Protecting wildness in Alaska’s Western Arctic Reserve

The lessons I’ve learned in wilderness – exploring our nation’s spectacular national parks, wildlife refuges, monuments and wilderness areas – have influenced my life, and my love for the wild has been the driving force fueling my obsession with both restoration ecology and photography. So as the federal government moves closer to opening the intact landscapes of northwest Alaska to drilling, it is critical that priority number one be minimizing the impacts of development in one of America’s last truly wild places. 

The Alaska office of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) recently issued its final plan for ConocoPhillips’ proposed development – dubbed Greater Mooses Tooth Unit 1 (GMT1) – in the Western Arctic Reserve (National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska) in Alaska’s northwest corner. Why is this so important? Because GMT1 will result in the first oil production in the Reserve, and BLM’s preferred plan will set a dangerous precedent for future oil development and road construction in the Western Arctic’s sensitive wetlands and tundra. 

{mosads}The “preferred” plan essentially allows ConocoPhillips to conduct year-round drilling and provides for a permanent road to transport supplies and equipment. The problem is a permanent road to GMT1 will literally pave the way to future oil development. We need look no further than Prudhoe Bay or Alpine oil fields to see how quickly one road morphs into many. By selecting this plan, BLM is leaving open the possibility that we might one day have a Reserve blighted by a “spider web” of roads connecting drilling sites across the region. BLM is also discounting the ability of a more limited seasonal drilling option to alleviate the impacts of development on wildlife; for example, seasonal drilling could utilize temporary ice roads, which would allow for transport without permanently scarring the landscape. 

If future generations are to remember us with gratitude rather than contempt, we must leave them a glimpse of the world as it was in the beginning, not just after we got through with it. 

That statement was spoken by President Lyndon Johnson on September 3, 1964, upon signing the Wilderness Act into law, but his words remain just as true today. That landmark law defined what wilderness means: 

A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain. 

Nowhere does this definition find a more suitable home than in Alaska. Since 2007, I’ve traveled and photographed in the Western Arctic Reserve on extended trips on three different occasions. The region is a vast, roadless landscape of meandering rivers, majestic mountains, crystal-clear lakes, and mile after mile of tundra. This “last frontier” is also teeming with life, home to the Western Arctic Caribou Herd (one of the world’s largest), Teshekpuk Lake Caribou Herd, wolves, wolverines, and the highest density of grizzly bears north of the Brooks Range. Millions of terrestrial and aquatic birds come from across the globe to breed in the Reserve each summer. 

In September I was invited to display my photographs from the Western Arctic Reserve in the Rotunda of the Russell Senate Building in Washington, D.C.; an opportunity to show our country’s decision-makers what’s at stake. The GMT1 development will be located in the wildlife-rich northeast corner of the Reserve near the Colville River Delta – the largest and most productive river delta in northern Alaska – and within close proximity of Teshekpuk Lake, one of the most productive wetland complexes in the Arctic. These are lands that have been set aside for conservation because their beauty, wildlife and subsistence values make them simply too precious to drill. Any development that takes place in the Western Arctic must include a thorough consideration of the present and potential future impacts on the region. 

The Western Arctic Reserve is the nation’s largest and wildest unit of public lands at 23 million acres. It belongs to all Americans, and by law BLM must seek to balance conservation and development in the Reserve. It’s unfortunate that oil development must occur here, but if it must, it’s imperative we choose the option that protects the region’s wilderness values above all else. Speaking as a restoration ecologist, there’s no way to recover from widespread industrialization of this fragile landscape. Greater Mooses Tooth will set the standard – BLM only has one chance to get it right. They’ve failed with their final plan for GMT1. 

Shreffler is a restoration ecologist and photographer; his photos of the Western Arctic were recently featured in an exhibit on Capitol Hill in the rotunda of the Russell Senate Building.