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A Wild and Unbounded Place Until Robert Edwin Peary reached the North Pole in 1909, the North American Arctic was one of the least known places on the planet. In the years since that expedition, the Arctic's silent expanses have become threatened by the industrial extraction of its fish, oil, gas, and minerals to satisfy the incessant consumer demands of a growing world population. In view of the Arctic's vulnerability, Canada and the United States, along with other circumpolar nations, have formally agreed to monitor environmental damage in the region, establish an emergency response program, protect the marine environment, and conserve endemic flora and fauna. These are huge challenges, and the Sierra Club, whose members have long explored the arctic environment and worked for its protection, is determined to see this international commitment carried out. Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the adjoining 5-million-acre Ivvavik National Park in Canada already form the first international arctic preserve. The Porcupine caribou herd that calves on the coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge remains the most important meat source for the 7000 Gwich'in Indians scattered throughout Alaska and the Yukon. Also to be found here are polar and grizzly bears, wolves, foxes, musk-oxen, Dall sheep, and more than 135 bird species. Yet huge chunks of the ecoregion still lack essential wilderness protections. Oil-and-gas development threatens the coastal plain, including the 1.5 million acres at the biological heart of the Refuge. The Sierra Club, which played a lead role in establishing the refuge by spearheading passage of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980, is today spurring the Canadian government to expand Ivvavik and urging the U.S. Congress to give the Arctic Refuge wilderness status. Club activists are also pushing for the greater Arctic Refuge/Ivvavik ecosystem to be declared an International Biosphere Reserve through the United Nations Man and the Biosphere Program. One of the most vulnerable areas of the Arctic is the 6-million-acre utility corridor flanking the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, which transects three wildlife refuges and Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve. Despite intense public opposition, the Bureau of Land Management transferred almost 700,000 acres of this land to the state of Alaska, which seeks eventual control over the entire stretch north of the Yukon River. The Sierra Club hopes to prevent the state from selling this land to private owners and developers. In the northwest corner of Alaska, a pristine area the size of Indiana became a National Petroleum Reserve in 1976 at oil-industry insistence; it contains wildlife habitat that scientists have yet to thoroughly investigate. The Sierra Club wants an assessment of the region so that the most biologically sensitive areas can be protected. Without such a study, extraordinary places could be damaged before much is known of their natural history. Of particular interest to researchers are the Utukok and Colville rivers, both of which flow from the De Long Mountains in the western end of the Brooks Range. Along the icy northern edge of the continent, activists are working to protect Alaska's offshore areas, the enormously fertile Chukchi and Beaufort seas, as well as the Arctic Ocean. Large tracts of these waters have been leased for oil drilling, and the risk of catastrophic spills is very real. Several oil companies are planning or have already started exploratory drilling. To stop them, the Club, in coordination with other conservation groups, is calling for a moratorium on lease sales. The reason for these concerns becomes especially clear to those who visit the Arctic Refuge in summer and see its wildflowers blooming in profusion under the midnight sun, who meet with Native villagers, and who witness the spectacle of tens of thousands of caribou migrating to their calving grounds. As Arctic explorers George Collins and Lowell Sumner wrote in the Sierra Club Bulletin in 1953, "The preservation of a part of the original Arctic wilderness would be one significant step toward further understanding the Northland's biological wealth; it would protect wildlife breeding areas, and one of the great scenic and historic regions of North America." To Learn More See our Wildlands Campaign to protect the Arctic Wildlife Refuge.Contact: Polar Bear photo courtesy Northern Alaska Environmental Center. Up to Top |
