ANWR: The Last Call of the Wild

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When Miller went public with the full report in mid-1988, the American Petroleum Institute responded with chutzpah: "So far more than six billion barrels of oil have been produced on the North Slope in an environmentally sound and safe way. It is a remarkable record." Remarkable? Not nearly as remarkable as a pink polar bear. In 1989 a polar bear, stained fluorescent pink after having drunk two industrial poisons, was found dead on the North Slope.

Certainly 21st-century technology and a heightened watchdog attitude would make for more responsible development in the 1002. But just as certainly, history offers every reason for distrust when we're talking about getting oil out of Alaska.

MEANWHILE BACK ON THE HULAHULA....

Across the water from us were what appeared to be a dozen great, dark bales of hay, incongruously stacked on a tundra field. Then one of the bales walked. We got our binoculars and focused. Massive and shaggy, grazing desultorily, were beasts that appeared to be not of this age. In fact, they weren't. They were a dozen musk oxen, rare remnants of the Pleistocene epoch. They quite properly looked primeval, more so even than an alligator or a rhino.

Next to the oxen, a hundred more caribou browsed. Neither of these vegetarian species is the others' predator. And neither were we humans their predator, not on this particular afternoon. We grazed on gorp, cheese and sausage; they on willow and tundra moss. We all knew the others were nearby and we all seemed content.

If ANWR is developed and oil is found on that field across the way, then that is where an oil camp will be set up. I wondered as I envisioned the drill site: Is that the point at which man becomes predatory? Nothing inherently wrong with being a predator, of course. Most animals are, to one extent or another. But humans have the capacity to modify instinct, whether it's the instinct to hunt or the instinct to make more money through development or the instinct to waste energy. We can be predatory in a selective fashion. Will we choose to hunt our oil here, and thereby prey upon the musk oxen?

We were well out onto the coastal plain now, completely out of the foothills. The terrain was flattening. The river was braided but still running high. We rafters stroked rhythmically onward. As a diversion, we raced against one another, not exactly ignoring the wildlife but not paying great attention to it. Caribou had become, if not a bore, simply part of the scenery.

But a pair of, say, bears would still give pause — and did, as they went moseying through the marsh on the western shore. They caused an abrupt halt in our raft race.

We docked on the eastern shore to watch the two grizzlies, one of which was just larger and one just smaller than the first bear had been. As we observed, we were all aware that our camp that night would be pitched less than a mile downstream. In a typical day, a Brooks Range griz surveys perhaps eight square miles of his hundred-mile habitat. This fact, too, was mentioned as we watched.

There was really nothing to be done except locate the tents smartly away from the kitchen, stow all cooking gear and not wipe our fingers on our shirts after eating. We were in bear land, and whether we traveled a mile or 20 miles that evening made little difference.

As if to distract ourselves from any preoccupation with grizzlies, we talked during dinner about non-ursine things. ANWR was, again, the primary topic.

"If it's developed, this is where most of the wells will be," said Alexander. "Back in 1983 ARCO drilled an experimental well as part of the Interior Department's oil-potential study, and later Chevron drilled near here. They've never divulged what they found. But the Interior report came up with all those big projections, so the thinking's always been that this part of the plain contains the most oil." The Chevron pipe, sunk in 1986 to a depth of 15,200 feet on land leased from its Eskimo owners, is a particularly mysterious piece of metal. Because the fight for ANWR has intensified since Chevron's prospecting was completed, the rumor has circulated that a mighty large oil reserve was found beneath the permafrost.

"Don't believe those Interior or any other estimates," cautioned Rivlin. "There has been a consistent overestimation of revenue projection from oil leases throughout the years. The more the oil companies want a place, the higher revenue is projected. That's part of their strategy — that they have to have it. The country has to have it."

