Subject: [LABIRD-L] one oilman's view of ANWR (fwd)
Date: Aug 12 13:09:26 2001
From: Dennis Paulson - dpaulson at ups.edu


I know it's too late for the vote, but perhaps there are still ways to stop
the drilling. Here is a compelling report from one person.

>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2001 11:16:36 -0500
>From: Van Remsen <najames at unix1.sncc.lsu.edu>
>Reply-To: Bulletin Board for Dissemination of Information on Louisiana
> Birds <LABIRD-L at listserv.lsu.edu>
>To: LABIRD-L at listserv.lsu.edu
>Subject: [LABIRD-L] one oilman's view of ANWR
>
>LABIRD: FYI below; definitely worth a skim if you're interested in the
>fate of Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (where some of our Louisiana
>wintering birds presumably breed):
>
>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2001 00:31:17 EDT
>From: GreatGrayO at aol.com
>Subject- ANWR
>
>
>I just got this narrative written by Mark Herndon. Mark is an oilman from
>Oklahoma who has worked with us for many years on our storm intercept
>projects as a volunteer. He just spent a month trekking ANWR... read what
>he has to say. Pass it on to your friends if you are so inclined.
>
>Erik Rasmussen
>Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies
>NSSL/OU
>
>Hi everyone,
>
>For those of you who don't know, I returned yesterday from a month alone
>in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in far northeastern Alaska. I'm
>really beat. I lost 25 lbs and basically feel like I have been beaten up.
>It was a really tough trip.
>
>I want to share a little bit about the place with you while it is still
>fresh in my mind; things that I feel are very important. I want to grab
>you by the lapels and tell you a few things that are true, because I have
>seen them.
>
>ANWR is probably the biggest chunk of absolute wilderness left in this
>country. I've also been in part of Gates of the Arctic National Park and
>Noatak National Preserve, two other large protected areas in the Brooks
>Range. ANWR is huge compared to those places; it's a place where you could
>walk your whole life and never see it all. Contrary to what you may have
>heard about the place in the media, it is not a vast wasteland. It is like
>heaven on earth, and hasn't been touched by man. There is not a single
>building, not a single trail, in an area that I've heard is about
>comparable to South Carolina. It's 19 million acres and there ain't no
>visitor center.
>
>Very few people go there. It is difficult and committing to get there.
>Since I have been there, and with the current political situation about
>ANWR's coastal plain, I emphatically want to tell you what it is like. And
>feel free to tell your friends.
>
>First, I paddled the Canning River, on the west side of the Refuge. I
>started up high in the glaciated Brooks Range and hiked for a few days.
>Craggy mountains and a two day snowstorm on the fourth of July. It looks
>wilder than the wildest part of Colorado without the trees. That part of
>the refuge is far north of treeline.
>
>As I floated down I saw gyrfalcons, peregrines and golden eagles. I saw
>musk ox and had a long, close encounter with a grizzly bear. Everywhere
>were tracks of caribou, muskox, grizzly, wolf and wolverine.
>
>I hiked up side valleys that were miles wide and absolutely flat tundra
>covered with lupines and arctic poppies. A close examination of the tundra
>reveals hundreds of tiny flowers and lichens. Everywhere were old caribou
>antlers and skulls poking up through the tundra. Wolf killed caribou
>skeletons also dot the tundra, often skulls with huge antlers attached. I
>saw more muskox, and managed to walk pretty close to some of them, before
>they got a little agitated.
>
>As I floated out of the mountains to the coastal plain I began to see
>caribou in earnest. More than you could ever count. It was like being in a
>herd in Africa. This is also where I came out of the wilderness part of
>the refuge and the river became the boundary between state land on the
>left (where oil exploration goes on) and ANWR on the right bank. On the
>state land I began to see many abandoned fuel drums and huge tracks on the
>tundra where cat trains shoot seismic in the winter. The tracks don't go
>away any time soon. I saw abandoned drums on the tundra constantly after a
>while over on the state land.
>
>As I crossed the coastal plain I saw many smaller caribou herds and began
>to see lots of birds; geese, ducks, tundra swans, and many strange types
>of birds that I have no idea what they were, probably migrating up from
>Hawaii or Chile to nest.
>
>All this time, I saw more and more garbage on the left bank. Most of the
>animals were on the right bank. In this day and age, I would think that
>BP-Amoco, Exxon, and Phillips would go clean all that crap up.
>
>I made my way to the delta of the river where it empties into the Beaufort
>Sea, and in a 2:00am lull in the wind paddled a roundabout 10 miles across
>the four mile lagoon to an island that is about 6 miles long. There were
>many small icebergs about thirty feet across. I saw old sod huts that the
>eskimos used to live in on the island, and found that the entire north
>side of the island was still fast against the sea ice which continues to
>somewhere in Russia, I guess. I walked out on it for a ways, and it is
