Column: Tell Trump to leave the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge alone
The Columbus Dispatch
During the summer of 1990, while camping on the Okpilak River in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, I received a visit from former President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn. He had read my book, “Midnight Wilderness,” and wanted to meet me. They arrived in a helicopter with Secret Service agents who watched for bears. I took them fishing with my daughters and sister.
On that memorable trip, the Carters witnessed the migration of the Porcupine caribou herd on the coastal plain. Tens of thousands of caribou with month-old calves flooded the tundra before them. Astonished and deeply moved, President Carter understood why many had described this special birthplace as “America’s Serengeti.”
Modified: 12/11/2020 5:50:14 AM
During the summer of 1990, while camping on the Okpilak River in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, I received a visit from former President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn. He had read my book,
Midnight Wilderness, and wanted to meet me. They arrived in a helicopter with Secret Service agents who watched for bears. I took them fishing with my daughters and sister.
On that memorable trip, the Carters witnessed the migration of the Porcupine caribou herd on the coastal plain. Tens of thousands of caribou with month-old calves flooded the tundra before them. Astonished and deeply moved, President Carter understood why many had described this special birthplace as “America’s Serengeti.”
Universal Images Group via Getty
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, an expanse of public land in Alaska the size of South Carolina, is one of the last untouched landscapes in the world. The native Gwich’in people who have lived in harmony with the area’s migratory Porcupine caribou herd for centuries call the refuge’s vast coastal plain Iizhik Gwats’an Gwandaii Goodlit, or “The Sacred Place Where Life Begins.”
But in the past few years, the fate of the refuge’s roughly 19.5 million acres has become rather bleak:
Its permafrost is melting rapidly, along with the rest of the Arctic region. The refuge’s coastal plain also remains at risk to oil and gas development, which companies have long had their eye on but have been barred from doing until now.