The Last Wild Place: War Over Arctic Oil

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The contrast between Prudhoe Bay and ANWR--between human industry and wilderness--is starkest when you fly between them. The plane journey from Prudhoe east to the village of Kaktovik takes 35 minutes; halfway there, you pass over the Canning River, and suddenly the pipelines, roads and yellow-lit oil wells are left behind, and the unbroken whiteness of the refuge spreads out as far as the Canadian border. The 8,000-ft. peaks of the Brooks Range rise up on the south side, just 50 miles inland from the frozen fringe of the Beaufort Sea to the north. The flat plain in between is home to those who live closest to the refuge--some of the 7,000 Inupiat Eskimos who live along the North Alaskan coast. The Inupiat, by and large, favor drilling in ANWR. The other Native American tribe in the region, the 5,000-strong Gwich'in, who live in Arctic Village and other settlements on the southern fringe of the refuge, opposes it. The two tribes disagree on the issue as fundamentally as the Republicans and Democrats in Washington.

The houses in Kaktovik, pop. 260, have drifts over their roofs. Snowfall isn't heavy on the northern slope of the Brooks Range--usually no more than 18 inches annually--but winds that reach 100 m.p.h. pile it in drifts against anything that rises above the tundra. The Inupiat who live here still hunt whale and seal for food. Boats jut from the snow along the small airstrip, which turns out to be a sandspit sticking out into the frozen sea. During the day, the only sounds come from dogs barking outside their houses and the occasional snowmobile or pickup crossing the village. At night, the northern lights play in the skies above, pale-green sheets of fire shooting up through the heavens.

The Inupiat believe oil revenues and land-rental fees from oil companies will raise their living standards. "My concern is for our benefits," says Isaac Akootchook, 78, a Presbyterian preacher and former whale hunter. "Oil is really important for our young people, for education and health care." Akootchook is worried, however, that once established in the refuge, the oil companies might move offshore to drill--and that he would oppose, because it could interfere with the bowhead whales the Inupiat hunt when the sea melts in the summer.

Akootchook's daughter Susie also supports drilling but is concerned about the social impact of oil money--especially the availability of alcohol. Kaktovik, like many of the native villages in northern Alaska, bans alcohol by law. "We are trying to keep alcohol out, but already it is sneaking in," she says. "We have real nice people here before alcohol, but it really destroys families."

If the social impact of drilling is unpredictable, so too are its effects on wildlife. Wildlife-management experts are concerned the winter activities of oil companies could disrupt the denning of pregnant female polar bears along the shoreline. Musk oxen could be driven from their riverside habitats, where oil companies come to find gravel and freshwater. And grizzly bears, which come out on the plain in summer, will likely again prove they are incompatible with oil camps. In the Prudhoe area, grizzlies were often relocated and sometimes shot when they became too intrusive.