>really rough. One day I watched ringed seals (polar bears staple food)
>sunning on the ice through binoculars. I saw a huge set of polar bear
>tracks around the lagoon side of the island, but they were pretty old. The
>island was just a few miles outside of the ANWR boundary, and Exxon had
>drilled a dry hole on it in the past two years. It was one of the
>filthiest locations I have ever seen in my 15 years working in the oil
>industry. I was really surprised, because Exxon drillsites in the lower 48
>are usually the cleanest of them all. I was not impressed with what I saw
>of the oil industry in Alaska.
>
>Then my bush plane landed on a sandspit and took me to the headwaters of
>the Jago river, which is supposed to be one of the most beautiful places
>on earth. I spent ten days in this valley, hiking up to the glaciated
>peaks at it's headwaters. Part of the Porcupine caribou herd had gone
>south up the valley a couple of days before my arrival and there were
>millions of tracks, all heading south. Interspersed were the occasional
>wolf or grizzly track. I saw a few stray cow caribou, but the show had
>already moved south for the winter.
>
>On the Jago, I was trapped for two days waiting for a rain swollen river
>to come down so I could wade across. I fell in the same river on the way
>up, and wet gear up there is serious trouble because of the cold. The only
>way to describe this valley is to take the prettiest valley in Montana or
>Idaho and double it. It just took your breath away. It was so different
>that it may as well have been the moon. One night while I slept a grizzly
>walked by my tent. There was a set of fresh tracks there that weren't
>there the night before. He paid me no mind.
>
>Anyway, I was picked up on a gravel bar on the lower river and flown out
>to Kaktovik, on the coast. I heard there were nine white people in
>Kaktovik, but the Inupiat eskimos who live there were very nice people.
>You'd see someone cleaning a freshly killed bearded seal in the front yard
>of their house. A local hunter (they basically all hunt and whale) heard
>I'd been on the Canning and sought me out for skinny on where the caribou
>still were. From there, I made all of the flights home.
>
>Before I went to see ANWR for myself I already had some conceptions. After
>last year in Alaska I thought that modern oil exploration could be done
>responsibly. Certainly most Alaskans were for it. They got $1600 each last
>year from the north slope oil money.
>
>After seeing ANWR....seeing that coastal plain myself, I realized that
>there are a lot of lies being told about this place. It is not a vast
>wasteland. It is achingly beautiful, and if you value wild places, the
>refuge could be considered a sanctuary or a cathedral. To me, it was an
>intense experience far beyond what I expected. I have been going to wild
>places most of my life, but I have never been to a place like this. Not
>even close in the lower 48.
>
>There are a few places that are just not appropriate for large scale oil
>exploration. This place is far more fantastic than Yellowstone or Grand
>Teton, but it is far away and few care.
>
>If we put a bunch of drill pads on that coastal plain we will be making a
>terrible mistake. Our country will never again be energy independent
>anyway. Those numbers don't lie. Drilling in ANWR will only help about 4
>major oil companies and the state of Alaska (which is completely addicted
>to the oil tit). The numbers don't lie. It will only make a few percent
>difference to the nation.
>
>The first morning back, I read in the paper that the House approved
>drilling in ANWR. I felt like crying. That coastal plain is very narrow,
>and the most environmentally sensitive exploration would put a giant blot
>on it.
>
>Most of you will never meet anyone else in your life who has actually been
>to ANWR. Fewer still who have crossed the coastal plain. I emphatically
>urge you to listen to what I am saying and take it into account as you
>form your own opinions. The vote to open ANWR still has to make it through
>the senate, and those of you in Oklahoma are wasting paper by writing to
>our senators; to those of you in other states, maybe you can help.
>
>And remember. I AM in the oil industry. I'm all for drilling in many, many
>places. Not here. The price is way too high.
>
>I can't emphasize enough how special this place is. I don't believe the
>promise that they will only disturb 2000 acres. When they get through
>shooting seismic in that place it will look like a chessboard from the
>air. It's kind of like a football field. 22 players standing on their feet
>probably occupy far less than 100 square feet of that football field. But
>they sure do make an impression. The coastal plain is the living part of
>the refuge. The rest is very mountainous and almost sterile by comparison.
>To go stomping on the coastal plain with a series of industrial sights is
>just too much.
>
>I don't want to have to say that I saw ANWR way back BEFORE it got all
>messed up.
>
>Thanks for listening (for those of you who made it through this).
>
>Mark Herndon

Dennis Paulson, Director phone 253-879-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax 253-879-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416
http://www.ups.edu/biology/museum/museum.html