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Published in Fall 2000
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Millennium Trek and NAFEC
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A fight for cultural survival in the high Arctic
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By Richard Mostyn
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It is known as the belt of life, and it ranks among the most contentious strips of real estate in North America. The Alaska Coastal Plain is a narrow strip of fertile grassland in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a 7.6-million-hectare reserve in the northeastern corner of Alaska.
For more than 20 years, oil companies have wanted to open it up to oil exploration, specifically a 600,000-hectare area known as the 1002 lands. They believe there are between 1.2 and 10 billion barrels of crude oil buried there.
The 1002 lands seem a small slice of a large refuge. But they aren't. The land the oil companies covet is the narrow coastal plain. By a freak of geology, this so-called belt of life is narrower than at any other point on Alaska's north coast.
Here, the Brooks Range extends very close to the Beaufort Sea, so the oil-rich area overlaps a fertile coastal plain just 20 kilometers wide. And it is here that the 130,000-animal Porcupine caribou herd comes to give birth to its calves. The caribou still feed 17 Gwich'in communities in the Northwest Territories (NWT), Yukon and Alaska—physically and spiritually.
Central to that unique culture is the health of these calving grounds. So sacred is that place to the Gwich'in people that, in thousands of years, they have never ventured there.
Until now.
Between August 10 and August 19, a delegation of Gwich'in, invited guests and journalists traveled between Aklavik, NWT, and Arctic Village, Alaska, journeying to the calving grounds to draw attention to the danger posed by oil exploration and development.
The impetus was the death of 15,000 calves this year, the result of a harsh winter and late spring, Doug Urquhart, a campaign strategist working for the Porcupine Caribou Management Board, wrote in a recent article in the Yukon News.
"If this kind of calamity occurred every year, the herd would wither to a remnant, taking the Gwich'in culture with it," he wrote. "But the calving grounds are a safety net that enables the herd to rebuild. Thus they can survive severe setbacks as they have since mammoths roamed this land."
Oil development threatens that.
Of course, the Alaska Coastal Plain isn't much to look at. It is plain, figuratively and literally—just a tabletop-flat ribbon of marshes, bogs, dwarf willows and tussocks (ankle-twisting tufts of grass) cut by clear-as-glass streams. But animals, insects and flowering plants flourish there.
The place is home to, among other things, dozens of species of migratory birds, grizzlies and polar bears, musk oxen, wolverines, Arctic foxes, wolves, ptarmigan, golden eagles, small rodents and snowy owls.
Look among the tussocks and you'll find legions of wolf spiders, no doubt feeding on the clouds of mosquitoes that inhabit the place. As well, you'll find a painter's palette of wildflowers, from alpine azalea to tiny Arctic poppies.
And of course, caribou.
A congregation of 15,000 caribou on the foothills of the Brooks Range resembles a swarm of bees—a difficult-to-comprehend sight when you remember bulls weigh more than 130 kilograms each.
When such a herd breaks into a gallop, it can change direction in a heartbeat, moving as if it were one organism. It easily matches the grace of a flight of doves. When the animals swim the 30-metre-wide Kongakut River, its waters become so clogged with their hair that filling a water bottle is impossible without picking up dozens of the wiry follicles.
And, by July, the clusters of these animals on the coastal plain will gather in larger groups that can number 80,000 animals.
The herd has migrated between the NWT, through the north Yukon and into this peaceful place for thousands of years. In fact, it has physically shaped the region. The landscape is littered with caribou bones and antlers. And, over the millennia, its passing has worn trails in exposed rock. The Gwich'in believe these trails mimic the lines of wisdom etched in their elders faces.
And so, following such paths, the caribou arrive on the narrow sliver of land, by the thousands, to calve. They arrive in 24-hour sunlight. Fed by the light, the surrounding vegetation experiences some of the most profoundly rapid growth seen on the planet. And it all happens within two or three weeks of calving.
That's why the 90-kilogram cows come here to feed, eating five kilograms of sedges, moss and willows a day—the equivalent of two full garbage bags.
They move constantly, up to 25 kilometers a day, for if they stood still they'd strip the land bare. In fact, the first month spent on this verdant plain is critical. Biologists warn that any disruption in their spring feeding patterns can be disastrous.
Eighty to 85 percent of calf survival depends on that critical month-long window. That's why the Gwich'in have always steered clear of the place. And why they oppose any oil exploration in this "belt of life."
And it is why the Gwich'in launched the Millennium Trek, which was sponsored, in part, with US$18,000 from the North American Fund for Environmental Cooperation, administered by the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation to help support community-based conservation projects.
The goal of the Gwich'in is to convince the US government to declare the region a national monument, preserving the sacred ground from development. The future of the caribou—and hence that of the millenniums-old Gwich'in culture—depends on it.
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