The caribou cow gives birth on her feet. She stands with legs wide apart, or turns on the spot, shuffling in slow circles, craning her long neck to watch as her calf emerges inch by inch from below her tail, between her hips. It’s oddly calm, this process — a strange thing to witness for us two-legged mammals, more accustomed to the stirrups and the struggle and the white-knuckled screaming of a Hollywood birth scene.
The calf, when he comes, emerges hooves first. He climbs into the world fully extended, like a diver stretching toward the water. Out come the front pair of hooves, capping spindly legs, then the long narrow head, the lean, wet-furred body, and finally, another set of bony legs and sharp little hooves. His divergence from his mother leaves behind nothing but some strings of sticky fluid and a small patch of bloody fur. He doesn’t know it, but the land he is born on is one of the most contentious stretches of wilderness in North America.
Still slick with mucus, the calf takes his first steps within minutes, stumbling awkwardly to his feet as his mother licks him clean. Within 24 hours, he is able to walk a mile or more. Soon, if he survives long enough, he will be capable of swimming white-water rivers, outrunning wolves, and trotting overland for miles upon miles every day. His life will offer myriad dangers and only the rarest respite; for the caribou, staying alive means staying on the move.
The days and weeks immediately after his birth are critical. That’s why, if at all possible, his mother will have sought out a known quantity, a place of relative safety, before he arrived. That’s why, every year, tens of thousands of heavily pregnant caribou cows return, salmon-like, to the places where they were born.
For the Porcupine caribou herd, 218,000 strong, that means a long march through snow-choked mountains to one of two calving grounds. One, lesser used, is in Canada, in the northwestern corner of the Yukon Territory between the Firth and Babbage rivers. It’s protected by the invisible boundaries of Ivvavik National Park.
The other, the most commonly used by the herd, is a small slice of land just across the border in northeastern Alaska, a flat patch tucked between the Brooks Range and the Beaufort Sea. The land is unassuming but critical: When, every so often, the herd fails to make it to the calving grounds on time — as can be the case when deep snow lingers late into the spring — their calves’ mortality rate can climb by as much as 20 percent.
This primary calving ground lies within the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), but unlike its counterpart across the border, it has not been formally sealed off from large-scale human activity. Instead, for 40 years, a debate has raged about its status. On one side are those who want the oil that could lie below the calving grounds extracted. On the other are those who want the area protected from industry forever.
The Porcupine caribou herd is caught between the two, its fate tied up in Washington committee rooms and the fine print of legislation. And intimately connected to the caribou is the Gwich’in nation, roughly 9,000 people scattered across Alaska and northern Canada. In fighting to protect the caribou, they are fighting for their own survival. (...)
In mid-1967 and early 1968, the Prudhoe Bay oil field was discovered along the Arctic coast just west of the Porcupine herd’s territory. In 1973, the OPEC crisis hit, ratcheting up concerns about a domestic oil supply. In 1977, the Trans-Alaska pipeline system was completed, and Alaska’s oil began to flow.
In November 1980, the United States Congress passed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. Among other changes, it more than doubled the size of ANWR, to about 19 million acres — just slightly smaller than South Carolina. The act changed the name of the area, from the “Wildlife Range” to “Wildlife Refuge.” And within those 19 million acres, it formally designated 8 million as “wilderness” under the terms of the 1964 act.
The 1980 act also set aside 1.5 million non-wilderness acres on the refuge’s northern edge for further study — an area of ANWR’s coastal plain that encompasses the calving grounds of the Porcupine caribou herd. Section 1002 of the act, titled “Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Coastal Plain Resource Assessment,” outlined a process of inventory and assessment of resources, and analysis of potential impacts of development, before oil and gas development would be authorized.
In other words: Wait and see. Full-blown oil and gas development was not yet permitted on the coastal plain, but the possibility of future extraction remained.
After decades of campaigning by conservationists, ANWR as we know it today was born. The refuge was built on the strength of powerful words and lofty ideals. Its founders envisioned it as a place that would feed the soul of humanity worldwide. Simply by continuing to exist in its natural state, “where man himself is a visitor,” it would provide an example to the world of what once was. (...)
