How the thirst for oil imperils an ancient land

The Gwitch'in people have depended on the Porcupine caribou herd for 27,000 years. Now, that way of life is in jeopardy, writes Paul McKay. 

Paul McKay The Ottawa Citizen, A1
Monday, August 08, 2005 

OLD CROW, Yukon - There is no geological fault line that connects Washington and this isolated, Arctic Circle aboriginal village, but the 300 Gwitch'in residents here are bracing for what may be biggest change in their 20,000-year history. 

The epicentre of the change that looms over the Gwitch'in will be the U.S. Congress. The trigger will be the stroke of a presidential pen that will pass into law a bill that will accelerate oil, gas and coal production on federal lands in nearby Alaska. At the top of that wanted list is a strip of coastal flat near the Yukon border, called the "1002 lands" after a 1980 Congressional provision that vetoed federal drill leases there. 

This spring, the U.S. Congress -- by two votes -- agreed to seek oil-lease revenues there to help offset the soaring Bush administration budget deficit. If that provision is ratified next month, leases in these lands could be sold in 2007.

Virtually no humans go there now. The area has no access roads. It is bounded by the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge and the Beaufort Sea. The geology indicates the existence of between six billion and 16 billion barrels of oil in scattered, subsurface pockets. It is too remote even for Gwitch'in hunters in Alaska and the Yukon, who live in 13 villages with a combined population of 7,000, to reach. 

For all but a few weeks of each year, there is little to hunt in the 1002 lands. The brief summers produce only thin carpets of cotton grass, wildflowers and lichens, which vanish in September. 

That is precisely why, every spring for some 27,000 years, the pregnant cows of the 123,000-strong Porcupine caribou herd have migrated up to 1,000 kilometres to reach this refuge. They arrive in early June, pawing through the last veils of snow to reach the first nitrogen-rich foods crucial to producing milk. Laying down by the tens of thousands to deliver their calves, they have effectively taken eternity to find the one place and time where food is abundant, predators are distant, and the malevolent clouds of mosquitoes have not yet hatched. 

It is a time when caribou cow and calf are most vulnerable. For about 10 days after birth, they are essentially immobile and defenceless. Fuel is their first priority. Mothers munch. Calves suckle, sleep and begin cavorting on long, wobbly legs. Even the male bulls stay far away, leaving the scarce plants for those who need them most. 

For almost as long, archeological evidence shows, the Gwitch'in people in Alaska and Canada have respected that sanctuary. It has been forbidden to hunt in the Porcupine caribou calving grounds. Instead, their villages have been located largely near the outward radius of the range, where adult caribou can be intercepted during fall migrations and killed for essential winter meat. 

This age-old bond between the caribou and the Gwitch'in has existed since the last ice age. What is at issue now is whether new Alaska drill rigs and pipelines in the Porcupine herd's preferred nursery will cause a catastrophic collapse in breeding, and whether there are better ways to satiate oil-addicted America. 

At most, a U.S. federal energy agency has found, the Alaska refuge could reduce oil imports by two per cent. And in the same week the U.S. Congress voted to drill there, it voted against adopting tougher nationwide vehicle fuel efficiency standards.- - -

"It is the worst place to drill." 

That's the blunt scientific verdict of Don Russell, a veteran biologist who has spent three decades taking the measure of the Porcupine caribou herd. Working first for the Yukon government, then the Canadian Wildlife Service, he began tracking their migrations and habitat conditions in the late 1970s, when spray paint on caribou coats and sporadic spottings from bush planes were the best tracing technology available. 

Later, up to 100 caribou per year were fitted with radio collar devices, and then the more-precise but expensive satellite tracers were brought into play, and then genetic mapping. The decades of annual data, augmented by reports from Gwitch'in hunters and related studies from other scientists studying caribou predators and forage cycles, scoped out where, when and why the herd migrated vast distances every year. 

During that period, the Porcupine herd increased to a peak of 178,000 in 1989, then plummeted to 123,000 by 2002. Mr. Russell can't nail down the cause but he suspects the past decade of earlier, hotter Arctic summers may have caused escalating cow mortality during the arduous migrations to the calving grounds.

He says the Porcupine herd reproduction ratios is now near a critical point and there is no breathing room for added stress during calving. 

"We think that will be fatal to a herd which is the least productive of all herds in North America," Mr. Russell says. "Just a two-per-cent increase in cow mortality, or a five-per-cent increase in calf mortality, is enough to halt any population increase." 

