The Alaska Wilderness League (AWL) is a

nonprofit A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...

organization that works to protect Alaska's most significant wild lands from oil and gas drilling and from other industrial threats. Founded in 1993, AWL has its main office in Washington, DC, with additional offices in

Anchorage Anchorage () is the largest city in the U.S. state of Alaska by population. With a population of 291,247 in 2020, it contains nearly 40% of the state's population. The Anchorage metropolitan area, which includes Anchorage and the neighboring Ma ...

and

Juneau The City and Borough of Juneau, more commonly known simply as Juneau ( ; tli, Dzánti K'ihéeni ), is the capital city of the state of Alaska. Located in the Gastineau Channel and the Alaskan panhandle, it is a unified municipality and the se ...

, Alaska. For the past ten years, AWL has taken the lead in the fight to protect the

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR or Arctic Refuge) is a national wildlife refuge in northeastern Alaska, United States on traditional Gwich'in lands. It consists of in the Alaska North Slope region. It is the largest national wildlife ...

from being opened to oil and gas development, and its leadership has made a significant impact in this area. The organization has rallied public support and successfully stopped numerous attempts by Congress to open the refuge to development. In 2001, AWL and its supporters helped fund photographer Subhankar Banerjee's ground-breaking winter field photography in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The photos he took were published in the book ''Seasons of Life and Land''. Banerjee's photographs of the Refuge were exhibited at the

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...

National Museum of Natural History The National Museum of Natural History is a natural history museum administered by the Smithsonian Institution, located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., United States. It has free admission and is open 364 days a year. In 2021, with 7 ...

, and controversy erupted when his captions for the photos were altered and the exhibit was moved to a far corner of the museum. Some charged that Alaska Senator

Ted Stevens Theodore Fulton Stevens Sr. (November 18, 1923 – August 9, 2010) was an American politician and lawyer who served as a U.S. Senator from Alaska from 1968 to 2009. He was the longest-serving Republican Senator in history at the time he left o ...

had used political pressure to remove the exhibit from the spotlight because Senator

Barbara Boxer Barbara Sue Boxer (née Levy; born November 11, 1940) is an American politician and lobbyist who served in the United States Senate, representing California from 1993 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, she previously served as the U.S. ...

had held up Banerjee's book during a Senate floor debate over oil drilling in the Refuge, but the museum maintained the changes were made "for artistic reasons".Censorship or Politics? Views Differ Over Exhibit
/ref> Starting in 2004, AWL expanded its work to include ecologically significant areas of Alaska's vast National Petroleum Reserve, the

Tongass National Forest The Tongass National Forest () in Southeast Alaska is the largest U.S. National Forest at . Most of its area is temperate rain forest and is remote enough to be home to many species of endangered and rare flora and fauna. The Tongass, which i ...

, and the

outer continental shelf The Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) is a feature of the geography of the United States. The OCS is the part of the internationally recognized continental shelf of the United States which does not fall under the jurisdictions of the individual U. ...

areas of the

Beaufort Beaufort may refer to: People and titles * Beaufort (surname) * House of Beaufort, English nobility * Duke of Beaufort (England), a title in the peerage of England * Duke of Beaufort (France), a title in the French nobility Places Polar regions ...

and Chukchi Seas. AWL's work has had long-standing support from President

Jimmy Carter James Earl Carter Jr. (born October 1, 1924) is an American politician who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, he previously served as th ...

, who remains the Honorary Chairman of the Board of Directors.

Press

Andrew Revkin: Who's Backing Gingrich's ‘Drill Here' Push? (NY Times)

Notes

External links

*
Dochetry, Bonnie. Challenging Boundaries: The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and International Environmental Law Protection.
Environmental organizations based in Washington, D.C. {{Environmental-org-stub