Iowa Sierrans have been instrumental in every win in the Arctic and we have the best chance now of finally permanently protecting the Coastal Plain.  Salazar has not ruled yet on the Arctic and it's looking like he might leave office without doing so.  The pressure has to be on President Obama so please everyone do what Sierrans do best--write, call or email.  Phyllis

Wow. February was a very good month for America's Arctic.

Last month, 11 million acres of Arctic wild lands in Western Alaska were protected, keeping over 200 million barrels of climate-disrupting oil in the ground. Tens of thousands of people converged on the White House to demand that the President move away from oil drilling and towards climate solutions. Shell Oil finally announced that it would not be able to drill for oil in the fragile Polar Bear Seas in 2013.

I almost can’t believe I get to say this, but we're starting to win the fight to permanently protect America’s Arctic and making real progress to fix the climate crisis.

Keep the momentum going. Tell President Obama to protect special areas of the Arctic Refuge and refuse Shell Oil's future attempts to drill in the Polar Bear Seas.

The fight isn't over. Even though Shell has temporarily backed down from drilling in the Arctic, Big Oil’s friends in Congress haven’t stopped pushing for more dirty and dangerous fossil fuel extraction.

Just last week, Senator Lisa Murkowski released her energy plan, which called for drilling in the Polar Bear Seas and the Arctic refuge, as well as on both the east and west coast of the continental U.S., immediate approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, and cutting investments in renewable energy.

This shows that Big Oil isn't going to back down easily, and neither can we. Send a message to President Obama today.

We’ve won some key protections for America’s Arctic this month, but there's so much more to do. Right now, President Obama and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar are deciding whether or not to recommend that the coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge be protected permanently from drilling.

Tell President Obama to take bold leadership by permanently protecting the coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge, and by letting Big Oil know it can't drill in the Polar Bear Seas.

Thanks to millions of calls, emails and letters from people like you, America's Arctic is safer from drilling now than it was just a month ago. Now it's more important than ever to keep this fight going.

Thank you for everything you do for our wild places,

Dan Ritzman
Sierra Club Arctic Campaign Director

P.S. We want to make sure the Obama administration knows how important the Arctic is to Americans. Forward this alert to your friends and colleagues, or share it on Facebook and Twitter: