NRDC et al. v. Doug Burgum et al.

On August 24, 2020, NRDC and Earthjustice lawyers, representing the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, and NRDC, filed a lawsuit over the Trump administration’s decision to open 1.56 million acres of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge—specifically the coastal plain—to oil and gas leasing. 

The coastal plain is the biological heart of the refuge: 1.56 million acres of tundra ecosystem that provide essential breeding, birthing, foraging, and overwintering habitat to countless animals, including polar bears, caribou, and birds from all 50 states. It comprises vast expanses of tundra, braided rivers, slopes, foothills, and shallow lakes and ponds. It is also exceedingly sensitive to change, with a short growing season, soils and waterbodies perched on permafrost and ice, and a thin, protective layer of productive vegetation that is vulnerable to disturbance and slow to recover. 

The 2020 decision from the then-secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI), David Bernhardt, and the Bureau of Land Management ignored far-reaching adverse impacts and alternatives for reducing them, and unlawfully treated oil and gas as the dominant use of the refuge’s sensitive coastal plain. The accompanying biological opinion baselessly found that the program adequately ensures against harm to polar bears. 

On January 6, 2021, the Trump administration held an auction for oil and gas leases within the coastal plain. But thanks in part to the active litigation and public pressure, only three bidders took part. Similarly, owing to overwhelming public input and strong expert analysis mustered in part by NRDC, the DOI failed in its effort to greenlight potentially disastrous seismic exploration there.  

In his first week in office, President Joe Biden issued an executive order placing a temporary moratorium on activities implementing the leasing program and instructed the DOI to review the program. That review resulted in a new program in fall 2024, which provides critical protections for the coastal plain ecosystem. 

In the first day of his second administration, President Trump ordered the DOI to reverse the Biden administration’s actions in the refuge. In October 2025, DOI Secretary Doug Burgum adopted a new program that, in essence, reinstates the 2020 program. 

The 2025 decision again ignored far-reaching adverse impacts and alternatives for reducing them, and unlawfully treated oil and gas as the dominant use of the refuge’s sensitive coastal plain. And the accompanying biological opinion again baselessly found that the program adequately ensures against harm to polar bears. 

In early 2026, we amended our lawsuit to add claims against the 2025 program. 

Our complaint pleads violations of the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the National Wildlife Refuge System Administration Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act. The Gwich’in Steering Committee, a voice for Indigenous communities, has also challenged the 2020 and 2025 program, joined by other conservation groups. The Gwich’in people have depended on the Porcupine caribou herd, which calves on the coastal plain, for thousands of years. Protecting the coastal plain and the caribou are thus a matter of basic human rights for the Gwich’in and the Indigenous Peoples who stand with them and also depend on the coastal plain’s natural values. 

As we fight these unlawful leasing programs in court, we expect the DOI will continue to try to lease more and more of this special place. We’ll continue to advocate both inside and outside of the courts to ensure the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is never industrialized.