Trump is clearing the way for damage we can’t undo.
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Friend, it's Mike. I'm writing to you to ask for your help — it's urgent that we step up right now to stop the destruction of seismic testing in the Arctic before it's too late.
I've been lucky enough to stand on the frozen ground of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and experience the kind of silence you can only find in the Arctic. That silence also surrounds the dens of polar bears — where a mother curls around her days-old cub, hidden safely beneath the silence and the deep Alaskan freeze, waiting for warmer days to emerge.
That silence is what seismic testing shatters. Seismic testing sends powerful bursts of sound deep into the frozen earth to search for underground oil and gas. This process tears through the stillness of the Arctic, vibrating through snow and ice to reach even the hidden places where wildlife should be safest.
These destructive projects even collapse polar bear dens, suffocating newborn cubs before they ever get to stand in the bright Arctic sun.
The Trump administration has gutted protections across millions of acres of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, clearing the way for fossil fuel companies to blast what is meant to be a place of safety. For the Alaska Natives who live on this land and have stewarded it for generations, this isn't theoretical damage. It's a very real threat to their land, resources, culture, and the traditions that sustain them.
Seismic testing is just the first step in the destruction — and every time the Trump administration opens up new areas of the Arctic to industrial exploitation, I think of those dens underground and how that heartbreaking destruction could be just the beginning.
Just a few weeks ago, the Trump administration announced plans to revoke protections for even more of the Arctic in a giveaway to corporate polluters, offering them millions of acres of the fragile Western Arctic.
These lands are irreplaceable, friend. They are birthing ground for polar bears, the heart of the Porcupine caribou herd's migration, and the ancestral homelands for Indigenous communities who have stewarded this land since time immemorial. Once it's destroyed, there is no going back.
