ANWR’s fate on hold

Change of Interior secretaries could delay decision on new wilderness areas

Wesley Loy

For Petroleum News

Afederal website says a “record of decision” is due this spring on a new management plan for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, including a potential recommendation to designate more of the refuge as wilderness.

But an official with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages ANWR, said the schedule could slip as the Interior Department transitions to new leadership.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is leaving the post at the end of March, and President Obama has nominated Sally Jewell to take his place.

Salazar was not expected to deal with the ANWR issue before his departure, Sharon Seim, of the Fish and Wildlife Service, told Petroleum News on March 24.

No preferred alternative yet

The website for the plan revision is http://arctic.fws.gov/ccp.htm.

The Fish and Wildlife Service rolled out a draft revised plan and took public comments from Aug. 15 to Nov. 15, 2011.

The plan offered six alternatives, ranging from no changes to recommending three huge new chunks of ANWR for wilderness designation. One of those is the coastal plain, also known as the 1002 area, which the oil industry regards as highly prospective.

But the Fish and Wildlife Service did not include an alternative to allow oil and gas leasing or exploration in ANWR.

Alaska’s elected officials generally disagree with revising the ANWR plan, which the agency says is overdue for an update. The officials especially don’t cotton to new wilderness, noting that much of ANWR already is so designated.

Since the draft plan came out, the Fish and Wildlife Service has gone through the more than 612,000 written and oral comments received. The vast majority of these were form letters from 28 different organizations.

Seim said the agency has now finished a final environmental impact statement, or EIS, which must include a preferred alternative.

And that, she said, is what remains to be done amid the change of Interior secretaries.

“Nobody knows what our preferred alternative is,” she said. “That is the piece that is left unresolved at this point.”

The record of decision on the ANWR plan could slip, perhaps by months, she said.

As it stands now, Seim said, all six of the alternatives in the draft plan remain on the table.

Diverse comments

The question of whether to designate more wilderness in the remote refuge, with takes in an area nearly the size of South Carolina, is the flashpoint.

Even if the agency does recommend additional wilderness, such a step would need to clear several approvals including an OK from Congress.

Here’s a sampler of comments the agency received.

U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said 8 million of the refuge’s 19 million acres already are classified as wilderness.

There’s no evidence that existing wilderness is “somehow failing to provide sufficient levels of opportunity for solitude, primitive and unconfined ... recreation, or challenge,” Murkowski said.

Edward Rexford, vice president of the Kaktovik Tribal Council, spoke against any wilderness designations. He said local people have long hunted and fished on the coastal plain, and it hosts many graves.

“So the idea of trying to make the 1002 area into a wilderness designation is another slap in our faces because we live here, our ancestors died here and this is not a place without people,” Rexford said.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration said new wilderness designations could block launches of sounding rockets from the Poker Flat range near Fairbanks, with “devastating ... implications on our nation’s ability to study and understand geospace at high latitudes.” Some rocket stages land in ANWR.

Nicole Whittington-Evans, of The Wilderness Society, supported the most wilderness-heavy alternative, saying the Fish and Wildlife Service has an “historic opportunity” before it.

“Some would like to develop the coastal plain for oil and gas resources, but industrial development is not compatible with goals 1 and 2 of the draft plan — protecting ecological processes and wilderness character,” she said.

Cliff Eames, of the Alaska Quiet Rights Coalition, also favored the most extensive wilderness alternative. And the Fish and Wildlife Service should pay more attention to the “natural soundscape,” which Eames described as a “fundamental resource.”

David Jenkins, of Republicans for Environmental Protection, likewise urged sweeping new wilderness designations.

“Oil and gas exploration and drilling are not compatible with the purpose and vision of the refuge and FWS was correct in its decision to not consider an oil and gas alternative,” Jenkins wrote. “The vast web of pipelines and other infrastructure needed to extract oil and gas from the refuge would industrialize and forever alter the landscape.”