He adds that the Porcupine herd already has a high 16-per-cent annual cow mortality rate, and that its population plunge since 1990 contrasts sharply with steady rises in other North American caribou herds. 

"The rise was part of a continental phenomena. Virtually every migratory caribou herd in the early 1970s grew from their lowest population levels in 40 years. Significantly, the Porcupine herd only grew at half the average rate of the other herds. It was the first to start declining, and that decline has continued."

Mr. Russell, who completed his MA thesis studying caribou in Alaska's Prudhoe Bay region, concedes that adult caribou can co-exist with limited drill rigs and pipelines. But, he warns, industrial development and calving grounds don't mix.

"The calving grounds and post-calving grounds are the most critical part of their range. In the 1990s, 60 per cent of the (Porcupine herd) calves born were born in the 1002 area (the Alaska land now slated for drilling). That's a tremendous concentration. By also monitoring vegetation data by satellite, we can match the 'greenup' to the survival of calves during their first month of life." 

He notes that the Porcupine herd has a traditional, transboundary range of 290,000 square kilometres, but more than half of all new calves are born within a 1,100-square-kilometre area in Alaska. 

"In the years they don't get there, the average calf mortality increases to 19 per cent. If they can get to the 1002 lands, and the new cotton grass flowers there, their chances of survival go way up. Then the willows unfurl, so the cows take advantage of that. Their energy needs double during the first week after giving birth, to produce milk for the calves. What they need is nitrogen, which lichens can't supply.

"So they have to get there." 

- - -

Bill Noll is the relentlessly genial point man for Alaska Governor Frank Murkowski, and he's come into something of a lion's den to woo and placate Canadian oilpatch executives at an annual petroleum convention in Inuvik. 

They are there mostly to promote a new gas pipeline slated to carry three decades of natural gas from the Canadian side of the Beaufort Sea down the Mackenzie River valley to Alberta, then to the U.S. Mr. Noll is pushing a rival pipeline that would carry Alaska natural gas from the Beaufort down the existing Alaska highway to Alberta, then to the lower 48 states. 

Mr. Noll says both pipelines should be built, but there is little doubt his boss wants Alaska to win the race. Speaking for Mr. Murkowski, he tells the mostly glum audience that Alaska has promised its promoters an $18-billion (U.S.) loan guarantee to slash red tape, that the state will defer royalty payments, perhaps take equity in the project, accelerate depreciation and reduce taxes, and ram approval through its legislature this fall. 

Alaska, Mr. Noll makes it clear, has the same pedal-to-the metal plan to pump out the Alaska oil buried where the transboundary Porcupine caribou herd now calves. Mr. Murkowski has pushed opening up the 1002 lands for decades, as a former Republican senator and now governor. His daughter, a current Republican senator, recently voted to grant drill leases, as did Alaska's other Republican senator. 

Mr. Noll says other Alaska caribou herds have thrived despite the Prudhoe Bay oil project, and that fears about the demise of the Porcupine caribou herd are unfounded. 

"We are optimistic about the Senate energy vote in the fall," he says in an interview in Inuvik. "We've been at this such a long time -- 20 years or more. So both the governor and our Alaska delegation are leaning forward in the saddle, doing everything they can to educate and persuade. We are determined." 

But Mr. Noll balks when asked about the joint Canada-U.S. scientific reports that explicitly warned against drilling in the calving grounds, and the effect that would have on the Gwitch'in of Old Crow. 

"No comment. I don't intend to address the 1002 or Alaska National Wildlife Refuge issue today. Our position has been clear on that for decades." 

- - -

Often dressed in down-home crumpled clothes, and speaking in a slow, rumbling baritone, the Yukon's MP, Liberal Larry Bagnell, cannot claim charisma as his strong suit. But, others say, he makes up for that with conviction. 

He has quietly led the fight in Ottawa and Washington to protect the Porcupine caribou herd, and even learned the Gwitch'in language to better represent his aboriginal constituents and their way of life. He has personally paid for many flights to the U.S. capital to lobby members of Congress before crucial votes. And he is a regular at Old Crow assemblies and meetings, even though they represent only a few hundred votes. 

For Mr. Bagnell, his battle is about both caribou -- and people -- facing extinction. 

