Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is the largest national wildlife refuge in the United States. The 19.6-million-acre landscape attracts millions of migratory birds and supports more than 200 unique species. Birds migrating to or through the Arctic Refuge come from six continents and are drawn by the burst of plant and insect life during the long days of the Arctic summer. The region has earned the nickname “world’s bird nursery” due to the diversity and abundance of birds that come here to feed, nest, and raise their young.

The Arctic Refuge is the country’s only conservation unit that encompasses an entire Arctic ecosystem—from the peaks of the Brooks Range to coastal barrier islands. It’s home to polar and brown bears, wolves, and the Porcupine Caribou Herd. The region is the traditional homelands of the Iñupiaq and Gwich’in peoples, and abundant wild resources continue to be harvested from this landscape for their food and other cultural purposes.

This landscape was first set aside by Dwight D. Eisenhower as the Arctic National Wildlife Range in 1960. In 1980, Congress enlarged the original range and established the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to protect additional wildlife habitat. Unfortunately, the 1.5-million-acre Coastal Plain is endangered by an oil and gas program. Such development threatens irreplaceable migratory bird habitat and the Porcupine Caribou Herd’s calving grounds, an area known as Iizhik Gwats’an Gwandaii Goodlit or the “Sacred Place Where Life Begins” in the Gwich’in language. Audubon is committed to ensuring that this landscape remains free of all oil and gas activity.