By Duncan Adams
29-06-04
Biologists warn the decision could affect thousands of migrating geese,
caribou and the Inupiat Eskimos who hunt them for food. The scenario is
familiar. In one of the nation's wildest places, oil and wildlife inhabit the
same ground.
No, not at ANWR -- the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge -- the focus of
prolonged, impassioned debate about the compatibility of oil drilling,
wilderness, wildlife and Alaska's indigenous people. This wildlife haven is
Teshekpuk Lake in Alaska. The lake and environs are west of the wildlife refuge
and Prudhoe Bay. This habitat in the northeast corner of the National Petroleum
Reserve-Alaska, or NPR-A, has been protected since 1977 from oil development.
But the Bush administration wants to write a new plan for the 4.6 mm-acre
northeast corner. Federal land managers are considering opening 387,000 acres
previously closed to drillers, an area about half the size of Rhode Island.
"The part that was put off limits -- that's where the oil is," said
Jody Weil, a spokeswoman in Alaska for the US Bureau of Land Management. Weil
said the BLM wants to determine whether "there is a way to develop the
resources that are there while also protecting the biological and environmental
resources."
"Can we get to that oil and still protect the resources?" Weil said.
It's a question others in Alaska pose, too.
Few residents of the Lower 48 have heard of Teshekpuk Lake. But every spring
and summer, tens of thousands of migrating birds find the lake. Geese, ducks and
swans inhabit surrounding tundra wetlands for nesting, moulting and fattening
beneath the midnight sun. Caribou from the Teshekpuk Lake herd calves there and
seek sea-breeze relief along the nearby coast from summer's insect swarms.
The caribou frequently linger through the North Slope's harsh, dark winter.
Inupiat Eskimos hunt the caribou and migrating birds. They catch fish in nearby
rivers and deep-water lakes. Biologists on the North Slope and Inupiat villagers
agree that the Teshekpuk caribou herd is a crucial resource.
"That name -- Teshekpuk Lake -- may not mean anything to you," said
George Ahmaogak, mayor of North Slope Borough, during a forum in Anchorage
earlier this year. "It means a lot to our people."
Ahmaogak readily acknowledges that the oil industry means a lot to his
people, too. North Slope Borough, a municipal government incorporated in 1972 by
Inupiat leaders after the discovery of oil at Prudhoe Bay, has used revenues
gained by taxing oil industry infrastructure to build schools and roads,
airfields, water and sewer systems, and much more.
Borough leaders favour onshore oil development over offshore drilling because
they believe that the latter threatens the animal at the centre of the Inupiat
culture -- the bowhead whale -- which coastal Eskimos hunt during the whale's
migrations.
But Ahmaogak told the forum that he worries about the expansion of onshore
oil development westward from Prudhoe Bay, development he said threatens to
encircle the village of Nuiqsut. He said industrial activity already "is
driving caribou farther away, so it's more difficult and more dangerous for
Nuiqsut hunters to get to their subsistence resources."
Craig George, a wildlife biologist for North Slope Borough, said many Inupiat
"have almost completely abandoned their former hunting areas in Kuparuk and
Prudhoe." Ahmaogak said the borough can support industrial activity in new
areas if "we are convinced that our interests will be protected."
Citing President Bush's National Energy Policy, Henri Bisson, BLM's Alaska
director, said the agency wants to reconsider earlier protections established
for the area. Someday, oil companies might drill for crude in the lake's very
heart.
The prospect of oil development in the vicinity of Teshekpuk Lake worries
many biologists, who fear it will disturb the birds, caribou and fish. Geoff
Carroll, an area biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, who has
travelled the North Slope by boat, air, dogsled and snowmobile, expressedsimilar
concerns.
"NPR-A contains very important subsistence hunting areas and some of the
most biologically productive areas on the entire Alaskan coastal plain," he
said. "If we were going to protect an area just on the merits of biological
importance and importance to subsistence hunters, the area around Teshekpuk Lake
would be the area to preserve," Carroll said.
President Warren Harding established the petroleum reserve in 1923 as a
potential source of oil for the US Navy. NPR-A encompasses 23.5 mm acres. During
the Clinton administration, when Bruce Babbitt was secretary of the interior,
the BLM developed a plan to allow leasing, exploration and drilling for oil in
portions of the 4.6 mm acres in NPR-A's northeast corner -- sections of which
coincide with a geologic structure, known as the Barrow Arch, relevant to the
oil strike at Prudhoe Bay in 1968.
In July 1997, Babbitt told Nuiqsut residents he recognized that their ability to
withstand arctic conditions and months of darkness depended upon their
"access to the caribou, the fish, the whales." When Bisson announced
the BLM's new proposal for the area, he talked about the national importance of
access to oil.
"There are 190 mm vehicles and 56 mm homes that depend on oil and gas each
and every day," Bisson said on June 9.
The NPR-A plan that emerged on Babbitt's watch excluded from oil and gas
leasing about 600,000 acres, including Teshekpuk Lake and areas north and east
of the lake. Surface activity also was excluded from an additional 240,000 acres
south, west and east of the lake. Carroll said the BLM is proposing "to
break those promises" while "the ink is hardly dry on the 1998
plan."
BLM's new "preferred alternative" would keep 213,000 acres of
sensitive goose moulting and caribou habitat northeast of Teshekpuk Lake
off-limits to oil and gas leasing. For other areas, the agency touts new
industry technologies -- such as angle drilling and production pads built on ice
instead of gravel -- that leave fewer scars on the tundra.
But Carroll said that even though new methods reduce industry's footprint,
effects still loom large.
"There is much more involved than just how much land is covered with
gravel," Carroll said. "The pads must be connected by pipelines,
roads, power lines, and [other infrastructure]."
Carroll said "it is possible to have oil development and healthy wildlife
populations on the North Slope, but only if crucial wildlife habitat is
protected."
Weil said the BLM is listening and welcomes such input. Public hearings will be
held in Alaska and a hearing also is set in Washington, DC. Carroll, George and
Ahmaogak will be among those offering input during hearings in Alaska. But
George wonders how much weight that input will have.
"I guess we feel like the oil companies will go where the oil is, period,
regardless of stipulations," he said.
Staff writer Duncan Adams was managing editor of The Arctic Sounder in
Barrow, Alaska, from 1996 to 1998.
Source: The Roanoke Times