"Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced last week that he will open 1.8 million acres of the National Petroleum Reserve in northern Alaska to oil and gas leasing. He pledged to protect habitat for migratory birds and caribou near Teshekpuk Lake, an ecologically sensitive area inside the 1.8 million acre tract — welcome news. Even better news would be a pledge by the secretary to go slow on any future development in the reserve.

The southern section has immense coal deposits. The potential environmental destruction involved in extracting that coal is enormous.

We take Mr. Salazar at his word when he says these new leases mean “environmentally responsible development,” and we applaud his decision to protect the lake and some of the most critical lands around it. But right now conservation plans and development plans are wildly out of balance in the National Petroleum Reserve.

The spigot to its oil and gas cannot be opened without doing serious harm to a largely unspoiled Arctic ecosystem. We need to find surer protections for what is, after all, the reserve’s most valuable resource: its wildness."

Get the Story:
Editorial: Whittling Away the Petroleum Reserve (The New York Times 7/15)