History

The United States government set aside this wilderness for protection more than 40 years ago under the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower to protect its "unique wildlife, wilderness and recreation values." In 1980, President Carter signed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, or ANILCA, which doubled the size of the Arctic Range and renamed it the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This law closed the 1.5 million acres of the refuge's coastal plain to gas and oil exploration unless specifically authorized by Congress.

Oil companies and their pro-drilling advocates in Congress and the White House are determined to secure drilling authorization in the 109th Congress. Defenders of Wildlife is determined to stop them. 

The Refuge's Coastal Plain

The 1.5 million acre coastal plain, the biological heart of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, is home to the full range of arctic and subarctic life. Over 130 bird species, including those that visit each of the lower 48 states, find breeding, nesting or resting places on the plain. It is the most important on-shore denning area in the United States for polar bears. The coastal plain is also the principal calving ground of the 130,000- strong Porcupine caribou herd, which has made its annual migration to the plain for tens of thousands of years. The caribou herd is a resource shared with Canada, the second largest herd in the United States, and a key source of food, clothing and medicine for the Gwich'in Indians. Grizzly bears, wolves, arctic foxes, whales and other species also thrive in the region.

Industrial Impact of Oil Drilling

Coastal plain oil development would require a spider's web of industrial complexes across virtually the entire plain - hundreds of miles of roads and feeder pipelines, refineries, living quarters for hundreds of workers, landfills, water reservoirs, docks and gravel causeways, production plants, gas processing facilities, seawater treatment plants, power plants and gravel mines. And the oil development process is rife with catastrophe. At the Prudhoe Bay oilfield just west of the Arctic Refuge, spills of oil products and hazardous substances happen every single day, and noise and air pollution are rampant. According to Alaska's Department of Environmental Conservation, there are 55 contaminated waste sites already associated with this development.  

Oil and Wildlife Don't Mix

The threats to wildlife would be enormous. In a letter to President Bush, over 1000 scientists and natural resource mangers from the U.S. and Canada confirmed that oil development could significantly disrupt the fragile ecosystem of the coastal plain and seriously harm caribou, polar bears, muskoxen, snow geese and other wildlife. (Read the letter). Biologists project that the birthrate of the Porcupine caribou may fall by 40 percent if drilling is allowed. Wintertime seismic exploration could cause polar bears to abandon their dens, leaving their cubs to die. Wolves and grizzly bears that prey on newborn caribou would also be adversely affected by the impacts of oil drilling, and the more than 130 species of migratory birds that depend on the refuge's coastal plain would suffer permanent habitat losses from oil development. Simply put, oil development would have a severe, detrimental impact on wildlife populations in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. 

Arctic Oil is Not the Answer - Now or in the Future

No oil or natural gas would flow from the Refuge for at least ten years. The amount of oil that the U.S. Geological Survey estimates could be economically recovered from the Arctic Refuge would amount to only a few months' supply for America. Expanded conservation, greater use of the renewable energy, and alternative fuels can save far more than what might lie beneath the Arctic Refuge. For example, a modest increase in the fuel economy of cars and light trucks of about 2 miles per gallon would save more than a million barrels a day - far more than is likely to be underneath the Arctic Refuge. 

Photos: Arctic Refuge Coastal Plain / Copyright USFWS