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The disruption of the tender ecologies in places like these is a betrayal of the land and the wildlife and humans it supports. Roads blocking caribou movements, helicopters moving the wildlife unnaturally, pads melting permafrost, seismic pounding that drives polar bear mothers from their dens all of this to continue burning fossil fuels, which has poisoned our air, heated our climate, and eliminated the sea ice from the northern coast for much of the year.
The developers, including Bureau of Land Management and politicians, claim it will have no significant effects on wildlife. As a biologist, I know better. But our shared concerns go beyond protecting this special place and its wildlife, because the oil and gas extracted from beneath Alaska s coastal plain will be combusted, producing carbon gases that will remain in our atmosphere where they ll continue to trap heat for hundreds of years.
The administration s position to seek out every available drop of oil, even as the world s scientific authorities continue to raise the alarm that we must stop burning fossil fuels is nihilistic and suicidal. Those in favor of drilling are trying to pull this off on federal land belonging to all Americans because they believe most Americans don t care or won t notice. That s what they hope.
I hope they are wrong. I hope in defiance of errant politicians and corporate greed that we Americans will keep this Arctic land and its wildlife undisturbed, healthy, and beautiful where one can experience, as I have, being alive on the unencumbered cusp of creation.
Jeff Fair is a loon biologist and award-winning writer who has lived and worked in Alaska for 26 years, including 16 trips in the Teshekpuk Lake area and two on the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He co-authored a 2002 Audubon Alaska report on the National Petroleum Reserve Alaska, and his fieldwork with Yellow-billed Loons in Arctic Alaska led to the species current warranted status for ESA listing.
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