Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR)

Overview

A recent controversial environmental policy question is whether exploratory oil drilling will be allowed on the heretofore protected lands of Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). These pages of maps depict the geographic context of this issue and investigate development scenarios in this contested landscape. They were created by Ecotrust's Anchorage-based GIS analyst David Pray, as part of a joint project with the Alaska Conservation Alliance.

The Brooks Range stretches across the entirety of Northern Alaska, from the Chukchi Sea to the Yukon border, separating the plains of the North Slope from the southern two-thirds of the state. The North Slope is itself divided, by human designations, into the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A), in the northwest and under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, in the northeast and administered by the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Prudhoe Bay area, which lies in between and is leased by the State of Alaska. The Prudhoe Bay area, has been a source of Alaskan oil since 1968 and is the origin of the Trans-Alaska pipeline.

Arctic Alaska and Northwest Canada (View a larger version of this map.)

The 19.8 million acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was established in 1960 and enlarged to its present size in 1980. The Fish and Wildlife Service calls the Arctic Refuge "the only conservation system unit that protects, in an undisturbed condition, a complete spectrum of the arctic ecosystems in North America." Four of the highest peaks of the Brooks Range are within its borders and three of its eighteen major rivers are designated as Wild. One hundred eighty species of birds, migrating from five continents as well as each of the lower 48 states, utilize the Refuge. So do 45 species of land and marine mammals, and 36 species of fish. There are no introduced species in the Refuge.

Much of the debate, recent and in past decades, has focused on the Arctic Refuge Coastal Plain, the northernmost part of the Refuge. This 1.5 million acres, also known as the "1002 Area", is the land that the Administration would like to open for exploratory drilling. Although it comprises only eight percent of the Arctic Refuge, it represents a crucial calving ground for the Porcupine caribou herd. The Plain is the preferred calving ground for this 128,000 member herd. They return yearly for its high quality forage and lower density of both predators and insects.¹

¹ U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 2001. Potential impacts of proposed oil and gas development on the Arctic Refuge’s coastal plain: Historical overview and issues of concern. Web page of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Fairbanks, Alaska. 17 January 2001. http://arctic.fws.gov/issues1.htm

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