OPINION/COMMENTARY

The Caribou Con: In Search of ANWR Truth

Estimates of the size of the Porcupine Caribou herd vary, but approximately 123,000 seems to be the best current estimate. Despite all the speculation about the potential effects ANWR oil exploration might have on the herd, the greatest single, ever-present threat — their harsh natural habitat, including weather, food supply and predation — is almost never discussed beyond research papers. During a series of severe winters in the early 1990s, weather conditions alone depleted approximately 15 percent of the herd. The second greatest existing threat to the Porcupine Caribou — the only human one — is the Gwich’in themselves. On the Canadian side of the border, approximately 3,000 Porcupine Caribou are killed each year by Gwich’in hunters. (That is not a criticism, just a fact.) Any discussion of oil exploration in ANWR is misleading without an understanding of and perspective on that vast area. It is likely that meaningful opposition would have faded years ago were it not for the opportunistic exploitation of ignorance about a terrain and the conditions thereof that few people understand and fewer still will ever see....

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