Arctic Refuge: Essence of the Act

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska looms around the top of many lists.

It’s the nation’s largest refuge and it encompasses the second-largest official wilderness.

It’s home to some of the country’s rarest creatures, such as muskoxen, and holds the highest density of polar bear land dens along the Alaska coast.

It figures into some of the longest wildlife migrations, including arctic terns that fly 21,000 miles round-trip from Antarctica and caribou that roam for hundreds of miles to drop their calves on a section of the coastal plain that resembles a postage stamp on the map of their annual range.

ANWR also is believed to hold the largest untapped oil fields in the U.S., forcing the refuge to the forefront of the nation’s hottest wild-land controversy involving one of the highest priorities of our top elected official, President George W. Bush.

Yet this roadless landscape is so far north, so remote and so intact, it has yet to be invaded by noxious weeds or exotic species.

The 19-million-acre refuge, which encompasses the 8-million-acre Mollie Beattie Wilderness, is inhabited by 45 species of land and marine mammals, ranging in size from the pygmy shrew to the bowhead whale. No roads or permanent human developments are maintained here to interfere with the grizzlies, wolves, wolverines, Dall sheep, moose, muskoxen and caribou that symbolize the area’s wildness.

The waters attract 36 species of fish. Up to 180 species of birds are attracted to ANWR’s isolation and fecundity born from 24-hour summer daylight and an all-you-can-eat smorgasbord of insects.

“The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge epitomizes what the Wilderness Act intended to do,” said Roger Kaye, manager for the wilderness portion of the refuge. “It’s the very definition of wilderness.”

Even by aircraft, the refuge border is several hours north from Kaye’s headquarters in Fairbanks.

The campaign to establish ANWR basically coincided with efforts to enact the Wilderness Act of 1964, he said, noting that many people were involved in both campaigns, including influential biologists Olaus and Mardy Murie.

“The original act focused on national forest areas primarily in the West, but the arctic was the inspiration,” he said.

“It’s the closest thing we have to the ideal of a natural ecosystem that’s being allowed to remain what it is and change only through its own natural processes. This place is huge, varied and intact enough to do that.”

The 1964 Wilderness Act specified that other federal lands, including national parks and wildlife refuges, were to be considered for inclusion in the wilderness system.

“Shortly after the act passed, the refuge was studied and found entirely suitable for wilderness,” Kaye said. But politics intervened and no wilderness was designated until 1980, when President Jimmy Carter signed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. The action angered the Alaska delegation by doubling the size of the refuge and giving its core the added protection of wilderness.

But Congress maintained its option under previous legislation to explore the coastal plain for vast oil reserves that are thought to be under land that’s critical in the lifecycle of arctic wildlife, especially the caribou.

Political debate continues

“Such a spectacular place, yet it’s the site of the most bitterly fought wilderness battle,” Kaye said. “So far, the refuge has stayed intact despite incredible pressure from the oil industry and the Alaska delegation and others who would profit from oil development.”

President Bill Clinton vetoed a bill passed by Congress to open the refuge to oil drilling, which would involve roughly 2,000 acres of roads and development scattered over the 1.5 million-acre coastal plane.

But now that the Bush administration has pushed for similar legislation, Congress hasn’t been able to muster the votes.

In June, assistant Interior Secretary Rebecca Watson said the next effort to open ANWR to drilling probably wouldn’t come until after November’s presidential election.

“The general wisdom in Washington at this point is nothing is going to happen until after the election,” said Watson, according to an Associated Press report while she was visiting Anchorage. “We think ANWR is a good idea, (and) it’s been modified to address the concerns people have raised, but it has not gotten us across the finish line at this point.

“I think when we speak of a second Bush term, we want to come back and work with our partners in Congress and see if there’s a way that we can develop ANWR.”

Scientists say that even limited development could disrupt polar bears, calving caribou and migratory birds in the narrow biological hotbed of coastal tundra between the Beaufort Sea and the Brooks Range. However, politically active refuge supporters say the main point is the futility of degrading the refuge for a relative drop in the barrel of America’s huge demand for petroleum.

