ANWR: The Last Call of the Wild

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LOWELL GEORGIA/CORBIS A polar bear in Alaska's Arctic Wildlife Refuge

We paddled to shore and began scoping the deer with our binoculars. As we did, Blake said, "Look! There's one alone, right over there!" Our glasses were redirected to the tundra field just across the river. What they brought into focus was a large, healthy grizzly bear.

He was a 500-pound adult griz, and I hoped we would not get to know him intimately. Grizzlies routinely kill moose twice their weight. They are as fast as racehorses and as strong as gorillas. They are largely, although not exclusively, vegetarian. Not exclusively. When they're hungry, grizzlies will try anything.

The grizzly sensed us, sniffed the air, smelled nothing and loped on. If we could have had him smell us we would have. The bear, whiffing something as foreign as humanity, likely would have turned tail. Man's presence in ANWR is so minimal that none of ANWR's wildlife, not those Dall sheep and not this bear, is accustomed to man. ANWR bears and Yellowstone bears have entirely different frames of reference.

We figured we were done with the bear, and re-boarded our rafts. The river wound west, then around a bend and back toward the east. We soon realized that our casual pace and the bear's were the same. He was 75 yards right in front of us. And we were closing. He sensed us again, perhaps due to the loud slapping of our raft on the water. He stood and peered upriver. It was like a Disneyland ride, wherein our craft had tripped some underwater switch that made the bear at the bend rise up. But this had been nature's own trip-switch, and that six-foot brown triangle of fur was no Mickey Mouse bear. He also wasn't very interested in us, for as we took the curve he fell back to all fours and resumed his riverside stroll.

As we put distance between us and the bear, we gained on the caribou. They heard our gallumphing raft and skittishly moved to the ridgetop. A north-country proverb maintains that if a thing falls in a forest, the eagle will be the first to see it, the bear to smell it and the deer to hear it. These deer had heard something strange.

The stream curved around that ridge and... this was what we had dreamed of seeing. Thousands of caribou stretching out over the tundra valley, caribou on all the faraway wheat-brown hillsides, caribou crossing the Hulahula a half-mile upstream. Caribou everywhere.

A golden eagle soared high above. An ocean of caribou moved toward the far hills in reaction to our rafts. Three Arctic tern flew in formation west to east. Somewhere nearby, a bear was prowling. Nature was fluctuating all around us.

ANWR has been called America's Serengeti, the cold-weather version of Africa's great wildlife wilderness. Advocates of development argue vehemently that the phrase is misleading. Even some conservationists are uncomfortable with it. I had a conversation subsequent to my ANWR trip with Nathaniel P. Reed, former undersecretary of the Interior for Fish and Wildlife, and he called the nickname, "imaginative biological overstatement." He pointed out that "the multitude and diversity of species composition for the Serengeti ecosystem is infinitely more complex." Nevertheless, as Reed and others readily admit, the 1002 Area attracts more than 160 species, as musk oxen and Arctic foxes live there year-round, wolves and wolverines visit in summer and more than 100 birds, from tundra swans to snow geese, use the plain as a staging area for migrations to the Americas, Asia, Africa and even Antarctica. The Serengeti metaphor may not be neat, but the point remains: ANWR is an immense haven for animals.

Reed thinks ANWR's days as an inviolate sanctuary are numbered. "Even if this analogy could be stretched to the limits of one's imagination, the central issue remains untouched: the Serengeti does not overlay a major oil and gas field. If it did, the Tanzanians would move speedily to develop the area."

When I spoke with him, Reed advocated a land swap. Development in ANWR, which he feels will occur someday, would be traded for land acquisition and protection elsewhere. His fear is that in a crisis mode, such as might be created by more brownout or future conflicts in the Middle East, ANWR will be lost with nothing gotten in return.

One evening at our Hulahula campsite, I mentioned the idea of an ANWR tradeoff whereby environmental protection might be gained in other — and less remote — parts of the country, whereby a vital conservation initiative might become law in a swap for ANWR. Most of our contingent quarreled with the concept. They seemed resolutely unwilling to bargain with Big Oil, or those whom they considered Big Oil's representatives in Congress.

I asked about the basis for their distrust.

"Oil companies misrepresent everything," said Alexander. "Look at their national-security argument."

