David B. Williams sends dispatches from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge 2

David B. Williams is a freelance natural-history writer based in Seattle. He is the author of The Street-Smart Naturalist: Field Notes from Seattle and has written for Smithsonian, Popular Mechanics, National Parks, and The Seattle Times.

Friday, 29 Jul 2005

SEATTLE, Wash.

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is at the center of one of the most contentious environmental and political debates of our time. Yet few people know much beyond the rhetoric, and far fewer will actually visit the Arctic Refuge.

The most hotly disputed chunk of land in the U.S. of A.

Photo: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

The University of Washington, however, is trying to remedy this situation, at least for one group of students. Twelve graduate and undergraduate students are taking part in an intensive, five-week class ("Choices and Change in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge") offered for the first time ever in summer 2005 by the Program on the Environment (POE), an interdisciplinary program on environmental studies.

"Environmental issues are uniquely interdisciplinary in that they draw upon the physical, biological, and social sciences, as well as the arts and humanities, in almost equal measure," says POE co-director and course co-instructor David Secord. "The past, present, and future of the controversy over oil drilling in the refuge forms a perfectly packaged microcosm of critical regional and global sustainability issues."

Central to this interdisciplinary approach is giving students the opportunity to become unusually well-informed about an issue and then providing them an opportunity to share the information. At the end of this course, students will develop a public exhibit to interpret their experiences and share their insights.

We're spending the first week of the class in Seattle, learning about the politics and natural and cultural history of the refuge. Students and faculty will then fly to Alaska and spend a week rafting on either the Jago or Aichilik rivers, which flow out of the Brooks Range across the controversial 1002 area (where drilling would occur in the refuge) to the Beaufort Sea. The class will also meet with members of the two Native groups most affected by potential drilling, the Inupiat and Gwich'in, as well with biologists, geologists, and staff from the offices of Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) and Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell (D).

As part of the course, they also decided to ask a journalist to tag along -- me.

(One quick note: I will not use the term ANWR throughout these Dispatches. As several people who are deeply involved with the issue told me, ANWR is a term coined by industry, and it sounds too much like war. More important, the acronym ANWR conceals the fact that this landscape is a national wildlife refuge, federally protected "for the purpose of preserving unique wildlife, wilderness, and recreational values.")

"This course is probably unlike any you have taken and is unlike any I have taught," says Nate Mantua in his class introduction. Lead instructor and a research scientist at the NOAA/UW Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean, Mantua's specialty is long-term climate patterns, such as El Niño and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. "Our goal is to attempt to tackle many difficult issues and wrap them into one package. This is going to be an exciting experiment."

Mantua asks the students to share their backgrounds and state their top issues for the refuge. "Caribou, jobs, native peoples, and energy independence," says Dustin Andres, a senior in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies. Others add tourism, ecosystem balance, drilling impacts, climate change, plant and animal sustainability, and wilderness values. The 12 men and women include students in programs as diverse as marine affairs, conservation biology, geology, environmental science and resource management, political science, and economics.

Two nonstudents also sit in on the class and will join the group in the refuge. Ned Backus and Phil Stoller are board members of the Seattle-based Lucky Seven Foundation, which supports social services around Puget Sound. Although the foundation was approached for $5,000, the Lucky Seven ended up providing $13,500 for scholarships for students to participate in the class. "We were already supporting the Subhankar Banerjee show at the Burke [Museum of Natural History and Culture] and this was a logical extension," says Backus. "Plus, we wanted to make sure that students of need could attend." In addition, the UW Earth Initiative, the UW Summer School, and Tom Campion, cofounder of Zumiez, provided funding for the course.

Arctic Village, where life is all about caribou.

For the next six classes, we delve into the issues. Each day revolves around a single subject, beginning with culture. Only 7,500 people live in the North Slope region of Alaska, the area north of the Brooks Range and equal roughly in size to the state of Minnesota. Two towns dominate the issues in the refuge, maritime-oriented Kaktovik, which is on Barter Island in the Beaufort Sea, and caribou-focused Arctic Village, at the southern edge of the Brooks Range. Kaktovik has a little over 250 residents, 85 percent of whom are Inupiat. It is the only community in the refuge. Arctic Village's 150-plus residents are Gwich'in Indians, more closely related to Navajo than Inupiat.

