ANCHORAGE: President Donald Trump’s plan to help balance the federal budget features a new attempt to open the coastal plain of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to petroleum drilling.

The effort is the latest chapter in a long-running political fight between two camps: environmentalists, who revere the plain as a maternity ward for polar bears, caribou and migratory birds; and politicians, including those in Alaska’s congressional delegation, who have campaigned for four decades on the promise of jobs and prosperity through “opening ANWR.”

The refuge covers 2,300 square miles (5,957 square kilometers), an area the size of West Virginia and Con­ne­c­ticut combined in Alaska’s northeast corner.

Published in Dawn, May 28th, 2017