Congress debates oil drilling in largest US wildlife refuge
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Sometime next April, pregnant cows in the Porcupine Caribou Herd in Canada will take the lead in an annual migration of nearly 200,000 animals north to Alaska.
From winter grounds in Canada’s Yukon Territory, the caribou travelling in small and large groups will cross rivers and gaps in the mighty Brooks Range on the 400-mile (643-kilometre) journey. Their destination is the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a strip of flat tundra between the mountains and Arctic Ocean.
The plain provides food and a vantage point from which caribou can spot predators from far away. But beneath the lichens and cotton grass, there’s a hidden resource: crude oil.
Opening the coastal plain to petroleum drilling, with the hope for jobs and new oil for the trans-Alaska pipeline, has stood as a goal of every Alaska governor and the state’s members of Congress for three decades. And the opportunity is rising again in federal budget discussions.