Tuesday we turn to geology. Drilling in the refuge can only occur on the coastal plain, the land between the Beaufort Sea and Brooks Range and commonly referred to as the 1002 ("ten-oh-two") area, because it was designated by section 1002 of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, which created the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

In the words of Bob Swenson, deputy director of research for Alaska's Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys, "Things really get complicated" in the 1002 area, in part because two very different geologic systems -- a rift and a convergence zone -- collide along the coastal plain. At least nine studies have been done with estimates of between 100 million and 49.5 billion barrels of oil, not all of which would be economically recoverable. The most recent study, by the U.S. Geological Survey in 1998, estimated a 50/50 chance of 7.7 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil.

Part of the estimation challenge is that only one well has been drilled inside the 1002 boundaries and the information obtained from it is a closely held secret. (Intriguingly, the two companies who do know what came up in that well, ConocoPhillips and BP, have pulled out of funding Arctic Power, an industry financed group that promotes oil development in the refuge.)

The highlight of the first week is a class led by Gordon Orians, UW emeritus professor of biology and chair of an 18-member National Research Council panel that in 2003 assessed the cumulative effects of oil extraction on Alaska's North Slope. In a quiet yet passionate voice, Orians describes how the panel developed an unbiased, rigorously reviewed, scientifically based report. And then he launches into his concerns:

• Anthropogenic food sources from oil operations have led to an increase in predators, such as arctic fox, ravens, and glaucous gulls, which prey on nesting birds.
• What happens to lakes when they are drained 85 percent to make ice roads? There are regulations to govern this activity, but no data to support the regulations' requirements.
• There are pervasive effects from seismic exploration, including disturbance of bowhead whales and polar bears. Again, there is no data to support regulations governing seismic surveys.
• For reasons unknown, the Porcupine caribou seem especially vulnerable to disturbance.
• No money has been set aside for cleanup after the oil runs dry.
• The biggest changes resulting from drilling in the North Slope have been cultural, with a radical alteration in social structure. As one Native told Orians, "We have money and electricity, but at what price?"

He concludes by saying, "One would wish that the debate wasn't about the nutty stuff and would be about the real issues."

Three days from now, 17 of us will be heading to Alaska to continue learning about these "real issues."

Monday, 8 Aug 2005

FAIRBANKS and AICHILIK RIVER, Alaska

The Alaskan part of the trip begins at 12:30 a.m. on Aug. 1, when we arrive at the Fairbanks Airport. We are met by Karen Jettmar, who owns and runs Equinox Expeditions, our guide company. Karen gives us dry bags for our gear and tells us to be back at the airport at 7:30. We catch several cabs to the dorms at the University of Alaska and try to fall asleep. I toss and turn for an hour, keyed up about our adventure. The next morning with the group in near revolt, we make a panic stop at a coffee shop before driving to the airport. (This is a group of Seattleites, after all.)

To get to our put-in on the Aichilik River, we fly north out of Fairbanks. I am amazed at how quickly we lose sight of anything human. The last large feature I see is the oil pipeline from Prudhoe Bay, and then trees disappear and we begin to climb over the Brooks Range, with stark, sharp peaks occasionally higher than us. After three hours of flying, we land on a barely visible airstrip, cleared out of the tundra, next to the Aichilik. Before Ken the pilot leaves, he shows me how to use the shotgun, but we find no shells. "In that case, I'd just try and hit the bear with this end," Ken says, as he thrusts the handle toward me. And then he is gone and I am alone. (Because of logistics, the rest of the group flew to Arctic Village to talk with members of the Gwich'in community.)

On the right track.

Photo: Nate Mantua.

