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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

ANWR visits rally photographers to spread word

Rich Landers Outdoors editor

With Congress debating whether to allow oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, two Spokane adventurers traveled this summer to the farthest reaches of North America to see it for themselves, again.

It was the third trip for Harvey Brown and Rosemarie Bisiar to a land that’s like nothing else they’ve experienced.

“It’s the only place in the world where I feel completely safe drinking directly out of a stream,” Brown said.

The photographers were in Oregon in 1989 when they were captivated by a slide program about ANWR and vowed to experience it themselves. “We made our first trip in 1993 and then went again in ‘94,” he said. “It’s just an amazing place.

ANWR, which sprawls north from the Brooks Range is 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 musk oxen, and holds the highest density of polar bear 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 officials.

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 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.”

Said Brown, “We’ve read what (naturalists) Olas and Mardy Murie wrote about the area in the 1930s and it’s still the same.”

The couple often presents slide programs “to give people who have not been to the refuge a feel for what is,” he said.

Brown also traveled to Washington, D.C., this year to help lawmakers understand the arctic landscape before they make decisions that could change it forever.

“I met with senators who seemed to understand what a special place it is, and then I met with some representatives who made it clear we weren’t going to sway their intent to go for oil in ANWR,” Brown said.

The most discouraging thing, he said, is that wildlife seems to be secondary in the debate.

Congressman Dave Reichert, R-Wash., who lives in Auburn and represents the 8th Congressional District, is an example of the pressures the politicians are facing, Brown said.

If Reichert votes to keep the oil companies out of ANWR he’ll lose his money from Rep. Tom Delay’s influential political action committee, Brown said. “But if he votes to allow drilling in ANWR he knows he’s going to lose votes,” he added.

In D.C., they’re not talking so much about the wildlife and “the reason ANWR is the only place we don’t purify our water,” he said.