|
Washington State - Cascade Chapter South King County Group |
|
Background Information about Arctic Alaska Wilderness |
|
Alaska’s North Slope Alaska’s North Slope is a vast rugged expanse of land - about 89,000 square miles -extending from the crest of the Brooks Range to the pristine Arctic Ocean. This wild and unique area contains millions of acres of ecological resources unlike anywhere else in the United States or on earth.
The North Slope of Alaska is America’s only arctic ecosystem. A balanced land management approach for the North Slope would provide:
In the recent elections, Americans sent a message to Congress: the majority of Americans want to move our country in a different direction. A significant part of this demand focuses on protecting our public lands and natural resources.
The most significant and ecologically sensitive areas in Arctic Alaska are far too important to risk losing, and now is the time to take a stand against choosing short term energy solutions over protecting wilderness and cultural assets for future generations.
Unfortunately, since coming into office, the Bush administration has pursued opening almost the entirety of Alaska’s North Slope, and America’s Arctic Ocean to oil and gas development, despite their vital resources.
We need legislation aimed at stopping or postponing the administration’s current aggressive development plans either completely or until science shows that development can be done in a way the ensures protection of these key areas.
Individual Bills
Arctic Ocean- The Polar Bear Seas Alaska’s oceans support an enormous diversity of marine life. America’s Arctic Ocean is made up of the U.S. portions of the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas and home to many of America’s beloved sea animals including polar bears, whales, sea otters, walrus, seals and a variety shorebirds, seabirds and seaducks. The marine ecosystems of the both the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas provide essential subsistence resources for the Alaska Native people of the North Slope.
The Chukchi Sea This pristine ocean area between Alaska and Russia supports approximately one-tenth of the world’s polar bear population. It’s also a spring and fall migration route for bowhead and beluga whales, a feeding area for gray, humpback and fin whales and Pacific walrus, and habitat for migratory birds, including threatened Steller’s and spectacled eiders. Its bays and estuaries support polar cod, capelin and other fish that are primary food sources.
The Beaufort Sea Ranging from Canada to Barrow, Alaska, the Beaufort Sea is home to another one-tenth of the world’s polar bears, as well as seals and migratory birds. It is a main artery for bowhead and beluga whale migrations.
This makes Alaska’s Arctic waters and coastal areas uniquely vulnerable to oil spills. The region is currently suffering from the impacts of global warming, which is melting sea ice vital the survival of polar bears and their prey. The Department of Interior is currently considering whether to list polar bears as a “threatened” species under the Endangered Species Act, despite a legal deadline to make this decision by January 9th, 2008.
Allowing more energy development in these sensitive areas would cause greater harm to Alaska and add to global warming. It would also threaten traditional Native villages, whose residents rely on ocean wildlife. Yet MMS proposes that nearly 73 million acres of America’s Arctic Ocean be opened up for oil and gas exploration and development over the next 5 years.
S. 2568 Sponsored by Senator John Kerry and similar legislation in the House (to be introduced soon) would halt any new oil and gas development activities until key requirements are met, including completion of an assessment by the National Research Council on data needed to establish an ecological baseline for the region. This data will help determine how wildlife, subsistence activities, and public health are and will be affected by future oil and gas development and climate change.
The 19.6 million-acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is a spectacular wilderness of boreal forests, rugged mountains, sweeping tundra vistas, wild rivers, coastal lagoons, and barrier islands. Located in the northeastern corner of Alaska, the Arctic Refuge features a complete range of arctic and sub-arctic ecosystems and an extraordinary assemblage of wildlife. The Arctic Refuge is a place of unparalleled beauty, so wild and untrammeled that one may walk for days without seeing signs of another human being.
Polar bears, migratory birds, and other wildlife depend on the Coastal Plain, which is the biological heart of the refuge.
Oil and gas exploration would ruin the wilderness character of the Refuge. Development would require a year-round human presence. Seismic testing scars the ground. Buildings, roads, airstrips, gravel pits, and other infrastructure will forever alter the landscape.
The Coastal Plain – where the oil companies want to drill -- is sacred ground to the Gwich’in people, whose culture and way of life depend on the caribou herd which gives birth there every spring. The Gwich’in’s health and livelihoods will be harmed by drilling.