At first, I am nervous. I have never been in grizzly country, moreover by myself, 45 miles from the nearest sign of people. At first, I stay close to the gear and the shotgun, not that it would help, but as I start to walk and notice the landscape, I begin to drop my trepidation. I find wolf and caribou tracks in the soft mud by the river. A dab of yellow flies by, a sulfur butterfly, and lands on a purple Oxytropis. Small purple gentians, yellow cinquefoils, bluish harebells, pinkish valerians, and white louseworts dot the low-growing willow and cotton grass. My first bird is a glaucous gull, one of the refuge's 180 bird species, many of which overwinter in the Lower 48.

The rest of the group arrives over the next six hours. We put up our tents, chat about logistics, eat dinner, and hang out, quickly adapting to life without darkness. Throughout our week on the river, we don't eat breakfast until 10 a.m. or lunch until 4 p.m. Dinner occurs at 10 p.m. or later. People go on walks at 1 a.m. As with so many aspects of the Arctic, we discover something special in this new landscape at the north edge of the continent.

The following day, we cross the Aichilik, hike across tundra, and climb up to 2,500 feet, along a ridge of tear-pants limestone. The Aichilik flows in a wide, braided channel north across the coastal plain to the Beaufort Sea, where sea ice appears to butt up against the barrier islands that lie just off the coastline. Through my binoculars I pick out Kaktovik, where a fire burns, sending a plume of smoke high above the horizon. From 1,400 feet above the coastal plain, the land looks eternal and limitless.

When I was flying into our put-in, one initial thought was that I understood the pro-drilling argument that development would only mar a small part of this huge landscape, but when I stand atop these final foothills of the Brooks Range and look across the horizontal and seemingly featureless coastal plain, I realize that this vastness also means that any development would significantly and negatively affect the experience of being in this place. The vastness is not just a visual vastness but a mental one, where knowing that humans have had and still have a microscopic effect is central to the experience and magic of the landscape.

We start our float trip on our third day in the refuge. We have two four-person paddle rafts and one two-person inflatable canoe. Like everyone else, I wear rubber boots, rain pants, long underwear, rain coat, and a hat. We climb into the boats and paddle away from shore. The water moves us swiftly for perhaps 200 yards, then we run aground. We hop out, pull the boat to deeper water, clamber in, and begin to paddle. Again we only go a short ways before bottoming out.

Don't fall in!

Paddle, pull, paddle, pull will be a constant throughout our 40 miles on the Aichilik. Like all the rivers on the coastal plain, the Aichilik flows across a flat, wide bottom in many small channels. Known as a braided river system, this type of flow pattern results from rapid and frequent changes in water volume, often in flat areas associated with glacier-derived runoff. The pattern makes navigation challenging but fun, as we try to follow the dark emerald line of deeper water.

Over the next few days, we begin to be swallowed by the vastness of the coastal plain. I find myself powerfully attracted to the land. I do not completely understand what specifically is so seductive, but in part I cannot get over the amazement I find standing on the coastal plain and looking out over cotton grass tussocks in all directions and seeing the horizon at exactly the same level everywhere. And yet, this vastness is complemented by the incredible complexity of what is at my feet. On a low mound, I find numerous snowy-owl pellets, several vole skulls, long-tailed jaeger poop, and caribou hair, in addition to a host of yellow, purple, and white flowers. I am humbled by the life that survives in such a harsh landscape, by the austere beauty of tussock and sky, and by the fact that we have the opportunity to protect this landscape for future generations.

Our most exciting day is No. 6, when we see a grizzly bear. We can only see it through our 45x spotting scope, but I can feel the palpable energy in the group. The most common comment as we look through the scope is a simple "Wow," punctuated by the occasional "I think it's getting closer." I am surprised by how blond the bear is and how it digs up the tundra looking for food. Since we do not want to surprise the bear, we build a small fire, hoping that our scent will drift down toward it. When I go to bed around midnight, the bear is still out there.

