At a glance

Key developments involving the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska:

1954 — National Park Service recommends preservation of Alaska’s northeastern corner for wildlife, wilderness, recreation, scientific and cultural values; sparks debate, controversy.

1960 — Secretary of Interior Fred Seaton, under President Eisenhower, establishes an 8.9 million-acre Arctic National Wildlife Range a year after Alaska statehood. Congress had debated the reserve, but failed to create it.

1964 — President Lyndon Johnson signs Wilderness Act, establishing policies for wilderness management.

1968 — Oil discovered in Prudhoe Bay.

1969 — First Arctic National Wildlife Range manager hired.

1971 — President Nixon signs Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act and gives Kaktovik Inupiat Corporation surface rights to 69,000 acres along arctic coast within the Wildlife Range.

1977 — Oil begins flowing through Trans-Alaska pipeline.

1980 — President Carter signs Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, expanding Arctic Wildlife Range to roughly 18 million acres, renaming it Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, designating 8 million acres as official Wilderness and three rivers as officially Wild. Act calls for wildlife studies and oil and gas assessment on 1.5 million acres of refuge’s coastal plain (called the 1002 area), leaving its future to Congress.

1983 — Nearly 1 million acres added to south side of refuge.

1987 — United States and Canada sign international agreement for long-term protection of Porcupine caribou herd.

1988 — Refuge expanded by 325,000 acres, bringing total to 19.3 million and making ANWR the nation’s largest refuge.

1989 — After peaking in 1988, oil production from Prudhoe Bay fields begins to decline.

1989 — Congress considers allowing oil development in ANWR, but debate stalled by Exxon Valdez oil spill.

1991 — Federal energy bill including provision for refuge drilling blocked by Democratic-led Senate filibuster.

1995 — Congress passes budget bill with provision for oil drilling in refuge. President Clinton vetoes it.

1996 — Mollie Beattie, first woman director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, dies; Congress later re-names the Arctic Refuge Wilderness in her honor even though she’d never been there.

1997 — U.S. Supreme Court reaffirms that barrier islands and lagoons along the northeast coast of Alaska are within refuge boundaries and off-limits to state-sponsored attempts to lease them for oil development.

2001 — President Bush in his energy proposal calls development of ANWR’s oil essential to meet U.S. energy needs. The House passes an energy bill that includes ANWR drilling.

2002 — Senate takes up ANWR drilling proposal as part of a broader energy bill, but fails to pass that provision.

2003 — Senate delivers stinging defeat to Bush energy plan, with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and five other GOP senators siding with Democrat filibuster that eventually leads to removal of some energy industry subsidies and a provision for oil drilling in ANWR.