Gates
of the Arctic National Park and Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska
Hiker: Terry Tempest Williams, author and environmental activist
Executive summary by darmansjah
In Her Words
The trail I dream of walking? Any caribou trail in Gates of the Arctic
National Park or Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Sometimes when I close my
eyes, I can hear their clicking ankles on the tundra, and I imagine walking
behind them in silence in that vast expanse of wilderness. —Terry Tempest
Williams
Length: The caribou migrate 120 to 400 miles
The Details: The northernmost park in the U.S., Gates of
the Arctic National Park and Preserve covers 8.4 million acres in the Brooks
Range just above the Arctic Circle. It has no trails and protects the habitat
and migration routes essential to the Western Arctic Caribou Herd, which has
been declining but still numbers approximately 325,000 animals, making it the
largest in Alaska. The 19.3-million-acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and
Preserve (ANWR) is probably the most well known and hotly debated wilderness in
the United States due to two natural resources it has in abundance—caribou and
oil. ANWR is a massive place consisting of mountains, tundra, and coastline
with few visitors, no trails, and a menagerie of Arctic wildlife.
The best known of those species is the caribou. Two herds live here and over
the border in Canada: the Porcupine Herd (about 169,000 animals) and the
smaller Central Arctic Herd (42,000). In spring, the Porcupine caribou come
together to make their great migration to calving grounds hundreds of miles
away on the coastal plain. The Porcupine herd leaves the coastal plain by
mid-July, mostly to avoid hatching mosquitos, and begins to head into the
foothills. In fall, they move en masse again, heading south into the Brooks
Range and Yukon Territory. The Central Arctic Herd follows a slightly different
route.
The conflict in ANWR is over 1.5 million acres of coastal plain, known also
as 1002 Area. Not only is it the calving ground for the caribou, it’s also the
site of one of what could be the largest known onshore oil and gas reserves in
the United States. For now, the only activity here is from the thousands of
caribou. It's possible to sign on with outfitters who will take you out to hike
along with them as they make their migrations in Gates of the Arctic—which has
no drilling conflict—or ANWR. It is one of the few great wildlife wonders left
on the planet.
When to Go: Spring and fall, when the caribou undertake
their great migrations
About Williams: Terry Tempest Williams has become more than
an author. She is a voice for wild places, as well as the people and animals
who inhabit them. Her book Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and
Place (Vintage, 1992) typified that ethos, telling not just the story of a
threatened Utah wildlife refuge but also of her mother’s cancer and fallout
from nuclear testing. In Finding Beauty in a Broken World (Vintage,
2009), she deals with everything from prairie dogs to Italian mosaics to
genocide. In Rwanda and in Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert
(Vintage, 2002), she explores the solitude and sensuality of her native
Colorado Plateau. Alongside her environmentalist husband Brooke Williams, she
has fought for the survival of wild places in America and abroad, winning the
Wilderness Society’s Robert Marshall Award, the Center of the American West’s
Wallace Stegner Award, and the Community of Christ International Peace Award
for her work.
No comments:
Post a Comment