WWF-Canada Hails Decision on Arctic Refuge

Today’s conservation win is a credit first and foremost to the efforts of the Gwich’in people who depend on the Porcupine caribou herd, the Government of Canada which has stood firm in its opposition to drilling, the Senators who in the end decided to do the right thing, and to conservation groups in both countries, including WWF-US, WWF- Canada and especially the Alaska Wilderness League.

This issue clearly put US politicians to the test, but it also raises questions for Canadian politicians, especially during a federal election:

· Canada has 15 barrenground caribou calving areas in its own country. Of these, only three are protected in National Parks. In the remainder, the federal government is allowing mineral exploration, roads and other industrial development. So what are OUR leadership candidates prepared to do to protect these for future generations of northerners?
· What specifically will OUR candidates do to help aboriginal communities reserve and protect areas important to them in advance of industrial development, so that Canada doesn’t have its own version of the Refuge crisis?
· Pressure on natural areas such as the Refuge in Alaska and other caribou habitats in Canada ultimately results from an out-dated approach to energy consumption that depends too much on fossil fuels. So, are OUR leaders prepared to develop a sustainable energy policy for Canada that puts new emphasis on energy conservation, greater efficiency, and renewable sources?

THE QUOTE – “Although we won today, we shouldn’t have even been put into the position of yet another cliffhanger. Conservationists have had to fend off drilling in the Refuge many times over the last 25 years, despite the fact that the majority of both Canadians and Americans do not want this to happen. Now we need to move beyond these defensive actions, to provide permanent protection to a North American natural treasure,” said Monte Hummel, President Emeritus, WWF-Canada. “Without a clear, sustainable energy policy that moves away from dependence on fossil fuels, conservationists will always be fighting a rear-guard action against the destruction of ecologically crucial places like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.”

BACKGROUND – More than 40 years ago, scientists and conservationists who fought to establish the Arctic Refuge envisioned preserving an undisturbed portion of America’s Arctic that was large enough to be biologically self-sufficient. Of particular concern was protection of the entire range of the Porcupine caribou herd, whose range is partly in the United States and partly in Canada. For over 20 years, oil companies have been lobbying for the right to build hundreds of miles of pipelines, roads, drilling pads, gravel mines, and other industrial facilities in the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The WWF global-family has been engaged in protecting wildlife in Alaska for more than three decades. In recent years, WWF-US activists have sent 175,000 letters and made thousands of phone calls to their representatives in Congress urging that the Refuge’s coastal plain be protected in the National Wilderness Preservation System. And, WWF-Canada recently obtained 77,000 petitions that were personally delivered to Prime Minister Paul Martin in support of the Canadian government’s position against drilling in the Refuge.

ISSUES
Canadian and Alaskan Aboriginal communities north of the Arctic Circle depend on the Porcupine Caribou Herd for their sustenance and cultural needs. The most important calving grounds for this migratory herd are in the Arctic Refuge, Alaska. Canada has permanently protected from development the lands in Canada used by the herd for calving, and continues to urge that the U.S. do the same. This would be consistent with the commitment to protect and conserve the herd and its habitat in the 1987 Canada-U.S. Agreement on the Conservation of the Porcupine Caribou Herd.

Key points:
· Research overwhelmingly shows that oil development in the Arctic Refuge will endanger the Porcupine caribou herd. Unlike some northern caribou, they have no viable alternative calving grounds.
· The Gwich’in First Nation and other Aboriginal Peoples depend on the herd for their sustenance, culture and way of life.
· The Refuge, including the coastal plain, is a world-class natural area with incomparable and irreplaceable ecological, scientific, historic, and educational values for the North American people.