The Thirty Years’ War
On December 22, 2017, President Donald Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act into law. The complex bill had only narrowly made it through the Senate, by a final vote of 51–48, and while it contained an array of changes to the tax code, it also contained something else: a provision to explore drilling possibilities on the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. That provision was widely regarded as securing the vote of Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, whose support of the tax bill had not been assured. Nearly 40 years after the 1002 loophole was created, and after 30 years of successful lobbying and resistance by the Gwich’in, ANWR was formally open to oil development. It had been a long fight.
It wasn’t long after the 1988 gathering that the Gwich’in had faced their first challenge. In March 1989, a bill to allow leasing across nearly a quarter of the 1002 area had passed a Senate subcommittee. But then, eight days later, the tanker Exxon Valdez tore itself open in Alaska’s Prince William Sound, spilling millions of gallons of crude oil. Suddenly, even for some of the pro-drilling politicians in Washington, the calculus changed.
The Edmonton Journal called the spill a “gift” to the caribou. Doug Urquhart, a Canadian member of the transnational Porcupine Caribou Management Board, wrote in the Yukon’s Dan Sha News that “every cloud has a silver lining.”
“The only positive aspect of the Valdez disaster,” he wrote, “is that it might save the Arctic National Refuge, the Porcupine Caribou Herd, and the thousands of Alaskan and Canadian native people who rely on the herd for economic and cultural survival.”
In the Lower 48, editorials supporting the preservation of the refuge, at least for the time being, popped up like morel mushrooms after a forest fire. “Until it is necessary to drill in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, it is clearly necessary not to,” went the slightly ambivalent line in the Philadelphia Enquirer. The Dallas Times Herald was more forceful: “It would be wrong to destroy about 1.5 million acres of natural habitat for no valid reason.” The Boston Globe called the energy security argument “a decoy,” and argued that, “on balance, the evidence suggests that risking ecological damage to the wildlife refuge is not justified.”
Vying with images of oil-slicked seals and birds, the Senate subcommittee bill withered. So did another, in 1991, the Johnston-Wallop National Energy Security Act. In 1995, yet another attempt made it through the House and the Senate before running headlong into President Clinton’s veto. There were more legislative skirmishes in 2002, and each time, the ban on oil exploration in the calving grounds held. The 1002 area remained in limbo.
In 2005, the issue came to a head again. In the Republican-led Congress, two different energy bills contained provisions that would have essentially opened the 1002 to drilling. Both were defeated by coalitions of Democrats and moderate Republicans. A third bill, one that targeted Pentagon spending, also included a drilling provision, but that provision was yanked after a successful filibuster.
Meanwhile, with every bill and every counter-campaign, the Arctic Refuge grew in public stature and was mythologized in the American consciousness. It had become a symbol, a talisman, to both sides. The fight over the refuge drew in not only all the major conservation groups — the Sierra Club, the Wilderness League, the World Wildlife Fund, and so on — but also an array of celebrities and mainstream brands. (During the 2005 skirmishes, Ben & Jerry’s produced a 900-pound Baked Alaska and had it carried on a litter of plywood and two-by-fours to Capitol Hill. “This is not going to last very long,” one of the company’s “flavor gurus” announced to a small crowd of protesters. “Just like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, if you drill up there.”)
After 2005, things quieted down some. When President Obama was elected in 2008, the Democrats took the Senate and the House as well. Notwithstanding Republicans’ call to “drill, baby, drill,” there was no legislative path forward for the pro-development side.
Early in 2015, Obama recommended that Congress designate the coastal plain, and other non-wilderness areas of ANWR, as wilderness. But that never happened, and as his term wound down, and the 2016 election loomed, people on both sides of the debate wondered if he would exercise his power to declare the area a national monument. He did not. Then came the 2016 election and the 2017 tax bill. The federal government shutdown in early 2019 delayed the commenting and review process for activity in the refuge, meaning that seismic exploration work originally planned for this winter will be held off a year. But the Bureau of Land Management still plans to hold ANWR’s first ever lease sale later this year.
