| Summary: | This article analyzes the attitudes of American conservatives and libertarians with regard to federal conservationist policies in the United States, taking the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska as a case study. ANWR is a huge tract of land located in the northeastern part of Alaska. Since 1960 it has enjoyed wilderness status, that is to say, the highest degree of protection for federal lands in the United States. Its size was vastly increased when Congress passed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) in 1980. Since then, the 1002 area, which is located in the northern part of the Refuge and which contains large reserves of petroleum, has become a major bone of contention pitting environmentalists against free-marketers. The former want the Refuge to remain inviolate whilst the latter push for the immediate opening of the 1002 area to oil drilling. This article sheds light on the reasons for the positions held by the American Right, and moreover looks at its implications for federally preserved areas in the United States by examining the publications on ANWR by the main conservative and libertarian think tanks which have developed a genuine interest in this issue. Since the 1970s, various think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, have often been financed by well-heeled corporate interests and have acted as the ideological arsenal of the American Right on all topics which US elected officials can be expected to discuss. In the specific case of ANWR, as in many others, conservative and libertarian think tanks provide Republican members of Congress, and some Alaska Democrats, with economic, technical, and scientific arguments to justify opening the Refuge. Opening the Refuge is not the free-marketers’ only priority : they also intend to call into question the justification for federal interventionism by calling for an end to environmental regulations and the almost total privatization of federally-owned lands. In point of fact, the repeated attempts made by the American Right ...
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