"The Porcupine herd is at a very critical level of reproduction. They are already declining, so they can't take any extra disturbance or lowering of the birth rate. Drilling in the 1002 lands will jeopardize the calving rates, and therefore the herd." 

But it is the human side that means the most to Mr. Bagnell. 

"Our world is getting more complex, and often violent. To survive, we need answers from different cultures, or outlooks, on ways to survive. No one has all the answers. But in Old Crow, there is no crime. The people are always smiling. They are happy. The elders and youth are always together. They are spiritual, and artistic. 

"So they have something to tell the world, because they have survived like this for thousands of years. I don't think the world can afford to let a culture like that go extinct. That's why I am so passionate about this battle. It's about more than just another park." 

- - -

There are alluring fossil fuel and mineral deposits beneath a national park on the Canadian side of the North Slope coastal plain, which was specifically created two decades ago to protect calving Porcupine caribou cows. Called Ivvavik, or "nursery" in Inuktituk, roughly one-quarter of the herd calves are born there each year.

It is a place of desolate grandeur, which has served as a biological refuge since before the last ice age. Never crunched under the kilometre-thick ice sheets that crawled over the rest of North America, it was the last redoubt of now-extinct mammals such as the wooly mammoth, sabretooth tiger, and a species of giant beaver. It has the oldest unscoured mountains, and the oldest rivers, in Canada. 

The Porcupine caribou are remnants of the reindeer species that crossed the Beringia land bridge from Asia epochs before humans split their territory in half with an international border. Millions of hoof trails stitched into the rugged British Mountains, and the remains of Paleo-Inuit lookouts and rock fences for hunters to corral them, testify to the age-old link between caribou and human. 

The vistas are so vast, and the rugged mountains so accessible, that 10,000 caribou can appear or disappear in mere minutes. Scanning from an ancient, isolated mini-mountain lookout called Engigstciak, one could conclude that the herd already has a seemingly endless habitat -- and that some oil drills on the Alaska side won't be fatal. 

But the caribou need an immense range the size of California to survive and produce their young. 

Evolution has designed them to survive on scarcity and that same force has driven them to choose Ivvavik and the Alaskan 1002 lands to deliver their young.

Ron Larsen, the chief Parks Canada warden of Ivvavik since 1999, says that the caribou are biological marvels, and that it is a thrill to witness them in motion, en masse. 

"They are fascinating. The most spectacular wildlife experience of my career has been to sit on one side of the Firth River and watch maybe 10,000 caribou come over a ridge, cross, then walk past within 10 feet of me -- for hours. There is nothing else like it." 

The national park status of Ivvavik, the warden-biologist says, means Canada has taken the key step needed to protect this side of the calving grounds.

"There are significant oil, gas and mineral deposits underneath the land there. So there is a trade-off. But sometimes you can't have both. You can't maintain the ecological integrity of the area, and develop it at the same time." 

- - -

Deputy chief William Josie, who directs the Gwitch'in natural resources programs from his home in Old Crow, knows as well as anyone how acutely his people depend on the Porcupine caribou, and the science of their survival. 

Like his father and grandfathers, he hunts them every year for his family's main source of protein. But he also has college degrees in renewable resources management, and commerce. 

Decades ago, he began working with biologist Don Russell tracking the herd's annual migrations. Laughing, he recalls the early days of spray-painting the flanks of caribou, and the one-in-10,000 odds against of spotting them again. 

Now he is a key player in Yukon-Alaska scientific studies on the herd, and in the international high-stakes political showdown over drilling in the 1002 lands. He says the Gwitch'in are determined to reverse the recent U.S. Congress vote, and that they and their MP, Mr. Bagnell, will be soon making 11th-hour lobby efforts in a bid to convince key American senators "who might be right on the fence. We only need to change a few votes." 

Mr. Josie says his village consumes up to 600 caribou each year. Typically only about 100 pounds of meat come from each bull, which are mainly shot in the fall for winter freezers. A minority are taken in the spring. Pregnant cows are never shot, he says, and the coastal plains where the caribou calve have always be a no-go zone -- even for the Gwitch'in. 

"Old Crow's position all along is that we are not opposed to any development, but we are opposed to any in the calving grounds. The reason is: It's a nursery. It's where the caribou look after their young. 

"I'm aware of all Don Russell's reports, and that is of great concern to us. It is a big threat. If that herd gets hit, Old Crow will get hit the hardest. We are front and centre." 

© The Ottawa Citizen 2005