Les Jones

I'm anything but an "environmist" or a "tree hugger." But I've seen this battle of photographs before and it depends on who's taking them.

That tundra land, which recovers very poorly from roads and other changes in the landscape, is a critical part of ANWR. It sustains a variety of birds as well as the caribou in the area.

But simply stated I am one of those who supports maintaining the last great piece of wilderness we have. When ANWR was set aside by the government organizations as diverse as the Sierra Club, NRA, and the Wildlife Association supported it. It was "set aside" the same way we have set aside other lands with various designations, whether they be national parks or BLM lands. It has a specific designation which prevents it from ever being despoiled or used in any commercial way.

The war of the photgraphs can be interesting. There are also a huge number of photographs on the 'net leftover from the last go 'round over drilling for oil there. This looks to be one of the first steps for a new round of discussion of the issue. And of course the native Alaskans, on the whole, support it. It will bring money and jobs to Alaska which is about to run out of the free ride they got from the drilling to the north.

I have nothing against jobs. Protecting some "wildnerness" to protect some useless minnow I've never heard of is one issue. The proposed drilling areas bring large machinery and roads with them. We have no other great wilderness like this left. There are portions of the Tetons or Yellowstone which have no interesting mountains or geysers or other tourist or backpacking attractions. But they, like these portions of ANWR, are an important and integral part of a whole ecosystem, one we chose to protect, and one we now are considering to despoil with the hope we'll find oil in sufficient quantitites to justify the damage we do.

You may be right. Drilling in ANWR may be inevitable. But the two conservative Senators in my state get a lot of mail from me and other of their traditional supporters that oppose ANWR exploration and/or drilling. Common sense, not "environmentalism," also plays a role here. An ecosystem is not made up of certain limited portions which may be more attractive to we humans, it is a whole, part of a greater system which keeps the whole area as it is.

This particular conservative, pragmatic, libertarian whatever is going to continue to oppose drilling in ANWR under any conditions.

Thanks for adding the map to your article. I've been viewing several maps today of the new proposals and it's one of the better ones I've seen. While I'd like to see one a bit bigger in file size and resolution, it magnifies reasonably well to 2X or so in Photoshop.

You can click on it to get the original, larger version. I reduced it for people with 800x600 monitors.

I used to be pro-ANWR based on the polemics, but in the big picture it seems to be a small concession that environmentalists are making a big deal out of.

Thanks. Missed the fact I could click it. Does anyone still have monitors that small? Just curious as I know many sites are designed with them in mind.

I understand your reasoning about ANWR. It's a matter of values I guess. Unfortunately it seems to generate more heated rhetoric on both sides than common sense.

I gave up trying to support 640 x 480 displays, but there are still quite a few 800 x 600 displays out there. Too, lots of people with bigger displays keep their history or bookmarks open in a pane on the left side of the browser window.

he 1.5 million acre part of ANWR where oil exploration would take place (designated the 1002 area) is pretty awful territory, as the pictures linked above demonstrate.

Those pictures don't demonstrate shit. He puts up a blurry shot taken from several hundred feet in the air, and a picture of a tidal mudflat, and claims that those are good representions of the entire 1002 area. This is a pathetic, Limbaugh-eque propaganda. I can't believe that you seriously agree with him.

It's hardly a scenic vista for backpackers, who prefer the mountainous regions to the flat, featureless stretch of tundra.

Fuck the backpackers. Snow-covered mountaintops aren't the be all and end all of beauty in nature. Tundras are really cool systems, and have plenty of aesthetic charm and appeal if you have the slightest interest in, like, living things, geology, and that kind of stuff.

There's plenty of reason to care about the coastal plain of northeast Alaska other than how purty it is. Aesthetic appeal is not the be all and end all of value in a landscape. One of the state natural areas in Tennessee consists of a cornfield. Nothing else, just a cornfield. But it's got one of the largest known populations of Stones River bladderpod, which is (no joke) entirely restricted to cornfields along the Stones River in Rutherford County.

Anyway, as far as the impacts -- I'm sceptical of anyone who claims to have anything resembling a definitive understanding of what the effects of drilling will be. This is from a 2001 Conservation Biology article I dug up:

"Our examination of the published scientific articles and non-peer-reviewed gray literature in both state and federal agencies as well as industrial documents reveals striking asymmetries in species and topics studied. For most wildlife species, including migratory birds, large herbivores, and large carnivores, there is a dearth of information available to enable adequate prediction of biological effects of wide-scale development of the coastal plain. Although the potential effects of oil development on polar bears have been studied to some extent, little information exists for other carnivores. No primary literature addresses the effects of resource extraction on wolves in northeast Alaska, and most studies of grizzly bears focus on effects of the timber industry in British Columbia and Montana. The only relevant study concerning Arctic fox (Alopex alopex) responses to oil extraction is an unpublished industry report on the Prudhoe Bay unit (Burgess et al. 1993), and wolverines in the ANWR have not been studied.

The conspicuous lack of detailed carnivore studies is provocative for two reasons. First, all of these carnivores except for the Arctic fox are classified as threatened or endangered in other parts of their range. Second, because the role of predatory carnivores in ecosystem dynamics is receiving increasing emphasis as a key issue in the scientific and conservation literature (Berger 1999; Estes 1996; Terborgh et al. 1999), the paucity of data concerning potential, let alone known actual, effects is clearly a missing element for the ANWR. The inequality in knowledge is so colossal that any attempt to move forward with development in the absence of a redressed balance involving all community members, rather than caribou alone, is likely to be foolish and may result in irreparable damage to one of North America's remaining natural treasures.

