which consists of more than 180,000 animals. We have a moral responsibility to preserve and protect this precious American treasure for future generations.

We urge you to not open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to fossil fuel development. Drilling in Arctic is incredibly risky. The massive infrastructure needed to extract and transport the oil, as well as accompanying air, water, and noise pollution from drilling would have devastating impacts on this pristine and fragile natural area. Chronic spills of oil and other toxic substances in the fragile tundra would forever scar this now unspoiled land while disrupting its wildlife and harming indigenous populations that rely on the Arctic and its animals to maintain their traditional subsistence lifestyles.

Please hear our business voices, an economic powerhouse in our state, and do not allow any fossil fuel development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Sincerely,