The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge renews my hope for escaping interference from the noise of the industrialized world. Its landscape spans from boreal forest in the sub-arctic in the Brooks Range to the Arctic with its tundra, rivers, lagoons, bays and coasts. This intact wild and open space requires special consideration and deserves to be protected as a whole unit.
On Thursday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is hosting a public meeting for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Comprehensive Conservation Plan revision. This plan will encompass all the stages necessary for overseeing the future of the refuge and includes a wilderness review for all lands not yet designated wilderness, including its coastal plain. It will cover day-to-day management issues, including how to ensure the wilderness values of the refuge, such as solitude and its naturalness and diversity of wildlife, remain for future generations.
When the last plan was completed more than 20 years ago, no new wilderness was proposed and this has left the coastal plain area in limbo ever since, even though it is has been a vital part of the Arctic refuge since it was set aside 50 years ago. While Congress is the only entity that can designate wilderness, the formal wilderness review process was laid out by the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act in 1980 and other refuge laws.
If the coastal plain receives the wilderness protection and becomes a wilderness area, this would join the Arctic refuge coastline with the body of the original refuge, which was awarded wilderness status in 1980. It is painfully obvious the refuge should receive our nation’s strongest protection — wilderness — as a contiguous piece of land from its Beaufort Sea shorelines, islands and lagoons, inland across rivers, tundra and foothills to the mountains. There is a deep-rooted connection from one ecosystem to the next through its rivers, wildlife migrations and watersheds, and to leave this piece of land vulnerable to oil and gas development does not meet the purpose of this refuge to protect all the naturally functioning relationships between shared ecosystems. The Arctic and all who wish to experience this place, whether directly or indirectly, deserve one fully protected coastline within the Arctic refuge and for this area to be managed for its wholeness.
In Alaska, when a recommended wildlife refuge area is designated as wilderness, our residents still have basic freedoms to hunt, fish, berry pick, dog mush, hike, camp and enjoy the wild land. Subsistence uses are a purpose of the refuge, and snowmachine and boat use is allowed in refuge wilderness in Alaska.
With the possibilities for offshore oil exploration looming in the near future, we had better look to protect these special arctic habitats already part of a wildlife refuge. Be reminded that the impacts to the tundra at Prudhoe Bay have well surpassed the anticipated estimates. An estimated 200 million gallons of fresh water per year is extracted from lakes and streams for oil operations. Spills and other cumulative impacts tax biological integrity.
America has the resourcefulness and acumen to transform the energy industry. It is short-sightedness to desperately seek every possible corner of our beautiful Alaska for development. We the people must demand alternative, clean and renewable energy sources. Our homes and cars can become far more fuel-efficient in order to let go of our dependence on oil.
Please make your voices heard and get involved in the public process we are so privileged to be a part of. Become informed about the process for better protections for the Arctic refuge coastal plain as wilderness. Be part of the process at the Morris Thompson Cultural and Visitors Center on Thursday, from
3 - 8:30 p.m. It might be a noisy discussion, but, for me, it is important as I think about the quiet on the land.
Because: that is how much the inflationary run up in fuel prices by the anti-drilling anti-oil, anti-human, anti-wood stove, save the planet from global warming, environmentalists is costing me.
And you, can kick in money to replace 50% of my IRA lost to inflation.
You need to be on your knees thanking your fellow humans for indulging your perfect world fantacy, rather than writing propaganda letters to the news papers.
Since the root cause of most environmental problems is over population, I am sure you will do your part, to save Mother Earth, by getting fixed! And, if already have children-have them fixed.
-- yuxpc
Are all environmentalist this delusional? I love enjoying the outdoors as much as anyone but to be so selfish as to put your own wants ahead of good paying jobs, self-sufficient oil production and reasonable economic development is unjustified. I have worked up on the slope and can tell you that when the wind stops blowing for a second this is the most desolate and quiet place I have ever been. A few well houses and an ice road does not diminish the solitude one little bit.
I pity the guys who will be working out there, not a bar in sight for miles.
Drill the coastal plain and help wean our nation from foreign oil. Ya know, what the EPA was originally created to do. Billions down the drain and counting and we're still buying Saudi oil.
Running out of wilderness, nowhere to go where you don't hear some man made noise. Yeah right. 3 miles out of North Pole, at 2 am and its quiet as a cemetery. I go out and get away from it all, all the time, and never even leave the borough. And you need what, the whole top half of the state for your personal utopia and sanctuary? Why don't you go renovate Kalifornia, and return it to its pristine wilderness beauty. Now there's something real for you to do, instead of living in your fantasy world. Liberal Walkoff....
If silence is what she craves, most of Alaska does not have oil or valuable minerals. She should go there.