Killing caribou for the sake of oil
The United States is pressing ahead with Arctic drilling -- despite the concerns of Canada
Times Colonist
March 21, 2005
The U.S. oil barons are fond of saying they can extract oil from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska without hurting the Porcupine caribou herd or other wildlife that Americans and Canadians share.
"There are so many caribou they are rubbing up against the pipeline," president George Bush said in 1991. "They're breeding like mad. They're having a great time."
Today his son, George W. Bush, is closer than any president has come to sending the drilling rigs onto the coastal plain of the refuge in search of billions of barrels of crude oil that are believed to lie below the tundra.
The concerns of environmentalists -- who call it the Serengeti of the North for its wildlife, the largest concentration in the entire Arctic -- won't matter if the drilling provision goes through Congress. The fears of the Gwich'in nation that relies on the caribou for food, clothing, tools and a way of life will be swept aside.
The objection of Canada that allowing oil production in the fragile tundra would violate international agreements made in 1980 and 1987 between the two countries will be ignored, as so many other agreements have been. As security trumps trade in Washington, so security of energy supply trumps the environment.
Republican presidents since Ronald Reagan have been trying to open the tundra to oil extraction. The House of Representatives in which Republicans are a majority has been on side virtually from the start. The Senate has been the holdout, but after the November elections, the Republicans expanded their majority.
On Wednesday the Senate voted its support for Arctic drilling and deprived opponents of using a filibuster to block passage of the measure by tying it to the budget approval process where that tactic is not allowed. If the budget, with the drilling provision, passes, oil could be gushing out of the tundra within 10 years, according to the industry.
The oil companies say that with modern technology the footprint that drilling makes on the land will be small. But the network of roads, buildings, pipelines, and airstrips and heavy machinery associated with extraction will disrupt the calving grounds of the Porcupine caribou, wildlife scientists have warned.
Despite Bush Sr.'s enthusiastic view of this vulnerable species, the U.S. Department of the Interior concluded in the 1980s that female caribou cannot tolerate industrial development during or after calving. When drilling began in Prudhoe Bay the 10,000 female caribou in the central Arctic herd avoided the facilities, but the coastal plain is 80 kilometres wide there. The 100,000 females are squeezed onto a coastal plain that is just 25 kilometres wide, only a portion of which is suitable for calving.
It's a certainty, environmentalists say, that they would move to calf in the foothills of the Brooks Range, easy prey for the wolves and grizzlies that roam there: The death rate of calves would be so high that the herd would inevitably decline.
Curiously, this was acknowledged by the Interior Department in 1986 when it predicted a 40-per-cent reduction in the herd if the coastal plain were developed.
The U.S. passed a law in 1980 recognizing Canada's interest in the Arctic refuge and requiring consultations with Canada before any development there.
In 1987 the two countries signed an agreement for co-operation in conserving the Porcupine caribou herd. Now, we're being told to butt out of U.S. internal energy policy and to trust the Americans to look out for those animals whose "great time" is running out.
Sorry, but we can't do that.