On our final day on the river, we paddle out to an unnamed barrier island, about a quarter mile from shore. It is mostly barren but covered in driftwood. We build a huge fire and celebrate our adventure by diving into the Beaufort Sea. We run back to the fire, clean and exhilarated. Again, I sense an energy in the group, but now it is an energy of joy, a joy to be alive in this stunning landscape of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Tuesday, 9 Aug 2005

FAIRBANKS, Alaska

We arrive back in Fairbanks early in the evening on Aug. 8. Everyone takes showers and we all eat Thai food a few blocks from campus. The conversation centers on our trip, with everyone sharing stories of what they saw, heard, smelled, and felt, particularly mosquitoes. None of us had ever experienced such biblical bug swarms. (They were so bad that when I was in the tent their inexhaustible crashing into the walls sounded like rain drops.) We laugh often and bask in a post-trip glow.

A river runs through it.

The next day we return to in-class discussions. We are at the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks (UAF). What a change it is to sit inside in a tan conference room. Our first talk is from Roger Kaye, longtime wilderness specialist and pilot for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He recently completed a Ph.D. at UAF titled The Campaign to Establish a Last Great Wilderness: The Arctic National Wildlife Range.

"My main interest is the underlying values that led to the establishment of the refuge. Why is wilderness important?" begins Kaye. "It's not the number of caribou or number of species that is important, but wilderness values." He then launches into a thought-provoking discussion of the history of the refuge. Five people were central to the original idea of preservation: Wilderness Society cofounder Bob Marshall; National Park Service planner George Collins ("the agency's dreamer of the biggest dreams"); NPS "maverick biologist" Lowell Sumner; and naturalist-conservationists Olaus and Mardy Murie.

Marshall was the first to call for protection, writing, "In the name of a balanced use of American resources, let's keep Alaska largely a wilderness!" In 1938, three years after founding The Wilderness Society and one year before he died, Marshall recommended that all of Alaska north of the Yukon River, with the exception of an area near Nome, be permanently set aside. His proposal attracted little interest with world war on the horizon, and in 1943 in Public Land Order No. 82, the federal government declared that all land north of the crest of the Brooks Range be set aside for national defense.

Collins and Sumner emerged on the scene in 1949 when NPS assistant director Conrad Wirth told Collins, "Go to Alaska and see that great piece of the world." At the suggestion of a U.S. Geological Service official, they focused on the north, particularly the land east of the Canning River, now the boundary of the refuge. In 1953, in what Kaye calls the article that launched the campaign for protection, Collins and Lowell wrote, "The northeast Arctic wilderness offers an ideal chance to preserve an undisturbed natural area large enough to be biologically self-sufficient."

A central impetus to Collins' and Lowell's thinking was Aldo Leopold. Collins required all of his planners to read A Sand County Almanac, with Leopold's vision of the land ethic. In Sand County, he writes, "A land ethic of course cannot prevent the alteration, management, and use of these 'resources,' but it does affirm their right to continued existence, and, at least in spots, their continued existence in a natural state."

Three years after the NPS pair made their proposal for wilderness, the Muries led a scientific party into the Sheenjek River valley. (This was not their first trip into the Brooks Range. In 1924, they explored the Arctic on a 550-mile-long honeymoon journey by boat and dogsled.) The Sheenjek expedition became a catalyst for protecting what became known as the Arctic National Wildlife Range. Olaus Murie called it "a little portion of our planet left alone" where one has "the opportunity to study the interrelationships of plants and animals, to see how Nature proceeds with evolutionary processes."

For three years, the Muries and the nascent environmental movement lobbied to protect what Collins and Lowell had dubbed the "Last Great Wilderness." At the end of President Eisenhower's administration, on Dec. 6, 1960, Interior Secretary Fred Seaton signed Public Land Order 2214. It established the 8.9-million-acre Arctic Range "for the purpose of preserving unique wildlife, wilderness, and recreational values." It was a radical idea.

Kaye reminds us that in the 1950s there was no Clean Air Act, no Clean Water Act, no Endangered Species Act. The post-war boom was drastically altering the landscape and the range represented what Kaye calls a "legacy of restraint." Never before had a refuge been created for preserving wilderness values. Kaye adds that it was no coincidence that the same people who lobbied for the range were pivotal in the establishment of the Wilderness Act in 1964. "The Arctic Range was the very ideal of the Wilderness Act," says Kaye.

