The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) is one of the Earth’s last intact ecosystems. Vast and little-known, this 19 million-acre expanse along Alaska’s north slope is home to some of the region’s last remaining polar bears, as well as musk oxen, wolvesm and wolverines. Millions of birds from around the world migrate to or through the region each year, and it serves as the calving grounds for the porcupine caribou.

Donald Trump has called the refuge the US’s “biggest oil farm.”

The first Trump administration opened 1.5 million acres of the refuge’s coastal plain to the oil and gas industry, and under Trump’s watch, the US government held its first-ever oil and gas lease sale there.

In a few weeks, when Trump takes office again, the refuge–one of the last truly wild places in the world–is awaiting an uncertain future.

The president-elect has promised to revive his crusade to “drill baby drill” on the refuge as soon as he returns to the White House in January, […]