The beluga whales of Alaska's Cook Inlet are among the most imperiled whales on the planet. Fewer than 280 remain. Yet an oil and gas lease sale for their Cook Inlet home is happening this month.

Big Oil continues to push wildlife to the brink, and The Center for Biological Diversity is fighting back.

Please help with a gift to the Saving Life on Earth Fund. All gifts through Dec. 31 will be matched.

Beluga whales are known as "sea canaries" because they're so vocal, it seems like they're singing.

They rely on their sensitive hearing to survive, but noise from oil and gas activities makes it difficult for the whales to communicate and find food.

The Biden administration had already canceled this Cook Inlet lease sale. But because of a poison pill in the Inflation Reduction Act, passed in August, the sale is now mandated to occur by year's end.

And endangered whales will pay the price. Noise pollution, vessel traffic, and oil spills that stem from new oil drilling put whales and other marine creatures at risk.

We know what happens when oil and gas companies drill: Wildlife suffers, and our coasts get soaked in oil.

And it's not just Cook Inlet: The Inflation Reduction Act requires another lease sale, in the Gulf of Mexico, early next year.

More drilling and oil and gas exploration will only worsen the climate emergency and extinction crisis.

The two are inextricably linked. To save imperiled species, we must end Big Oil's pillaging of natural resource at endangered species' expense.

The lives of beluga whales and many other species are hanging in the balance.

Please help us save them by giving to the Saving Life on Earth Fund.

Beluga photo by Sheila Sund.