No one knows how much oil is beneath ANWR’s coastal plain, or whether it would be profitable to extract. Federal estimates have ranged from 5.6 billion barrels (95 percent probability) to 16 billion barrels (5 percent probability) of technically recoverable oil.

Public curiosity roused

The political debate is out of Kaye’s hands, but he must manage some of the windfall from publicity.

In the mid-1980s, fewer than 1,500 visitor-use days a year were estimated in the entire 19-million-acre Arctic Refuge. Visitation surged to 9,000 visitor days in 1991, the year media attention surged because of proposals in Congress to unleash oil exploration on the fragile arctic plain.

After President George H.W. Bush had made a 1992 campaign pledge to go after the oil in ANWR, public curiosity soared again and an estimated record 12,000 visitor days were spent in the refuge.

“Any place else on public lands and you wouldn’t blink an eye at 12,000 visitor days on 19 million acres,” Fran Mauer, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist in Fairbanks, told The Spokesman-Review at the time.

Indeed, about 30,000 visitor days are easily endured each year at the tiny 18,000-acre Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge near Spokane, and 218,000 visitors days are logged in Idaho’s 1.2 million-acre Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness.

“We’ve leveled off again at around 14,000 visitors a year,” Kaye said in a telephone interview last week, noting that some visitors are already calling for restrictions.

Because of the vastness and absence of roads in the refuge, aircraft are exempted from the normal restrictions on mechanized equipment and allowed to land within the wilderness.

“We’re having some issues of aircraft landing on sensitive vegetation or coming in and scaring wildlife,” Kaye said. “And there are some crowding issues on some of the popular rivers, mostly because we have no maintained landing strips in the refuge and there’s only so many gravel bars and such where you can land a plane.”

Refuge visitors are a special, respectful breed, he said. “We don’t get convenience-oriented people who aren’t attuned to no-trace camping. They usually are highly prepared; they have to be since there’s no help around the corner. Virtually everybody up here is sensitive to the landscape.”

But even a little disruption can be critical on the fragile tundra, where damage may not heal for decades.

And when people come to what Arctic Refuge founders called “the last great wilderness,” they don’t expect to land on a gravel bar crowded with people, Kaye said.

“Out of respect for the freedom to roam the wilderness, we haven’t regulated the number of visitors; in fact, we don’t even have a good handle on how many visitors we get,” he said. “But we’re being asked to consider some restrictions by people concerned about preserving the quality of the wilderness experience, especially along the Kongakut, Hulahula, Canning and Sheenjek rivers.

“We have limited the size of commercial groups to seven backpackers or 10 river floaters, since floaters generally camp on gravel bars and cause less impact.”

Dream is alive

Regardless of the challenges, people will come here, or at least they will dream of coming to where a sense of unknown remains alive. ANWR is among the preeminent places in America for adventures.

“You don’t just come here casually,” Kaye said. “The average trip is eight days and many people go out for a month or two traversing the Brooks Range north to south or whatever.”

But ANWR is not dear just to the few with they skill and means to visit, Kaye said.

“It’s very important to remember that there was strong political opposition to declaring this a refuge in the 1950s, but a huge groundswell of public support made it happen,” he said. “It tells us something about this unique American attitude toward wilderness.

“In the 1950s, it was an extremely altruistic motive for people to write their representatives and support the preservation of a place they knew they would never visit. At that time there was virtually no public infrastructure to fly people into the refuge.”

H. Ken Cordell and other researchers who have surveyed attitudes on wilderness found that most Americans in the 1990s continued to support wilderness more for the preservation of environments and water quality than for the wilderness experience.

The support was strong even among people who don’t visit wilderness, the researcher observed in a study published in 1998.

“Just knowing it’s there offers inspiration and supports their values,” Kay said. “It’s soothing to be in a society with the wisdom to specify a huge area and let it be.”

Support for preserving ANWR has persisted even as the political stakes rise along with the demand for energy.

“This is a magic place that’s captivated people,” Kaye said. “That’s why they called it the last great wilderness.”