That argument, which gained great prominence during the Gulf War, maintains that ANWR development is important to our security because the U.S. shouldn't be too heavily dependent upon foreign oil. The oil lobby contends that ANWR oilfields could ameliorate a dangerous situation. The Interior Department estimates that the U.S. has more than 50 billion barrels of crude outside known oil fields that could be put into production with existing technology. ANWR's is the largest single deposit among this untapped reserve. ANWR is seen by some as our biggest unloaded energy cannon.

"The national security argument doesn't hold water," insisted Blake. "Not when you consider that there's no plan to conserve the oil we're wasting. The Reagan Administration relaxed all the energy standards and they haven't been re-tightened."

The Reagan White House rolled back auto fuel-economy regulations and cut funds for solar energy development and mass transit. It was hoped that George Bush senior, the self-professed "environment president," would correct some of this, but when his energy plan was delivered the most glaring omissions were new mileage standards and any incentives for alternative fuels. Throughout the 1980s and into the '90s, the White House successfully opposed moves to raise gasoline taxes and to establish energy-efficiency standards for appliances, standards that would have saved more than a billion barrels of oil by century's end. The White House attitude caused an undeniable erosion in conservation. In heavily industrialized New England, for instance, oil use by utilities dropped by 17 percent from 1983 to 1985, but then soared 25 percent in '86 and has kept climbing. In 1990, 40 percent of New England's power needs were met by oil, 3l percent more than in 1985. New England's surge — or slide, if you want to look at it that way — was mirrored nationwide. From 1986 though '89 Americans burned between five and nine billion gallons more gasoline than they did in the previous four-year period. These trends continued throughout the 1990s, and Clinton administration environmentalism was marked more by land set-asides than by conservation measures.

"I'm not anti-oil per se, and maybe someday we'll need to drill for ANWR's oil," Alice Rivlin told me a decade ago as she sat by the eastern shore of the Hulahula River. Rivlin, chairman of the Wilderness Society and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who would later spend much of the 1990s in the Clinton administration before returning to the Institution, is the former federal budget director. "But we don't need to drill now. We're wasting oil; we don't need more of it to waste. So it would be good to win the ANWR fight from a commonsense perspective — to prove we are not a silly, wasteful society. Perhaps a 15-year moratorium on development would be a good solution. Down the road, we could see what the world situation is, and in the meantime perhaps it would prompt our society to conserve."

Rivlin's right about one thing: There's no need to develop ANWR right now. Proof of this came in the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. The U.S. House Appropriations Committee overrode the objections of Big Oil and issued a one-year ban on drilling in large areas off the California, New England, mid-Atlantic and Florida coasts. It also banned oil and gas exploration in Alaska's Bristol Bay. The committee certainly wouldn't have acted as precipitously as it did if the modern USA were in any kind of oil crunch. Moreover, there are thousands of already granted oil leases nationwide that are not being developed [a fact that remains true in 2001]. And a last bit of evidence: Since losing a $150-million-per-year state tax break because of the Valdez incident, the Alaskan oil industry has said — rather petulantly, and over and over — that it might not even explore, let alone develop, some sites in the Arctic Ocean that are currently open to it.

WE FLOATED THROUGH A COUNTRY OF ANIMALS during the next few days. We were never in land barren of wildlife, as we drifted farther onto the coastal plain. Birds strafed our rafts whenever we paddled near their nesting areas. We floated past an immense eagle's nest built into a cliff. Ground squirrels, rough-legged hawks, short-tailed weasels, were constant visitors. As we paddled on, wave after wave of caribou fled before us. Gradually we came to feel calm and comfortable in their land, even though they let us know we were intruders by fleeing.

One afternoon, we pulled in for lunch. Caribou were browsing perhaps a hundred yards from the river, and this group did not run. Rather, as we ate they circled us and even came close for a better look. Fifty yards, 25, 10 for a couple of brave youngsters. They eventually grew bored and returned to browsing.

Why hadn't they fled, when so many others had scattered before us? There's no certain answer, but something is known of caribou behavior that might explain it. One or two caribou can spook a herd. When a single caribou runs, whether he's King Caribou or not, the jittery masses tend to follow. But the nervousness of the upstream caribou, unwitnessed except by us, obviously had no impact upon this segment of the Porcupine Herd. Had one of these animals been skittish, in all likelihood we would have lunched alone.

