The Caw Drilling in Arctic refuge could put North America’s largest caribou herd at risk

A push by lawmakers in Congress to open parts of Alaska’s vast Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling is rekindling a fierce, decades-old conservation battle. A major point of contention: how drilling in the refuge’s coastal plain might affect a main calving ground for the Porcupine caribou herd, one of North America’s largest and healthiest.

Last week, the Senate’s energy committee moved a step closer to allowing drilling in the refuge, voting 13–10 to advance legislation that orders the federal Bureau of Land Management to make two major oil lease sales in the 635,000-hectare coastal area over the next 7 years. If the bill becomes law, Republican lawmakers will have achieved a goal they have sought since the 1980s.

Drilling proponents, including Senator Lisa Murkowski (R–AK), who leads the energy panel, say the plan will minimize environmental impacts by limiting the total footprint of oil infrastructure to no more than 809 hectares. And they argue that, elsewhere on Alaska’s oil-rich North Slope, predictions that drilling would harm caribou proved to be unfounded.