A long migration, human consciousness, and the future of the Arctic Refuge
By: Susan Poirier Sorg
Tags: Birding, Migration, Green Energy, Environment, Climate Crisis

An intricate story of adaptation and evolution has performed on the coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge for tens of thousands of years.

Evolution has linked migratory birds with perfect habitat, so much so that the benefits of the Arctic tundra and its abundant insects, invertebrates, and vegetation outweighs the high risks of global migration. As biologist Bernd Heinrich explains in Winter World, “Each bird species, like every organism on Earth, feels most at home in the specific environment to which it has been tailored by natural selection and instinctively seeks that environment and avoids others.”

The Arctic tern travels 12,500 miles from Antarctica to nest in the Arctic Refuge every spring.

Every spring, over two hundred species of birds traveling from six continents transform the coastal plain into one of the planet’s most biodiverse nesting grounds with an explosion of new life.

President Eisenhower first established the 8.9 million acre Arctic National Wildlife Range in 1960. In 1980 President Carter expanded the land area which was renamed the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but the 1.5 million acre coastal plain was left unprotected.

The unthinkable happened in December 2017 when the GOP tax plan under the Trump Administration was signed into law. Pro-oil GOP politicians manipulated the legislative process and found a loophole to include drilling the Arctic Refuge in their tax bill.

Now, three years later the Trump administration in its final weeks has announced it will be issuing a Notice of Sale for the Coastal Plain Oil and Gas Leasing Program on December 7, 2020. Increasing oil and gas drilling in the Arctic Refuge is a dangerous and irreversible step backwards that will worsen climate change and destroy one of Earth’s last remaining intact ecosystems.

“Virtually every species of bird that occurs in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is migratory,” says David Sibley in Seasons of Life and Land, a chronicle of Subhankar Banarjee’s two-year photographic journey of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. If drilling occurs on the coastal plain, millions of migrating birds would arrive to find the nesting grounds they’ve migrated to for eons defiled by industrial trucks, drills, roads, and noise.

The longest-distance flyer of any bird on the planet, the Arctic tern is one of the many species that would be devastated by the loss of pristine habitat and abundant food.

The Arctic tern travels 12,500 miles one-way from its overwintering grounds in Antarctica to nest on the Arctic Refuge each spring. This four-ounce bird with long, narrow wings is well adapted for slow, low-altitude flight and spends the majority of its life en route to its next destination (and migratory stopovers in-between). Migrating 25,000 miles every year, the Arctic tern may fly over 750,000 miles in its lifetime which can be thirty years or more.

The tern population on the Atlantic coast is declining because parent terns cannot find herring to feed their chicks which cannot digest any other fish. Herring is disappearing from a warming ocean and overfishing. Thousands of tern chicks have been found washed up on shores.

Opening the Arctic Refuge to oil drilling would amplify the climate crisis in Alaska where villages are already losing coastlines and winter ice that their economies depend upon.

Since Subhankar Banarjee began his two-year photographic journey of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in 2001, climate change has dramatically accelerated. Female polar bears may not find food for their cubs or snow for a den. The Arctic’s warmer, rainier winters are deadly to muskox herds as they fall through ice, are trapped and drown.

Habitat loss, climate change, pesticides, herbicides, trophy hunting, and wildlife trafficking are taking a deadly toll on birds and wildlife globally. The Nature Needs Half movement launched by biologist and author E. O. Wilson gives hope that with cooperative efforts to preserve intact wilderness that still exists, there may be time to save species.

We must embrace the web of life with a higher consciousness of interconnection and protect this fragile, life-giving ecosystem. Human survival, never separate from the web of life, is inherently linked to this understanding.

President-Elect Joe Biden has made permanent protection for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge a Day One priority.

November 18, 2020 update from Earthjustice: Trump Administration’s Final Push to Drill the Arctic Refuge: What Comes Next? | Earthjustice

What we have in our favor to stop the leasing:

· Low oil prices and the high cost to produce a barrel of oil in this remote area.

· Banks stating they won’t finance new Arctic oil development include Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citi, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase (Alaska Wilderness League news release 12–3–20).

· The Trump administration has sidestepped mandated environmental reviews. Leases issued without required environmental review can be legally challenged.

· The Interior Department has altered or disregarded scientific data on the impact on wildlife and failed to consult with the Gwich’in.

Sources:

Biologists worried by migratory birds’ starvation, seen as tied to climate change, Darryl Fears. June 19, 2013. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/biologists-worried-by-migratory-birds-starvation-seen-as-tied-to-climate-change/2013/06/19/c04d8a74-d90d-11e2-a9f2-42ee3912ae0e_story.html?utm_term=.f287625dbcfe

Birds connect Arctic Refuge with the world, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. (Last updated: December 30, 2013.) https://www.fws.gov/refuge/arctic/birdworldmig.html

Half-Earth, Our Planet’s Fight for Life, Edward O. Wilson. 2016. Liveright Publishing Corporation.

Seasons of Life and Land, A Photographic Journey, Subhankar Banerjee. 2003. The Mountaineers Books.

Winter World — ‘The Kinglet’s Winter Fuel,’ Bernd Heinrich. 2003. HarperCollins.