Her sister became sick. With little medical attention in the village and hundreds of miles from a hospital, the baby girl passed away. None of us want to go back to that. Ahlers supports refuge development. But like many people in Kaktovik, she also worries about how life in this town of 254 people will change if the potentially huge oil reserves in the refuge's coastal plain get developed.
Villagers depend on the land for caribou, musk oxen and other game for food.
They are also concerned about an influx of oil workers and money. Kaktovik residents overwhelmingly support refuge development if only because the memories of the past without oil are more troubling than the thought of a future with it. A city poll in January found that 78 percent of Kaktovik residents support opening the coastal plain to development. The 1.3 million-acre coastal plain of the refuge holds 3.6 billion to 16 billion barrels of oil, according to government estimates. The contentious question of development took a new turn in recent months as President Bush backed opening the refuge as a key way to bolster the nation's oil supply.