The Trump administration is considering new rules that would allow oil companies to operate in northern Alaska even at the cost of the deaths of polar bears and walruses. All without legal consequences for companies.
The proposal, in fact, put forward by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, introduces the concept of “incidental take”: a legal term that includes any unintentional harm to protected animals, from simple harassment to death.
In other words: companies will not be able to “hunt” polar bears, but if during the activities – drilling, oil transport, seismic tests – some animals die, they will not be prosecuted. Terrible new rules affecting operations in the Beaufort Sea and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, one of the most delicate ecosystems on the planet, habitat of over 300 species including caribou, wolves, moose and, above all, polar bears.
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A non-theoretical danger: if industrial activities were to disturb a female during hibernation, she could abandon her den and her cubs, which would not survive on their own. It is a rare scenario, but possible and already observed in similar contexts. For walruses, however, the main risk is linked to panic: the noise of planes or operations could trigger mass escapes, in which the animals end up crushed by each other. Or they can be hit by boats.
Already fragile numbers
The polar bear population in the southern Beaufort Sea is already in serious difficulty: having decreased by around 40% since the 2000s, today it numbers just 900 specimens, with no signs of recovery. Globally, polar bears are classified as a “threatened” species. And Alaska is the only American state where they live. For their part, companies in the sector, represented by the Alaska Oil and Gas Association, maintain that the impact will be minimal and that deaths are only a remote possibility.
The permits, if approved, would last five years (until 2031) and come just as the United States aims to expand drilling in Alaska: the area could contain up to 11.8 billion barrels of recoverable oil.
The environmental organizations are not there: according to the Center for Biological Diversity – who filed 266 lawsuits during Trump’s first term challenging the Trump administration’s attempts to block progress on climate change, kill wildlife, endanger public health, destroy public lands – allowing this level of disturbance is “too risky,” especially in an Arctic already challenged by climate change. And the critical point is precisely this: even a few deaths can weigh enormously on an already fragile population.
In an extreme and increasingly vulnerable ecosystem, the question remains inevitable: how “negligible” can the death of even a few individuals really be, when every life counts for the survival of the species?
