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LONG BEFORE ALASKA BECAME A STATE IN 1959, THE TERRITORY’S VAST RESOURCES—INCLUDING GOLD, WHALES, FISH, AND SEA OTTER PELTS— HAD LURED PROSPECTORS INTO VAST AND SPECTACULAR TERRAIN. Today’s booty is even farther north, in the federal waters of the Arctic Ocean’s Outer Continental Shelf (OCS), which begins three miles offshore. Beneath the icy, turbulent, and fog-bound Chukchi and Beaufort seas lie potentially rich oil and gas deposits. Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski (R) calls it America’s “last great frontier” and is a vocal advocate for development. Conservation groups and Native communities dependent on the ocean for sustenance have fought to keep drilling at bay. The region is vital to orca and beluga whales, ringed and bearded seals, and walrus. It’s a key migratory route for the endangered bowhead whale. All of the nation’s polar bears, already threatened by melting ice, live there, too. Unless The Wilderness Society and its partners can secure a victory before all the decisions to allow drilling are finalized, Royal Dutch Shell will begin drilling exploratory wells in the Beaufort in 2012 and in the Chukchi in 2013. “Even if you think it’s okay to drill for oil and gas when the planet’s climate already is changing at a frightening pace,” said Lois Epstein, The Wilderness Society’s Arctic program director, “these projects raise two fundamental questions. First, what would the drilling do to the marine mammals, sea and bird life, and Native communities that depend on this fragile ecosystem? Second, when there is a major spill, what will the damage be? We just don’t have the answers.” Epstein also pointed to a need to update scientific surveys done a quarter century ago because “we need, at a minimum, a baseline understanding of the biology and ecology of the Arctic Ocean.” The health of marine mammals and other sea life is of paramount importance in the Inupiat village of Point Hope. “We are on a spit and have the Chukchi on the north, west, and south sides of us,” said Mae Hank. “During the summer we fish. Wintertime, the men hunt seals off the point on the west side. Spring they hunt whales and walrus.” The grandmother of eight added, “Energy companies have no legitimate way to clean up a spill.” Since the 1968 discovery of oil in Prudhoe Bay on Alaska’s North Slope, energy companies, including BP, have worked in state waters near shore in the Beaufort Sea. Dr. Dana Wetzel has been studying the area for 11 years through grants from the Environmental Protection Agency, the state of Alaska, and the North Slope Borough, made up of eight Native villages. Wetzel, an ecotoxicologist from Florida’s Mote Marine Laboratory, has focused on oil accumulation in marine mammals and fish near Prudhoe Bay. Thus far, she has found “very little,” she said. But, Wetzel added, “I think anybody would say that there is a danger to a lot of different sea life” from oil exploration and production. “The question is: What strategies are in place to deal with a spill or, even before that, what regulations are in place to ensure “We have extremely limited Arctic response capabilities,” Admiral Robert J. Papp, Jr., testified... “We do not have any infrastructure on the North Slope to hangar our aircraft, moor our boats or sustain our crews. I have only one operational icebreaker.” that a spill doesn’t happen?” In the event of an accident, Wetzel said, “I’m not sure how you’d clean oil off ice, for starters. There are just a lot of unknowns. It becomes very scary to even contemplate that sort of scenario.” Noise is another concern. Marine mammals and fish rely on sounds to find food and mates, to avoid predators, and to communicate. Dr. John A. Hildebrand studies marine bioacoustics at the University of California, San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Since 2006 he has been conducting studies for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in the Chukchi Sea. 16 1-800-THE-WILD
