Wallace Stegner wrote that you do not have to travel to a wilderness to know that it is worth saving -- simply knowing such a wild sanctuary exists is enough to create a "geography of hope." The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is an icon of that hope. We know even without going to the refuge that more than 130,000 caribou thunder across its rushing rivers and tend to their young in its greening tundra. Polar bears amble along its shoreline and wolves trot through its tangled grasses. Natural diversity and grandeur at this scale is something most of us will never see. By preserving it, we preserve the hope that our children will know that wildness and conservation still exist in our land.

For the Bush administration, the Arctic Refuge represented another kind of icon: the next frontier to be developed. Although administration officials said they wanted to let oil and gas companies stake their claim to the refuge to help end our dependence on foreign oil, in reality the refuge has less than a year's supply of oil, which would lower gas prices at the pump a mere two cents per gallon 20 years from now.

Americans do not have to choose between wilderness and energy security. Improving fuel efficiency in cars would do far more to end our oil dependence than drilling in the Arctic Refuge and its sensitive offshore waters.

In 2009 we will be urging the new Congress, as well as the incoming Obama administration, to provide permanent protection for the Arctic Refuge -- please check back then to take action.

Photo credits: Musk oxen in the vicinity of the Tamiariak River, with Sadlerochit Mountains in the background, © U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Polar bears, © Steve Amstrup, Alaska Image Library, USFWS.