Correct past wrongs in Arctic development

Environmental groups had high hopes for the Obama administration. They had spent eight years fighting off relentless efforts by the previous administration to eviscerate laws and regulations aimed at protecting our natural heritage and opening nearly all public resources to private exploitation.

The report card, nearly a year into the Obama era, is mixed but mostly admirable. The Environmental Protection Agency has overturned or withdrawn many onerous Bush initiatives. The Forest Service is doing pretty well by the national forests. The Park Service is working to protect Yellowstone from the annual onslaught of snowmobiles. The president will attend the Copenhagen climate talks.

Now, the Interior Department is faced with one of its biggest decision so far: whether to allow oil companies to lease and drill in the Arctic Ocean.

The upcoming Arctic decisions dwarf everything else Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has done so far. Interior's Minerals Management Service took a step in the wrong direction in October, approving a plan by Shell Oil to drill just offshore from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska next year, without a full environmental analysis. Other important decisions are imminent, including whether to continue offering lease sales, and defend existing leases, in the Arctic Ocean and whether to allow Shell to also drill in the pristine Chukchi Sea in 2010.

It is not too late for Salazar's Interior Department to correct course and protect the Arctic Ocean.

Others in the Obama administration have been urging a more sensible approach to the Arctic Ocean. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke has closed the Arctic Ocean to commercial fishing until more science about the region is available. The Fish and Wildlife Service proposed to designate large areas of the Arctic Ocean and its coast as critical habitat for polar bears.

Salazar should follow the advice of NOAA and hold off permitting new oil and gas activity in the Arctic until we have a better idea of how to respond when oil inevitably leaks and until we know a lot more about Arctic wildlife.

• Buck Parker is the former executive direct of Earthjustice.