Additional drilling in the refuge will increase emissions of global warming gases and other air pollution, as well as water pollution and oil spills. In other oil producing sites in Alaska, more than 1.9 million gallons of oil and other toxic substances spilled between 1996 and 2004.
Even at peak production, the refuge would produce little more than a year’s supply of oil for the U.S. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that oil extracted from Alaska would even be sold to U.S. markets. The best evidence says that gasoline prices will only drop by a few pennies a gallon if drilling is allowed.
More drilling is the wrong energy priority. The U.S. government spends many times the money on oil, gas, and coal development as it does on developing renewable, clean, and efficient sources of energy.
HR 39- the Udall-Eisenhower Wilderness Act- sponsored by Rep. Edward Markey and S. 2316 sponsored by Senator Joe Lieberman would permanently protect the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as Wilderness.
Teshekpuk Lake The 23.5-million acre National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A) is the largest single block of public land in the United States. NPR-A has superlative values for migratory birds, including waterfowl, shorebirds and raptors, caribou, and marine mammals, including polar bears and beluga whales.
The most immediately threatened piece of the NPR-A is the Teshekpuk Lake area. The Lake and its surrounding wetlands are ecologically unique and one of the most important wildlife habitats in the circumpolar Arctic. Tens of thousands of geese migrate from the United States, Canada and Mexico to use this remote wetland habitat to molt. During molting, flightless geese are highly vulnerable to any disturbance and industrial development could reduce geese populations important all of North America.
The area also provides important nesting habitat for millions of waterfowl, shorebirds, and loons from six continents. Northern pintails summering in the Teshekpuk Lake area are harvested by hunters in the western half of the continent, and nesting tundra swans winter on the east coast in Chesapeake Bay and in the Carolinas.
It is the center of activity for the 45,000-head Teshekpuk Lake Caribou herd, which calves to the south, east and north of the lake and seeks relief from insects east, north and west of the lake. Hunters from 7 communities rely on Teshekpuk Lake caribou for subsistence harvests.
Despite overwhelming opposition from scientists, local communities and the general public, the Bush Administration has been trying to open the Teshekpuk Lake area to the oil industry for years. In January, 2006 the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) issued a management plan that would have opened the entire Teshekpuk Lake area for oil and gas development. In response to a lawsuit filed by conservationists and Alaska Natives, a federal court ruled that BLM had not adequately addressed cumulative impacts and blocked implementation of this plan. In response, BLM issued a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for the lake area in August 2007. In this latest document BLM states plainly that the purpose of the plan is to allow drilling in the internationally important wildlife-rich areas in the Teshekpuk Lake region.
Prior to the efforts of the Bush administration the vital wildlife habitat in the Teshekpuk Lake area has been protected through four previous administrations. Even former Secretary of the Interior James Watt recognized the biological and cultural importance of the Teshekpuk Lake area. Since 1999 almost 3.8 million acres of the entire NPR-A have been leased, but there is not one well in production. With so much land already open for oil and gas exploration, it is unnecessary for the Department to continue its aggressive push to lease new areas.
Legislation will be introduced soon to put Teshekpuk Lake off limits to oil and gas development until further study can be done on the habitat and subsistence values of this area, as well as on the entire NPR-A and recommendations are made to Congress on areas needing permanent protection to ensure ecological and subsistence values, as well as public health, are not degraded by oil and gas development activities.
A balanced approach to management of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska would provide meaningful, lasting protection for key natural areas, wildlife habitat, subsistence uses, and public health while permitting responsible development elsewhere under a well-funded program of oversight and enforcement of environmental protection laws and regulations. |
Alaska’s lands and waters are subject to
legendary storms and sea ice. There is no effective technology for cleaning
up oil spills in the harsh environmental conditions of the Arctic Ocean. For
the most recent lease sale in the Chukchi Sea MMS estimates that the chances
of a large oil spill occurring are between 33 and 51 percent and states that
a large spill could have potentially significant impacts to bowhead whales,
polar bears, essential fish habitat, marine and coastal birds, subsistence
hunting, and archaeological sites.