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Fighting to Protect the Arctic Refuge—Again [ Cover Exclusive ]

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Fighting to Protect the Arctic Refuge—Again [ Cover Exclusive ] Pioneering solutions New day for giant to protect biodiversity manta rays p. 20 p. 5 SPRING 2017 THE VOICE OF DEFENDERS OF WILDLIFE Fighting to protect the Arctic refuge—again [ cover exclusive ] WILDLIFE HAVEN or The battle to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from Big Oil begins anew By Bill Sherwonit tanding on a rocky, windblown perch at the edge of Alaska’s northernmost mountain range, I look across Sthe Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s vast green, undu- lating coastal plain. This is the calving grounds for one of North America’s last great caribou herds—those famed and far-ranging “nomads of the north.” Every year they thunder their way hundreds of miles in the continent’s longest land mammal migration spectacle. I have arrived late in the season so most of the Porcupine caribou herd have already headed south to their winter grounds. But I haven’t given up hope that thousands—or at least hundreds—of late-departing caribou might surge past me. Even in the caribou’s absence, however, the sense of their presence, their spirit, is overwhelming. Hoofed tracks mark soft ground. Clumps and tufts of brown and white hair hang from willow branches. Sun-bleached bones and antlers lie scattered on gravel bars, tundra wetlands and craggy limestone ridges. Hundreds of deep, rutted trails crisscross the lowlands and hills. or OIL FIELD? © FLORIAN© SCHULZ [ cover exclusive ] At nearly 20 million acres— heart. Not only is the coastal (FWS) manages the refuge, including almost the size of South Carolina— plain the Porcupine caribou herd’s the coastal plain’s expansive tundra the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge traditional core calving area, it is the wetlands, low rolling hills, innumer- is one of the largest intact ecosystems country’s most important onshore able lakes and ponds, north-flowing in the world, home to a vast array denning habitat for polar bears and rivers, coastal marshes and river of wildlife, including 45 mammals home to grizzly bears, arctic foxes, deltas. But periodically this largely and more than 200 migratory and wolverines, muskoxen, wolves, voles, pristine wildlife haven is embroiled resident bird species. It boasts the loons, ducks, shorebirds, snowy owls, in a fierce political fight, pitting those greatest biodiversity of any protected arctic graylings and more. At least who wish to preserve this Arctic area north of the Arctic Circle. But 125 species of birds migrate here from wildlands and its inhabitants against it is the 1.5-million-acre coastal plain every continent but Australia and those who want to develop the land that gently descends from the Brooks from all 50 states to nest, rear their for oil and gas production. Range mountains to the Arctic young and feed. More than a decade has passed Ocean that is the refuge’s biological The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service since the last big push for drilling, 14 | DEFENDERS SPRING 2017 © FLORIAN© SCHULZ Caribou (far left) migrate to calving ground on the coastal plain, where an aerial shot (previous spread) © DAWN WILSON DAWN © reveals them as specs spreading across the landscape. The coastal plain is also important to the polar bear (left) and the arctic fox (above). allow oil and gas development there. As chair of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, Murkowski especially holds considerable sway. The consequences of drilling are stark and permanent. “Oil and gas development can require harmful seismic blasting and create a vast industrial complex across the coastal plain,” says Jenny Keatinge, a federal © JOHN SCHWIEDER/ALAMY JOHN © PHOTO STOCK lands policy analyst at Defenders. “This wild habitat could be forever and in 2015—following FWS’s resurrected with Donald Trump’s destroyed by a steel spider’s web of comprehensive assessment and election and Congress in Republican pipelines from dozens of well pads, recommendation—President Barack control. On the same night Hillary along with airstrips, gravel mines, Obama called on Congress to Clinton conceded the presidential roads and other infrastructure.” officially designate the coastal plain election, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski Even well-regulated oil drilling is and more than 10 million additional and Rep. Don Young—both a messy business, plagued by periodic acres of the refuge as wilderness. This Republicans who won re-election spills and pollution. The once wild would have sealed off the area from oil to Congress—told reporters they landscape 60 miles west of the Arctic development with the highest degree would begin a new effort to open the refuge at Prudhoe Bay, America’s of federal land protection available. coastal plain to drilling. Less than largest oil field, has been forever Predictably, it went nowhere in the a month later, Murkowski—in her changed. “Toxic spills of crude oil anti-conservation Congress. ninth attempt—and Dan Sullivan, and other hazardous materials