When it comes to America’s premier public lands, a pattern has emerged over the past four years: Protections that kept extractive industries out of beloved wild places under previous presidents were stripped away by President Donald Trump’s administration, leaving them exposed to contentious development. Nowhere has there been more controversy than in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a South Carolina-size sanctuary on Alaska’s North Slope home to polar bears, muskoxen, and millions of birds from six continents each breeding season. Since Republicans in Congress passed a 2017 tax bill calling for the first-ever fossil-fuel leasing in the refuge, the administration has been pushing ahead aggressively, despite lawsuits from 蜜柚APP, other conservation groups, and the Gwich’in people who rely on the caribou that breed there. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) last month formally asked interested drillers to nominate the parcels they’d like to lease, and a sale is...