Protect Alaska's Bristol BAy

BRISTOL BAY: AMERICA'S MARINE CROWN JEWEL

Bristol Bay, nestled just north of Alaska's Aleutian Island chain, is described by the National Marine Fisheries Service as the "single most important region of the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf for the conservation of marine mammals and endangered species and the protection and management of fishery resources." It has been protected from offshore oil and gas drilling for the last fourteen years. Now, however, it has become a primary target for drilling. A key U.S. Senate committee recently proposed deleting the longstanding, bipartisan protections for Bristol Bay, despite White House support for extended protections.

ECONOMIC AND ECOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE
The living marine resources and global ecological significance of Bristol Bay far outweigh its projected oil and gas value. Bristol Bay:

- shelters the world's largest run of sockeye salmon, a key halibut nursery conservation area, and important herring and king crab fisheries, all of which are mainstays of the regional economy;
- provides the migration corridor for millions of adult salmon and the migration and feeding habitat for numerous seabirds and marine mammals;
- is virtually surrounded by a critical coastal habitat for marine mammals, including the world's premier walrus breeding areas;
- shelters one of the largest eelgrass beds on the planet, Izembek Lagoon, an underwater meadow crucial to the bay's fish, birds, and invertebrates.

This tremendous concentration of wildlife is threatened by routine drilling discharges and accidental spills from proposed offshore drilling operations and risky tankering of oil.

CONTINUE PROTECTIONS FOR BRISTOL BAY
Fortunately, the House of Representatives has voted to extend the moratorium protecting Bristol Bay for another year, so debate over the protections should continue this September, when a joint House-Senate conference committee is expected to take up the issue.

Bristol Bay won a reprieve from the dangers of offshore drilling once before, when 23 oil leases there were relinquished by the petroleum industry soon after the tragic Exxon-Valdez tanker spill devastated Alaska's Prince William Sound. The people and wildlife of Prince William Sound still have not recovered from the 1989 spill, and yet the oil industry now wants to risk an even bigger catastrophe in Bristol Bay, where seasonal broken sea ice, fierce storms, and rough ocean conditions would make oil spill cleanup impossible. The wildlife of Bristol Bay needs your help!!
*Note, the petition may be sent to other senators depending on who signs it!