Caribou or oil?

by Glenn Taylor
Northern News Services

The public has always been led to believe that it must choose one or the other. Mounting evidence suggests we can have both.

Alaska's 1002 lands have become the cause celebre of the environmentalist movement. The 1.5 million acre coastal plain is the calving ground for the Porcupine caribou, and home to North America's last great untapped oil reservoir.

Many geologists believe there could be as much as 10 billion barrels of recoverable oil under 1002. Opponents of development say you can't put a price on the caribou, which they fear would be devastated by development.

But let's forget the rhetoric for a moment, and concentrate on what we know. Let's look about 120 km away to Alaska's Prudhoe Bay, for example. It is North America's largest oil development. After 30 years of intensive development, there is not yet a single scientific study documenting population decline of caribou using areas around Prudhoe for calving. -developers convince the public that caribou won't tolerate pipelines, or airstrips and roads. But that's not what we're seeing with other projects. I smiled this week while reading in News North that the Lupin Mine offers such a favorable habitat for the Bathurst caribou, that developers are considering fencing off the site. It seems the airstrips, tailing ponds and roads offer the caribou a habitat with less mosquitoes, and one where they can more easily monitor predators.

With 1002, we don't have to choose the environment or oil. Consider these facts:

• Only about 2,000 acres of the 1.5 million acre 1002 coastal plain would be needed for oil development, the equivalent of a briefcase lying on a football field.
• No evidence suggests that the four major herds that use land near Prudhoe Bay have been impacted. In fact, the Central Arctic caribou herd has tripled in size since the early 1970's, when development began.
• The Porcupine herd does use 1002 for calving, but it also uses other areas as well. Between 1982(c)95, studies show, only 44 per cent of the herd used the 1002 area, for a maximum of eight weeks.

  These facts that don't even consider the hundreds of billions of dollars that would be pumped into the Northern economy, which would also greatly benefit Inuvik as a transportation hub.

  Finally, remember that the Alaska Inupiat brothers of the Inuvialuit greatly favor 1002 development, because their beneficiaries in communities like Kaktovik would benefit from the project.

  The Alaska Gwich'in oppose the project, in my view at least, because their people would see limited benefit from the project. The Alaska Gwich'in welcomed the oil companies with open arms onto their lands years ago, but the drilling programs found nothing but dust, and moved on.

  Now it seems, for political reasons and little else, the Gwich'in are determined to kill 1002 development. With little scientific evidence backing up their caribou doomsday claims, perhaps it's time to ignore the rhetoric and consider the facts of 1002.