Arctic Science Journeys
Radio Script
1997

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Mosquito Escape
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STORY: Each summer in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge thousands of caribou flee hordes of bloodthirsty mosquitoes by wading into the shallow lagoons and river deltas along Alaska's North Slope.

Jim Kurth with the U.S. Department of the Interior manages the refuge's 19 million acres.

KURTH: "It's a critically important area in many years for the Porcupine caribou herd. Many people don't think of lagoons as being caribou habitat but you know this time of year the Porcupine Caribou herd often moves to those coastal lagoons and utilizes those areas as insect relief habitat. The millions and billions of bugs that are harassing caribou herd right now really are a drain on those animals. Oftentimes thousands of them will wade out into those lagoon waters to avoid insects.

Although caribou don't know it, those lagoons, barrier islands, and deltas have been some of the most hotly contested real estate in the country. Alaska laid claim to them, nearly 100,000 acres in all, believing they were given the land when Alaska became a state in 1959. Federal officials say they intended to reserve the lands as part of the refuge. At stake was not just the sanity of caribou, but potentially billions of barrels of oil thought to lay beneath the Arctic Coastal Plain.

Peter Van Tuyn is an attorney with Trustees for Alaska, a nonprofit environmental defense organization that filed a friend of the court brief in defense of federal ownership of the lands.

VAN TUYN: "The state, knowing that these lands were disputed and possibly coming to its ownership, had put these lands on its schedule of oil and gas lease sales. So they were actively planning to hold a lease sale that would be immediately within the refuge in these coastal lagoons and inland waters." Such plans came to an end earlier this summer when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the lands are part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge is off limits to oil and gas drilling. For Jim Kurth, the decision ties together important parts of the refuge.

KURTH: "The court accurately saw what the intention was in establishing this place, that it was the intention of the United States to reserve these lands as part of a wildlife refuge that was meant to protect the full spectrum of life in the Arctic. Ultimately what it does is it clarifies the vision of some real pioneers in Alaska conservation who struggled to have this land set aside as a wildlife refuge."

No doubt the caribou are happy too.

OUTRO: For Arctic Science Journeys, this is Debra Damron reporting from Fairbanks, Alaska.