This caribou trait has a significance in the ANWR debate. Development advocates point to the Central Arctic Herd's nonchalent attitude regarding the Alaskan Pipeline, which was completed in 1977, as proof that drilling in the 1002 will not adversely affect the Porcupine Herd. The argument was memorably synopsized in 1988 by Presidential candidate George Bush when he said, "I'd like to see us open up that Arctic Refuge, and that's important. Because it was said once, remember, when they built that pipeline, 'Don't build the pipeline, you get rid of the caribou.' The caribou love it! They rub up against it and have babies. There are more caribou in Alaska than you can shake a stick at!"

The statement is more than a rather bizarre view of the procreative process. It's wholly misleading.

First, the Central Arctic Herd migrates north-south in the direction of the pipeline, and so is relatively unbothered by the parallel pipe. The Porcupine Herd travels east-west, and this pattern would intersect with the proposed pipeline extension linking 1002 oilfields to the Trans-Alaskan tube.

Moreover, the Central Arctic isn't necessarily a good model for the Porcupine Herd. "Many conclusions probably apply to both herds," Tom McCabe, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's director of terrestrial research in the 1002 Area, told me. "But a major caveat is that the Porcupine Herd is 10 times larger than the Central Arctic. The chances that one or two animals will react adversely to development in a large herd, and then spook the whole herd, is, of course, much greater than in a small herd."

Big Oil's attempts to paint a pretty picture of development in northern Alaska go further than misrepresenting the caribou situation. Industry, with the apparent collusion of government, has long portrayed the Prudhoe Bay oil operation as an exemplar of environmentally sound drilling. Again George Bush has been a point man: "I think most people are reasonable enough and fair enough to look back at the record over the years in terms of the pipeline and have found there has been very little damage, if any. Certainly there's been no lasting environmental damage."

In fact, the Prudhoe Bay area has suffered considerable environmental damage, much of it severe and some of it lasting.

In 1987 Rep. George Miller (D-Cal.), chairman of the Water and Power Resources Subcommittee of the House Interior Committee, asked for an update on environmental impacts at Prudhoe so Congress could use the information when considering ANWR. Miller wasn't opposed to developing the 1002, but he wanted to make certain the necessary environmental safeguards were taken. He asked the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to compare actual impacts at Prudhoe with those predicted 16 years earlier in an Environmental Impact Statement.

In December, 1987, F&W gave Miller a summary of its report. This synopsis didn't mention any major discrepancies between the 1971 EIS and actual damage in the field. It said that in a number of cases the predictions had been on target, and in others damage had been corrected by the oil companies.

Miller asked for the full report and was surprised to find that the Interior Department — which oversees Fish and Wildlife — was uncooperative. In May, 1988, the 86 pages were leaked to Miller by concerned F&W staffers.

Among the findings in the complete report:

A 500-square-mile area of disturbance was originally predicted for oilfield development, but in fact an 800-square-mile area — 37 percent more — had been disturbed.

While it had been predicted that 6,000 acres of vegetation used by wildlife would be lost, 11,000 had been lost.

Although the original EIS hadn't foreseen any use of freshwater from Alaska's streams and lakes, some 200 million gallons were being used for oilfield operations annually. Furthermore, "the frequency and magnitude of impacts resulting from erosion and sedimentation, alteration of natural drainages, losses or impoundments of surface flow, and oil spills were frequently understated."

Unexpected expansion of offshore operations had damaged marine life. "Impacts to fish resources were some of the most significant environmental problems directly associated with the construction of the pipeline and oilfields."

"Direct and secondary habitat losses resulted in the total estimated loss or displacement of 22,500 birds."

Gravel extraction for development was 60 percent greater than expected. Extant facilities that weren't foreseen in the EIS included sewage and solid-waste disposal sites, oily waste pits, causeways and seawater treatment plants.

Although the EIS hadn't addressed pesticide pollution, "intensive" pesticide use had occurred at some oilfields.

The rise in caribou may be related to declines in predatory wolves and bears. The numbers of Dall sheep and other large mammals had also decreased in and near developed areas.

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