That evening — I have trouble calling midnight "night" when the sunlight casts a human shadow 200 feet across the tundra — I stood in our vast backyard and watched birds. Two elegant tundra swans, necks slim and long, flew soundlessly over the plain. Two Arctic terns twisted in the air just over the river. I noticed a triple rainbow — I had never seen a triple — extending skyward from the Hulahula. A gyrfalcon turned at high altitude. Two rock ptarmigan scampered through low brush.

There was a slight noise behind me and I turned quickly, expecting another ptarmigan. An Arctic fox, three feet from tip to tail, came to an abrupt halt a few yards from my heel. He probably had been hunting birds' eggs, and had decided to investigate the big critter in the center of the field. He had a sharply drawn raccoon's face and a 'coon's black-and-white fur. Suddenly, he darted for open ground in a bouncy run. Now cognizant of foxes, I noticed that there were three of them scampering badgerlike across the tundra.

The bears may get us tonight, I figured, but it's more likely someone's toes will be nipped by an Arctic fox.

Neither happened. Our last full day in the Refuge dawned (that doesn't seem right either, since there was no dusk) without incident. It was cold and there was a high overcast. It seemed a seashore day, and so in keeping with the mood, we walked toward the sea. It was a sloppy stroll across tussocks and tundra, stopping here and there to scope a bird. Common eiders, both ptarmigan (rock and willow) all three jaegers (long-tailed, paradisic and even pomerain), a ruddy turnstone and a pectral sandpiper were added to the list, as was the big prize, a snowy owl. This large bird, perched atop a hillock, excited those of us from the Lower 48. The guide Dittrick was more taken with a small buff-breasted sandpiper, his first. "That's a great bird to get," he said as he focused his scope.

THE SMALL BUSH PLANE WENT RUMBLING down the unapparent runway on its oversized tundra tires, bouncing as everything does on the spongy ground and then lifting off gently and banking north toward the Beaufort Sea, only a 10-mile flight away. The plane landed on the gravel runway of Barter Island, an offshore spit of land that was surrounded still, in early summer, by ocean ice. We were to spend the day on the island, then board a larger plane for our return to Fairbanks.

Barter Island is synonymous with the island's only village, Kaktovic. The town's minority population consists of employees of the U.S. government. They work either for the Air Force's Defense Early Warning system, or for Fish and Wildlife's Arctic Refuge Field Office. Kaktovic's 200-member majority is comprised of Eskimos, or, as they prefer, Inupiats.

The Inupiats' pink, blue and brown prefab houses were adorned with caribou racks and musk ox horns beneath the gables. The dirt roads, rock-strewn yards, broken-down vehicles and proliferation of 55-gallon drums — sometimes called the Alaska state flower — were reminiscent of the landscaping in Arctic Village.

Unlike Arctic Village's Gwich'in Indians, the Inupiat officially approve of development in ANWR. They feel that oil camps in the 1002 are inevitable, and they don't want to miss out on the stepped-up commerce and high-paying jobs that will come with the wells. This was clearly the sense we got as we took the pulse of Kaktovic after Sunday morning services at the Presbyterian Church. "I have always lived in Kaktovic," said Isaac Akootchook, a whaling captain and lay minister, as we chatted in the small church after the service. "My relatives live here. My family. We have a nice town.

"With oil exploration, we are caught in the middle. We don't like exploration, but if they do it anyway, what can we do? We should be ready for it." One of his parishioners added, "Up here, everyone assumes it'll happen. Emotionally, it will hurt. Seeing oil stations instead of birds is so different."

We thanked Akootchook for the coffee and conversation, and went for a walk around the village. The breeze off the Beaufort Sea was steady and there was a bite to the dry air. Adolescent Inupiats, some carrying boomboxes that blared the Top 40, didn't seem to mind the chill as they walked the few dirt streets of Kaktovik, whiling away the afternoon.

We passed the town school ("Home of the Mighty Rams") and the Waldo Arms Hotel, which is a flat-roofed prefab that will sell you broiled halibut ($9.75), a room for the night ($150) or a hot shower ($5). It's the Waldo Arms or nothing, at the top of the continent in Kaktovic.