Kaye's ideas on wilderness are a powerful argument for us all. Throughout our time on the river, we had talked about restraint and wilderness. Following one discussion, my notes read, "Perhaps we can be the people who say No to development. No to our urge to consume. No to affecting the lives of 120,000 caribou. We can say Yes to needing less. Yes, to developing a stronger relationship to the countries that provide us petroleum. What kind of world is it when all the sacred places are no more, when we had the opportunity to show restraint but lacked the courage or imagination to do so?"

When I talk to students and instructors in the days following Kaye's presentation, everyone mentions how it helped to clarify their thoughts. Many of them have come to the same conclusion: that the debate over the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is ultimately about values, about morals, about protecting the land for future generations. Furthermore, they are impressed that what we considered to be such an amazing example of wilderness has been the symbol for wilderness for the past 50 years.

One student concludes, "I liked getting the historical perspective. I didn't know the battle had been going on for so long. It gives me even more resolve to protect it."

Wednesday, 10 Aug 2005

FAIRBANKS, Alaska

For the two days following Roger Kaye's talk, we remain in Fairbanks meeting with scientists, activists, and pro-development representatives who talk to us about wildlife, Native issues, politics, and geology in the refuge. Throughout the talks, one subject dominates: caribou. Depending on which reports you read and who you hear speak, caribou will either thrive or suffer if the refuge is opened to drilling.

Handle with caribou.

On the pro-development side, people observe that the Central Arctic caribou population, which primarily uses the region around the Prudhoe Bay oil fields, has grown more than sevenfold since Prudhoe Bay development began in the mid-1970s. The herd has now reached its highest level ever recorded. Furthermore, the herd benefits from the microclimate of gravel pads and roads. A handout from Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski's (R) office, titled "Arctic Oil: Fact Versus Fiction," contains this line: "There is absolutely no indication that environmentally responsible exploration will harm the 123,000-member Porcupine caribou herd."

Anti-development people, instead, observe that petroleum infrastructure, such as roads, pads, and pipelines, have pushed pregnant caribou and nursing mothers away from preferred habitat. They say the rise in the Central Arctic caribou population is attributable to several years of mild weather, and that in the mid-1990s, the Central Arctic population dropped, mostly because of cumulative effects and high insect numbers. In addition, they cite reports that a small reduction in the number of surviving calves -- less than 5 percent in a single year -- could reduce the size of the herd.

One aspect of the arguments that stands out is who the opponents and proponents cite. When Murkowski's environmental liaison, Chuck Kleeschulte, spoke to the group, he handed out a sheaf of reports and citations on caribou. Of the 17 papers on Kleeschulte's reference list, 16 were written or co-written by one person, Matthew Cronin. In contrast, those opposed to drilling generally cite papers by Raymond Cameron. Who to believe? Some of Cronin's work has been funded by BP Exploration, and he has written many articles on caribou for libertarian and private-property-rights groups. Cameron formerly worked for the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and his work is generally cited more often in the scientific literature.

"It is a hard jump to make from a comparison of the Central Arctic caribou to the Porcupine caribou herd in the 1002," says Patricia Reynolds, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, getting to the heart of the debate. The Porcupine caribou migrate much farther, 400-plus miles versus 120 miles, and number 123,000 versus 27,000. In addition, the coastal plain section of the refuge, which is the most critical calving and nursing area for the Porcupine caribou, is only 40 miles deep between water and the mountains, as opposed to the Prudhoe Bay area used by the Central Arctic caribou, which is up to 100 miles deep.