© Patrick J. Endres/AlaskaPhotoGraphics.com “It gets much noisier when seismic exploration is taking place,” said Hildebrand. Humans need ear protection for sound above 80 decibels (dB), and Hildebrand’s group detected sounds of 250 dB when the air guns used for seismic exploration were fired. “You can’t go out and put ear protection on whales.” Hildebrand’s group has confirmed, however, that the Chukchi’s seabed in the area targeted for exploration is both shallow and flat. “Because of that flat continental shelf, when you make sounds like the air guns it propagates a long way. That means that you could be 100 miles away and you’d still hear it.” Just how difficult would it be to drill in these waters? Drill rigs and wells would be subject to the Arctic Ocean’s ice, high winds, and strong currents. During the approximately 100 summer days of open water, when exploratory drilling would occur, ice floes and icebergs pose a danger. Moving ice four miles wide has been seen in the Beaufort. In the Chukchi, Hank has seen two-story ice ridges—formed when currents smash ice floes into each other. How an offshore platform and its pipelines would fare in an encounter with what scientists call “an extreme ice feature” is still not fully known. And if a spill occurred? The Beaufort lies north of the North Slope’s Prudhoe Bay, which has basic infrastructure and could serve as a rudimentary staging area. However, much of the Beaufort coastline does not. The Chukchi, www.wilderness.org Chukchi Sea Point Hope Arctic Ocean Wainwright Barrow Beaufort Sea National Petroleum Reserve–Alaska Prudhoe Bay N O R T H S L O P E Colville River ALASKA Pacic Ocean Detail ALASKA Kaktovik Trans Alaska Pipeline Arctic National Wildlife Refuge © Joel Garlich-Miller/USFWS The entire U.S. population of polar bears, already facing grave challenges as the ice pack shrinks, is found along Alaska’s northern coast and would be in greater jeopardy if drilling occurs in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas. Among other species that could be harmed is the walrus. off Alaska’s northwest coast, is remote, essentially undeveloped, and lacks basic infrastructure. (If oil is extracted from the Chukchi, it probably would run through a proposed 280-mile pipeline crossing the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, which contains biologically sensitive wilderness, and hook up to the Trans Alaska Pipeline.) The U.S. Coast Guard would be responsible for cleanup in the Arctic Ocean, and its base nearest to the drilling sites is in Kodiak, more than 1,000 miles away. “We have extremely limited Arctic response capabilities,” Admiral Robert J. Papp, Jr., testified before a U.S. Senate subcommittee in August. “We do not have any infrastructure on the North Slope to hangar our aircraft, moor our boats or sustain our crews. I have only one operational icebreaker.” Brenda Pierce, program coordinator of the Energy Resources Program at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), co-authored a report on oil spill preparedness if drilling were allowed in the Arctic Ocean. The survey of 400 scientific publications and science policy documents on the 17
Page 1 and 2: Migratory birds tell climate change
Page 3 and 4: Table of Contents 17 The Final Fron
Page 5 and 6: ENERGY: We secured greater protecti
Page 7 and 8: IDAHO In 2009, climaxing an eight-y
Page 9 and 10: © Erin Paul Donovan Our coalition
Page 11 and 12: Harbingers of Climate Change Acreek
Page 13 and 14: On the highest mountains in the Nor
Page 15: The Final Frontier By Marilyn Berli
Page 19 and 20: © Steven Kazlowski/AlaskaStock.com
Page 21 and 22: Currier’s uncle spent the winter
Page 23 and 24: commitment to conservation was outs
Page 25 and 26: © Howie Garber a story: Following
Page 27 and 28: © © Bradly J. Boner Skiers and ot
Page 29 and 30: © Jeff L. Fox camp, miles hiked pe
Page 31 and 32: Getting people out in these spaces
Page 33 and 34: It is now open season on open space
Page 35 and 36: www.wilderness.org Aravaipa Canyon
Page 37 and 38: © Darren Huski www.wilderness.org
Page 39 and 40: © Tom Till www.wilderness.org East
Page 41 and 42: © Sean Babbington Building an Army
Page 43 and 44: © Caara Fritz BEN GREUEL, SIERRA C
Page 45 and 46: Noble Basin, about 40 miles south o
Page 47 and 48: Member Profile Wilderness Investors
Page 49 and 50: © Eric Mohl ten-year Mission 66 pr
Page 51 and 52: Wildsong Edited by John Daniel Desi
Page 53 and 54: www.wilderness.org 53
Page 55 and 56: Complex. Because of the primeval na
Page 57 and 58: Bodie Hills Visitor Information Bod
Page 59 and 60: © Lynn Donaldson my wilderness has
Page 61 and 62: Conservation Enthusiast CROSSWORD P
Page 63: A Tribute to David Getches David Ge

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