The newest building in town was the large bunkhouse adjacent to Fish and Wildlife's field station. The names of these two buildings are reflective of ANWR's changing fate. The Clarence J. Rhode Field Station, established in 1981, is dedicated to the memory of a former Alaskan F&W director, a conservationist, who was killed in a Brooks Range airplane crash in 1958. The Angus Gavin bunkhouse, which opened in the late '80s, is named after the former president of ARCO Alaska. When environmental groups raised hell about the propriety of this, Gavin's sign came down, but the name and what it signifies linger.

In the field station, working a computer program on a Sunday afternoon, was Tom McCabe. He graciously paused in his work to explain the field-station operation. McCabe said that he was in charge of a research staff of 70, which was an all-time Arctic Refuge high. He said the increased staff and the new bunkhouse were in anticipation of development in the 1002.

McCabe, a mild, middle-height, middle-aged man, was surprisingly willing to talk about ANWR. He motioned us to the couch, and said he had only one proviso: He would not address political issues.

McCabe came to Kaktovik in 1986, giving up a professorship at the University of South Dakota. "I was attracted by this incredible ecosystem," he said. "The opportunity to study here was irresistible.

"I came up at the tail end of the base-line testing that started back in 1981. Those tests gave us the size, distribution and productivity of caribou, bears, birds, muskox. After the base-line study was done, we turned to mitigation research. We're looking at what effects might occur when the 1002 is opened for oil exploration, and what can be done to lessen — or mitigate — those effects. Fish and Wildlife's position, as part of the Interior Department, is that the area is going to be opened up. So our job is to look at the area and determine what can be done to mitigate the impact when it happens.

"For instance, if you could bury your pipeline, or raise your pipeline up higher, you might lessen any disruption to the animals. You would help not to exacerbate the intrusion. Our goal might be to develop an alternate calving field for the caribou herd in spring. We have to find what options are available to the animals. Can they be moved? Will they move? We'll try to determine the same with bears, wolves, birds, ox, swans, snow geese — all of them.

"Now, again, you can't overcome behavior, but you can minimize the effects of intrusion, we hope. We can try to work with the wildlife. That's what we're shooting for, and what we do will make a difference down the road.

"The oil companies are predicting this field will last for 35 to 50 years. Maybe in 50 years improved technology will allow them to get oil beyond the stuff that's economically justifiable right now. So let's say the field is in use for 100 years. In a century, recovery would start. Then you're talking millennia to recover the tundra because it's very slow-growing. But in terms of animals, I would think they would return to their patterns quite quickly. One hundred years is a short span in geologic time. I'm not convinced we will see a wholesale loss of wildlife up here."

There was something equivocal in McCabe's testimony that led to a personal question: How did he feel about the Refuge?

"I love it. I love it up here. I've been absolutely thrilled. It's unique beyond words. I've never been any place that's been so awe-inspiring. The extraordinary juxtaposition of the Brooks Range and the ocean, so close to one another. Sea level to 9,000 feet in 50 miles. Extraordinary. I go into the Refuge whenever I can. It gives a really special feeling. It's true wilderness. No roads, no sign of man. It's a separate world, self-contained and thriving. I don't think I can put it in words. Wilderness. It's primordial. It's what the world once was, and isn't any longer, not in any other place.

Will this inexpressible quality remain if — when — the Refuge is developed?

"No, I don't think so. I don't think man's influence can be put on something like this and not impact it."

We went one step further: Is he for or against development?

McCabe remained polite. "I'm afraid that's a political question," he said. "I'm afraid I can't answer that one."

And with that, we thanked Tom McCabe and left the field station. We hiked to the airport where a plane was waiting. We packed our gear and climbed aboard.

Everyone was pretty tired and quiet as the plane lifted off sharply, banked once and headed south over the 1002 Area. As we soared above the Brooks Range and out of the Arctic Refuge, an eagle flew beneath our plane, traveling in the other direction.

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