The calf, when he comes, emerges hooves first. He climbs into the world fully extended, like a diver stretching toward the water. Out come the front pair of hooves, capping spindly legs, then the long narrow head, the lean, wet-furred body, and finally, another set of bony legs and sharp little hooves. His divergence from his mother leaves behind nothing but some strings of sticky fluid and a small patch of bloody fur. He doesn’t know it, but the land he is born on is one of the most contentious stretches of wilderness in North America.
Still slick with mucus, the calf takes his first steps within minutes, stumbling awkwardly to his feet as his mother licks him clean. Within 24 hours, he is able to walk a mile or more. Soon, if he survives long enough, he will be capable of swimming white-water rivers, outrunning wolves, and trotting overland for miles upon miles every day. His life will offer myriad dangers and only the rarest respite; for the caribou, staying alive means staying on the move.
The days and weeks immediately after his birth are critical. That’s why, if at all possible, his mother will have sought out a known quantity, a place of relative safety, before he arrived. That’s why, every year, tens of thousands of heavily pregnant caribou cows return, salmon-like, to the places where they were born.For the Porcupine caribou herd, 218,000 strong, that means a long march through snow-choked mountains to one of two calving grounds. One, lesser used, is in Canada, in the northwestern corner of the Yukon Territory between the Firth and Babbage rivers. It’s protected by the invisible boundaries of Ivvavik National Park.
The other, the most commonly used by the herd, is a small slice of land just across the border in northeastern Alaska, a flat patch tucked between the Brooks Range and the Beaufort Sea. The land is unassuming but critical: When, every so often, the herd fails to make it to the calving grounds on time — as can be the case when deep snow lingers late into the spring — their calves’ mortality rate can climb by as much as 20 percent.
This primary calving ground lies within the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), but unlike its counterpart across the border, it has not been formally sealed off from large-scale human activity. Instead, for 40 years, a debate has raged about its status. On one side are those who want the oil that could lie below the calving grounds extracted. On the other are those who want the area protected from industry forever.
The Porcupine caribou herd is caught between the two, its fate tied up in Washington committee rooms and the fine print of legislation. And intimately connected to the caribou is the Gwich’in nation, roughly 9,000 people scattered across Alaska and northern Canada. In fighting to protect the caribou, they are fighting for their own survival. (...)
In mid-1967 and early 1968, the Prudhoe Bay oil field was discovered along the Arctic coast just west of the Porcupine herd’s territory. In 1973, the OPEC crisis hit, ratcheting up concerns about a domestic oil supply. In 1977, the Trans-Alaska pipeline system was completed, and Alaska’s oil began to flow.
In November 1980, the United States Congress passed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. Among other changes, it more than doubled the size of ANWR, to about 19 million acres — just slightly smaller than South Carolina. The act changed the name of the area, from the “Wildlife Range” to “Wildlife Refuge.” And within those 19 million acres, it formally designated 8 million as “wilderness” under the terms of the 1964 act.
The 1980 act also set aside 1.5 million non-wilderness acres on the refuge’s northern edge for further study — an area of ANWR’s coastal plain that encompasses the calving grounds of the Porcupine caribou herd. Section 1002 of the act, titled “Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Coastal Plain Resource Assessment,” outlined a process of inventory and assessment of resources, and analysis of potential impacts of development, before oil and gas development would be authorized.
In other words: Wait and see. Full-blown oil and gas development was not yet permitted on the coastal plain, but the possibility of future extraction remained.
After decades of campaigning by conservationists, ANWR as we know it today was born. The refuge was built on the strength of powerful words and lofty ideals. Its founders envisioned it as a place that would feed the soul of humanity worldwide. Simply by continuing to exist in its natural state, “where man himself is a visitor,” it would provide an example to the world of what once was. (...)
