THE oil industry is to have access to 158,000 hectares of Alaska’s northern coastal plain which until now had been off limits to development, as part of a lease sale including an additional 1.77 million hectares.
The habitat in question is a small portion of the north-east corner of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska which has critical goose moulting sites and caribou calving grounds (91av, 16 April 2005, p 44). The Inupiat who hunt and fish there,and the Yup’ik who hunt the region’s migratory birds hundreds of kilometres away, say they have the most to lose. “It’s going to have a really big impact on our people here,” says Myron Naneng, president of The Association of Village Council Presidents, which represents Native tribes in west Alaska.
Every president from Reagan to Clinton has kept this area off limits, says Edward Itta, mayor of the North Slope Borough. But a decision last week by the US Department of the Interior has changed all that. “The Bush administration is letting policy trump science,” he says.
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Henri Bisson, Alaskan director of the US Bureau of Land Management says he believes “the subsistence values” will be protected in the areas where land leases are for sale. But Craig George, a wildlife biologist in North Slope Borough, is not impressed. His reaction to the BLM plan? “You don’t print expletives, right?”