Although the comparison may be hard to make, Fran Mauer, a recently retired U.S. FWS wildlife biologist who worked for 21 years in the Arctic Refuge, raises several key points about caribou. The first is that the narrowness of the refuge's coastal plain means that if drilling forces the Porcupine caribou away from the coastal plain, they will be forced into areas of more predators and more insects. Second is that all of the caribou on the North Slope have experienced population growth since the 1970s, most likely due to mild weather, but the Porcupine herd did not grow as fast as others and thus is less resilient. Combine these biological concerns with the large herd size, long-distance migration, and changes in climate, and Mauer concludes that the Porcupine caribou will be negatively affected by drilling in the 1002.

He adds one final point, which may be the most important for this debate. "It's not just the caribou, stupid," says Mauer, whose primary field of research was the Porcupine caribou herd. The refuge is home to 36 species of land mammal, ranging in size from the common shrew (weight equal to a dime) to polar bears, which can peak at 1,700 pounds. Nine marine mammals, including four whale species and three seal species, live in or visit the refuge, in addition to 36 species of fish. Birds make up the largest group, both in terms of numbers and diversity, with 180 migrant and resident species.

Among the most abundant visitors to the refuge are snow geese. Some years, in the fall, up to 300,000 snow geese arrive on the coastal plain to feed on cotton grass and fatten up for their 1,200-mile, nonstop migration to northern Alberta. Mauer observes that the 1002 is the only caribou calving area that overlaps with snow geese. "How much has caribou nutrient enhancement affected this area?" asks Mauer.

Both Mauer and Reynolds also discuss the importance of the 1002 to polar bears, many of which den in the area. A secondary concern is how global warming affects polar bears, which suffer decreased body condition and reproductive performance with earlier breakup of sea ice. Nor are the effects limited to land. Bowhead whales, which are central to the Inupiat way of life, are at risk from offshore drilling and seismic exploration. During the bowhead migration in the summer and fall, the whales will avoid loud sounds coming from 20 or more miles away. Recognition of the potential effects of offshore drilling has contributed to the growing number of Inupiat in Kaktovik who oppose development of the refuge.

After Mauer's talk, which is the final scientific one we hear, I ask some of the students for their thoughts. "I think Mauer's comment is right on," says Ben Brigham, a graduate student in marine affairs with an undergraduate degree in wildlife science. "The caribou issue is so contentious, we have to look at other issues and species as well, and see the cumulative effects. I think that is one of the central points missing from this debate."

Thursday, 11 Aug 2005

KAKTOVIK, Alaska, and SEATTLE, Wash.

"For us, this is a human-rights stand," says Luci Beach, executive director of the Gwich'in Steering Committee.

We are back in the classroom at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, for our final talk about the refuge. Beach tells us how in 1988, the elders of the Gwich'in community called a gathering to discuss the proposal to drill in the 1002, which they call Ishik Gwats'an Gwandaii Goodlit, "the sacred place where life began." "Since time immemorial, we have made decisions by our elders gathering. After much discussion and prayers, we chose to protect this area," says Beach. "There would be no compromise on the caribou nursing grounds."

Two days earlier we had heard a similar message from Robert Thompson, a community leader in Kaktovik. He explained how he was circulating a petition against drilling in the 1002, which we could see from where we stood on the runway at the Kaktovik Airport on Barter Island. "We now have 59 signatures of the 173 registered voters. I expect to get the 60th soon," he says, pointing out that of registered voters in town, only 98 voted in the 2004 general election. "We recognize that the refuge is a stepping stone to offshore drilling." (Although they live just across a small lagoon from the coastal plain, and do hunt caribou and other animals in the refuge, the Inupiat culture centers on bowhead whale hunting.)

What is surprising about Thompson's discussion is that until recently pro-development forces justified their argument by claiming that the people of Kaktovik supported drilling. (In the critical March 2005 Senate vote on the Arctic Refuge, Hawaii Sen. Daniel Akaka [D] supported drilling because of the reported support of the Inupiat for development.) "That data is three years old," says Thompson.

As we talked with Thompson, he offered several reasons for his stand against drilling that we had not heard. Promises to Native peoples were not kept. For example, he describes how developers said that the footprint around the new Alpine fields west of the 1002 would be so small one wouldn't even notice it, but now the town of Nuiqsut is completely surrounded by Alpine infrastructure. He is also concerned about pollution from Prudhoe, which can lead to a yellow smoke smothering Kaktovik during inversions.