So, despite the relative intensity of study of caribou, if we ask what we still do not know about the ANWR system, the answer is that we know something about the caribou that use the coastal plain for about 6 weeks per year, but little about most other organisms."

Translation of the excerpt you quoted: we're not sure what will happen.

Well, OK, but most of Alaska's North Slope coast has been explored for oil, and has active oil wells. What happened there? In some cases the large fauna increased.

I'm not sure that coolness is really a deciding factor. Tundra may be cool to you, but if it's not cool to other people (who may prefer a steady oil supply, or jobs working for the oil companies) then is it cool by you if they go ahead and get the oil?

I'm just sayin'.

I'm just sayin'.

No, what you you were just sayin' was

"The 1.5 million acre part of ANWR where oil exploration would take place (designated the 1002 area) is pretty awful territory, as the pictures linked above demonstrate."

My point wasn't to argue for or against the drilling - I know pretty much next to nothing about the subject, so I honestly have no real opinion one way or the other. I just stuck the Conservation Biology thing at the end because it seemed interesting and relevant.

I was just curious about why you think someone who puts up a picture of a mudflat and says "the environmentalists are wrong! All we're doing is drilling in a barren wasteland!" is making a good argument.

But your comment above brings up another point -- apparently you think protecting good backpacking country is an acceptable use of land, but protecting ecological systems is not. Why so?

By the way, I'd much rather get into blows over this while drinking a beer or flying a kite by the Washington Monument than on your blog. When are y'all coming up to visit? It's beautiful up here right now.

I thought I was addressing two major arguments for preservation in Alaska: wildlife and eco-tourism. I guess the editors of Backpacker magazine got to me.

We need to get up there. Melissa and I were even talking about meeting at some point in between Knoxville and DC. Abington, or something (though Melissa tells me Abington isn't really in betweeen, but something like that.)

I happen to live to live in Alaska for the last 13 years and it just makes me sick to see these people who have never even been to Alaska pull this environmental crap, that its "The Last Frontier" and they shouldn't drill anymore. Let me tell you, ANWR is one of the most unpopulated parts of Alaska,with few tourists. I can see Mt. Mkinley out my window and I know damn well it's better than whats in the part of ANWR they want for oil exploration. If environmentalists are so worried about damage they claim it will do to the environment, they can fly up here and get a first person look at it for themselves and compare it to the rest of Alaska, which I have been throughout. Tourists and locals don't go to ANWR, its as simple as that. And those few natives that DO live around ANWR greatly support its oil developement, so stop using them to hide behind.

Save ANWR for wildlife!!!!

I am one of those tourists who have visited ANWR's North Slope. Spent 11 days backpacking 80 miles. Spectacular place!

My visit was in late-June/early-July. Loads of wildflowers.

As for wildlife, I would definitely rate it up there with Denali or Yellowstone National Park. I've never had as many up-close wildife experiences as in ANWR: Tons of birds of many species. 15 feet from a golden eagle chick. Caribou every day. Moose every day. Musk Ox. Dall Sheep. Grizzly bears mating (viewed from about 1 mile away on a nearby hill). Lots of mosquitoes. Had a pair of wolves skirt around out camp on the final "night" pausing for about 3 mintues to stare at us curiously from about 50 ft away.

So don't be fooled when some senator who flew over the refuge in November tells you that there's nothing but mosqutioes up there. There are tons of wildlife. After all, let's not forget that this is a National W I L D L I F E Refuge!

To quote the 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, the "purposes are: (a) to conserve fish and wildlife populations and habitats in their natural diversity with special emphasis on the Porcupine caribou herd (including participation in coordinated ecological studies and management of this herd and the Western Arctic caribou herd), polar bears, grizzly bears, muskox, Dall sheep, wolves, wolverines, snow geese, peregrine falcons and other migratory birds and Arctic char (those residing in Alaska's North Slope rivers and lagoons are now classified as Dolly Varden) and grayling; (b) to fulfill the international fish and wildlife treaty obligations of the United States; (c) to provide the opportunity for continued subsistence uses by local residents; and (d) to ensure water quality and necessary water quantity within the refuge."

One of the key characteristics of the North Slope is water. "Most of the water available in summer comes from spring snowmelt. It pools on the surface of the land, soaking the tundra. The water doesn’t percolate through the soil, as it does in most places, due to permafrost, which underlies most of the area about a foot down." Thus, slow percolation of water accross the shallow slope creates the shallow ponds that breed the mosquitoes that feed the birds that attract the predators. What would gravel roads running accross the North Slope do to this process? What would the drilling activity do to the Porcupine herd that calves in the 1002 area?

More facts at: http://arctic.fws.gov

I've seen the abundant wildlife and the beauty up there. But I didn't seen any oil that might be "technically recoverable".

Cheers,
- Brad

And one other thing: have a look at the (all Repulican) senators visiting ANWR in winter at http://www.anwr.org/archives/senators_tour_anwr.php

Are they trying to dupe us or what!? Probably flew into the 1002 Area via helicopter, didn't see any wildlife, concluded that there must not be any wildlife (though they could have been standing on a polar bear den or ptarmigan) and then flew back to Fairbanks for some drinks.

Is this a joke? Do they think we're stupid? What are they hiding? They certainly aren't fooling me. Shame them for their deceit. They are an embarassment to our Nation.

Cheers anyway,
- Brad

The area considered for drilling is a section in the western-most area of ANWR where wildlife is extremely limited. This section of land considered for oil development is less than 2,000 acres, or .5% of ANWR. Oh yeah, and stop complaining about oil prices if you don't support oil exploration, and have no other reasonable solutions to substitute. I guess throwing taxpayer money and American blood overseas is a better solution.