The Thirty Years’ War
On December 22, 2017, President Donald Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act into law. The complex bill had only narrowly made it through the Senate, by a final vote of 51–48, and while it contained an array of changes to the tax code, it also contained something else: a provision to explore drilling possibilities on the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. That provision was widely regarded as securing the vote of Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, whose support of the tax bill had not been assured. Nearly 40 years after the 1002 loophole was created, and after 30 years of successful lobbying and resistance by the Gwich’in, ANWR was formally open to oil development. It had been a long fight.
It wasn’t long after the 1988 gathering that the Gwich’in had faced their first challenge. In March 1989, a bill to allow leasing across nearly a quarter of the 1002 area had passed a Senate subcommittee. But then, eight days later, the tanker Exxon Valdez tore itself open in Alaska’s Prince William Sound, spilling millions of gallons of crude oil. Suddenly, even for some of the pro-drilling politicians in Washington, the calculus changed.
The Edmonton Journal called the spill a “gift” to the caribou. Doug Urquhart, a Canadian member of the transnational Porcupine Caribou Management Board, wrote in the Yukon’s Dan Sha News that “every cloud has a silver lining.”
“The only positive aspect of the Valdez disaster,” he wrote, “is that it might save the Arctic National Refuge, the Porcupine Caribou Herd, and the thousands of Alaskan and Canadian native people who rely on the herd for economic and cultural survival.”
In the Lower 48, editorials supporting the preservation of the refuge, at least for the time being, popped up like morel mushrooms after a forest fire. “Until it is necessary to drill in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, it is clearly necessary not to,” went the slightly ambivalent line in the Philadelphia Enquirer. The Dallas Times Herald was more forceful: “It would be wrong to destroy about 1.5 million acres of natural habitat for no valid reason.” The Boston Globe called the energy security argument “a decoy,” and argued that, “on balance, the evidence suggests that risking ecological damage to the wildlife refuge is not justified.”
Vying with images of oil-slicked seals and birds, the Senate subcommittee bill withered. So did another, in 1991, the Johnston-Wallop National Energy Security Act. In 1995, yet another attempt made it through the House and the Senate before running headlong into President Clinton’s veto. There were more legislative skirmishes in 2002, and each time, the ban on oil exploration in the calving grounds held. The 1002 area remained in limbo.
In 2005, the issue came to a head again. In the Republican-led Congress, two different energy bills contained provisions that would have essentially opened the 1002 to drilling. Both were defeated by coalitions of Democrats and moderate Republicans. A third bill, one that targeted Pentagon spending, also included a drilling provision, but that provision was yanked after a successful filibuster.
Meanwhile, with every bill and every counter-campaign, the Arctic Refuge grew in public stature and was mythologized in the American consciousness. It had become a symbol, a talisman, to both sides. The fight over the refuge drew in not only all the major conservation groups — the Sierra Club, the Wilderness League, the World Wildlife Fund, and so on — but also an array of celebrities and mainstream brands. (During the 2005 skirmishes, Ben & Jerry’s produced a 900-pound Baked Alaska and had it carried on a litter of plywood and two-by-fours to Capitol Hill. “This is not going to last very long,” one of the company’s “flavor gurus” announced to a small crowd of protesters. “Just like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, if you drill up there.”)
After 2005, things quieted down some. When President Obama was elected in 2008, the Democrats took the Senate and the House as well. Notwithstanding Republicans’ call to “drill, baby, drill,” there was no legislative path forward for the pro-development side.
Early in 2015, Obama recommended that Congress designate the coastal plain, and other non-wilderness areas of ANWR, as wilderness. But that never happened, and as his term wound down, and the 2016 election loomed, people on both sides of the debate wondered if he would exercise his power to declare the area a national monument. He did not. Then came the 2016 election and the 2017 tax bill. The federal government shutdown in early 2019 delayed the commenting and review process for activity in the refuge, meaning that seismic exploration work originally planned for this winter will be held off a year. But the Bureau of Land Management still plans to hold ANWR’s first ever lease sale later this year.
by Eva Holland, Longreads | Read more:
Image: Peter Mather