Two other talks in Fairbanks shed light on the situation in Kaktovik. When one student questioned Sen. Lisa Murkowski's (R) aide, Chuck Kleeschulte, about the Thompson petition, Kleeschulte said that Thompson was not from the village, did not speak the language well, and had misled petition signers. We also heard from Debbie Miller, a naturalist and writer who has spent the last two decades exploring the refuge. Miller told us that when there was a recent town meeting on drilling organized by Alaska senators, they could not categorically deny that there was a plan for offshore drilling. She said that that lack of protection for the offshore environment seemed to be the turning point for the Inupiat.

For the Gwich'in, the debate about the Arctic Refuge is simple. Every aspect of Gwich'in life revolves around caribou. They rely on caribou for as much as 80 percent of their diet, plus tools, clothing, and spiritual guidance. "Caribou retain part of the Gwich'in heart, and Gwich'in retain part of the caribou heart," says Beach. The "place where life began" is such sacred land that few if any Gwich'in even go there. "My family has been through three famines and still never went to the coastal plain," she says.

Beach also tells us that the Gwich'in are leading a six-week vigil in Washington, D.C., timed to coincide with an upcoming congressional vote on a budget bill that contains a provision to open the refuge to drilling. The demonstration will take place across the street from the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian, every day from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and include Gwich'in singing, dancing, and drumming. It will culminate during the week of Sept. 20 with a large Rally for the Refuge.

Although the opinions and actions of Native people are critical in the battle over the refuge, one additional cultural group keeps coming up in our talks in Fairbanks. For the past 23 years, every Alaska citizen has received a check directly tied to oil revenue, from what's known as the Permanent Fund. Checks have ranged from $331.29 in 1984 to $1,963.86 in 2000, when oil royalties made up 82 percent of the state's revenue. Payments dropped to $919.84 in 2004. As Fran Mauer puts it, "We are like a family with one member who has an addiction, who takes down the family masterpiece and sells it to pay for his addiction."

This dependence helps explain an odd little conundrum in North Slope oil development. When we were still in Seattle, we heard about the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. In 1923, the federal government set aside 23 million acres west of Prudhoe Bay for oil for the military. Recent reports estimate that between 6.7 billion and 15 billion barrels of oil are under the NPRA, and yet little development has occurred on this land.

We kept asking people why NPRA had not been developed. We finally gained an insight when Bob Swenson talked to us about geology. He made the observation that NPRA is federal land, as opposed to state-owned Prudhoe Bay, which means that Alaskans would receive less money from development in NPRA. The Arctic Refuge is also federal land, but has different provisions governing oil use and would lead to more money going directly to Alaska citizens.

This information ties directly into a statement made to the group by Fran Mauer. He told us that polls show 60 to 70 percent support among Alaskans for drilling in the refuge, while in the Lower 48, 60 to 70 percent support protection. "With dropping oil revenue from Prudhoe, Alaskans can't wait to bring the refuge online," says Mauer.

In floating through the coastal plain, I kept thinking about sacred lands and Native people's rights. How many times in our past have we trampled the rights and history of indigenous people? We cannot correct the past, but perhaps with "the sacred place where life began," we can begin to turn toward a new path and respect and honor the Native people and their wishes.

We arrive back in Seattle on Thursday, Aug. 11, tired and transformed. My feeling is that most of us who went up there were either anti-drilling or leaning that way. We are still opposed to drilling, but we realize that the scientific and cultural issues are far more numerous, complex, and nuanced than we had ever imagined. We can see that both sides use rhetoric and well-chosen facts to make their arguments.

We know how lucky we have been to travel to the refuge, to delve deeply and thoroughly into a topic, and to learn so much from those who are so knowledgeable and passionate. But perhaps the most important parts of the trip were the discovery of the power of the refuge landscape and the recognition that the issue ultimately comes down to a moral decision.

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