are Now the prospect of an indus- her Alaska Republican colleague in common in Prudhoe Bay and on the trialized coastal plain has been the Senate, introduced legislation to North Slope,” says Keatinge. Birds, www.defenders.org | 15 [ cover exclusive ] © MICHIO HOSHINO/MINDEN PICTURES HOSHINO/MINDEN MICHIO © GARBER HOWIE © 16 | DEFENDERS SPRING 2017 mammals and fish exposed to oil and “Unique” is sometimes used tussocks—unstable, mushroom- other chemicals can die from acute too casually, but in this case it fits. shaped mounds of plants. Tussocks poisoning or suffer a slow death from A place of immense natural vitality, can be avoided by hiking along debilitating illness after ingesting the refuge’s coastal plain is the only the large, braided stream channels these substances or getting them on large swath of Alaska’s—and thus the that dissect the plain, but then their fur, feathers or skin. nation’s—Arctic coastline that has there’s no escaping mosquitoes. “There’s no question that the remained off limits to development. Or soaked feet. Meandering river coastal plain is once again at great And yet it accounts for only 5 percent channels make stream crossings, risk,” says Robert Dewey, Defenders’ of Alaska’s North Slope. or tundra detours, inevitable. vice president for government rela- Seen from the edge of the From a narrowly human perspec- tions. As one who’s participated in Brooks Range foothills, the coastal tive, the coastal plain itself is a remote, this “epic” clash across 27 years, he plain contrasts sharply with the flat, harsh and expensive-to-reach adds, “This time there’s a difference: mountains’ rugged beauty, yet it has place. In winter, it’s draped in dark- Politicians, not oil companies, a breathtaking grandeur all its own, ness and sub-zero cold, wracked by are making the push. The Alaska sweeping outward in a seemingly blizzards. In summer, much of it is delegation believes the time is right endless landscape that stretches to the bug-infested swampland. Yet even in to open the refuge to drilling, and horizon and beyond. my discomfort, I notice wolf tracks we’re certain they’ll do everything Because I want to experience pressed into sandbars, the buzzing they can to make that happen. the coastal plain firsthand, I leave trill of a savannah sparrow hidden This could be a year of reckoning. my mountain perch and hike a in the grasses. They remind me that It is essential that conservationists couple of miles onto the tundra flats, rally again to generate the strong where walking is made difficult, Musk oxen (top left), snowy owls (left), polar bears (below, on a whale) and public opposition necessary to if not torturous, by biting bugs, many more species rely on the refuge © RON© NIEBRUGGE/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO protect this unique place.” abundant marshlands and sedge to breed, feed and raise their young. www.defenders.org | 17 [ cover exclusive ] the coastal plain’s true importance Alaska’s polar bears have increased the southern Beaufort Sea’s pregnant has everything to do with wildlife— greatly since then, especially in the females denned on land. Studies done breeding, nesting, spawning, calving, southern Beaufort Sea region. As between 1996 and 2013 showed that feeding and denning—and nothing to recently as the late 1990s, Alaska’s percentage had risen to more than 50 do with humans. polar bear population was considered percent. As U.S. Geological Survey When I first walked onto the to be healthy and stable, perhaps polar bear researcher George Durner coastal plain in the late 1980s, I hadn’t even slightly increasing, but its comments, “Compared to years known its importance to polar bears. status changed dramatically over the before 1996, maternal land denning But in the years since, I’ve learned following 15 to 20 years. Biologists [of southern Beaufort Sea bears] has just how critical it is. In studies done now consider the southern Beaufort increased substantially, mostly because from the mid-1980s into the 1990s, Sea population to be declining. While of changes in the sea ice.” Not only is researchers learned that it’s a preferred overhunting and Arctic development sea ice retreating, but the amount of denning area for pregnant females were once considered the species’ stable, multi-year ice needed by bears belonging to the southern Beaufort primary threats, the consensus now to hunt seals has also diminished. Sea’s polar bear population. Some is that climate change and associated Recent research has also biologists have warned that industrial declines in Arctic sea ice present the confirmed that much of the mater- activities could severely disturb greatest danger. nity denning occurs within the Arctic denning females and their young, When scientists studied Alaska’s refuge’s coastal plain. Not only are potentially reducing cub survival. polar bears in the 1980s and 1990s, more pregnant females denning on Concerns about the future of they determined that 35 percent of land in winter, a growing percentage DEFENDER Members of the Porcupine caribou herd journey across the Turner River in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
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