Exploring a Timeless Wilderness, Before the Drilling Begins

Trump has no appreciation for the sublime, only for the gaudy. He’ll never visit it, so it is an abstraction.

Let the drillers buy the land. They can find private land to purchase if they wish to profit from drilling. Our public lands belong to our citizens. We can protect our lands and habitats without destroying the earth.

Humans are without a doubt the most rapacious species on earth. Without our gadgets we are pretty helpless, But without our protections we would have to live in balance with the earth, like all the other species, the earth would be a far better place to live because it would not be comprised by toxic civilization. We are now finally paying the price of out sourcing all our toxic wastes to the planet. We don't have the appearance of dependance on the planet for our very lives because we have such strong defenses against the raw planet. But those outsourced costs are coming due, as they eventually have to. And we seems to be accelerating the due date with eagerness, laziness, and blind greed.

I want to thank you for writing such an evocative piece. As an Alaska resident I always like to think that I've seen much of the natural majesty that our state has to offer. But, when I read descriptions such as yours, it reinforces that while I've traveled and seen much of my adopted home state, I have yet to scratch the surface. Please come back and experience more of our parks up here. We have some of the largest wilderness and national park land in the United States, much of which goes almost entirely unseen and un-visited even by Alaska residents. Gates of the Arctic National Park, the Alaska Marine National Wildlife Refuge, Kobuk Valley are all wonderful Arctic sites. We need as many visitors as we can find who can take pictures, write, and advocate for increased protections for these natural gems.

BP just sold all their holdings in Alaska. BP had the results from the one exploratory well drilled. If there were millions of barrels of oil that would be worth lots of money, would they have sold this? Not likely.

A beautiful piece! Thank you for giving us some insight into this very special place.

Nice piece which lays out the issues starkly enough. Problem is the "we" in the title. National polling demonstrates that the vast majority of Americans do not want wild lands developed by special interests. Once again, as with gun legislation, what the people want and what they get are far apart. The push to destroy our country and planet comes from only one national party which denies climate change, turns over public lands to their corrupt supporters, and doesn't have the courage to bring these policies to a vote.

Lovely writing. The time is now.

I have been there. It IS sacred. It hurts to my very soul to see our human impact on it. And what is worse - I see no hope.

I spent 10 days rafting the Kongakut river in The Refuge in 1984. I saw herds of migrating caribou, beautiful wildflowers and vistas that went on forever. The silence is extraordinary and the beauty is immense. On our last day saw a grizzly bear chase and kill a caribou, we couldn't get to our tents because it happened close to them. We stayed up all night and watched animals in the nearby mountains. This is a pristine wilderness that must be forever protected!

Having worked in and around Prudhoe Bay oilfields a few years back I saw first hand those operations had little effect on wildlife. Many people in the lower 48 do not have a realistic conception and just assume wildlife is irreparably harmed by any oil and gas drilling. Not true. If anything there were higher concentrations of game animals, appears they figured out they were safe from hunters there in some cases. Overall more bird deaths by far occur in wind and thermal solar electric generation. Having false conceptions as these causes hysterical reactions if a bird dies in a oil puddle but no reaction if the death is from a spinning wind turbine blade. Often these folks are cat people too and excuse the 2 billion birds deaths yearly by cats! Bird populations everywhere are in decline,many headed to extinction.. if we were rational we could better focus on actual causes of this disaster. This is piece is harmful and useless feel-good poppycock.

I spent the summer of 1969 in Alaska. It was the year that the North Slope oil leases were set, which would result in Pipeline construction six years later. When most of Alaska was really what we think of when we use the word. While I didn't get all the way to the ANWR, much more of the state was as wild then as ANWR still is today. I remember things like getting startled by a huge moose who came within a few feet of our canoe -- and how we gently, quietly, paddled away. Not to mention (at binocular distance, thank goodness) watching a group of grizzlies run across the tundra, far faster than any human ever could. But who needs experiences like these when there's money to be made? Let's just get it over with and pave the whole thing.

Not to get too high handed or cynical but if you read this entire article and loved the images and the beautify of it all, then please take a long look at your own retirement and investment portfolio holdings if you have any. The prospectus and reporting are opaque precisely to allow you to love these things and sacrifice them at the same time. Look closely and divest from oil wherever you can.

Birds everywhere lament the wind turbines that relentless chop them to shreds in every corner of the globe

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DnuP_XQWkiU I can not recommend this film too highly. The porcupine Herd is shared between the US and Canada. It is the heart of the Gwitchin Culture on both sides of the border. I have lived in Canada’s high arctic and this whole circumpolar region it is too vital to be allowed to fall to drill and kill. It is already too late for Siberia

Lovely. But the headline is misleading. We wouldn't be "gambling". We would be destroying this wilderness and pretty much everyone knows it, if it is opened.

I recently read, perhaps here in the NY Times, that the total cost of our military engagement in Afghanistan has exceeded two trillion dollars to date. And the current misadministration wants to destroy this irreplaceable wilderness for a potential profit of 45 million dollars. While giving trillions of dollars in tax cuts to the least deserving individuals and corporate entities extant. Despair is too mild a word to describe how I feel, seemingly daily, about the decisions that are made by a small coterie of corrupt politicians and mendacious energy company executives. Republicans all I've little doubt...

Let’s be clear what “we’re” willing to risk is not the issue. The American public isn’t interested in risking anything. Your talking about a hand full of multinational oil and gas companies happy to rape and pillage our national resources, most of which are sold off overseas for short term profit to feed shareholders and CEO bonuses. All supported by bought and paid for Republicans. Vote my friends, it’s sad days in our country.

The GOP appears to know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

Let's see how long it takes for this administration to destroy the natural and rare beauty found in the National Wild Life Refuge. Cold hard cash is equal to free $peech says our Court of Supreme Corporations and , all of a sudden , our country is open to being sold down the river to the highest bidder.

To see this pristine land ripped apart for senseless greed is sickening. Vote this administration out of office before all is lost in our beautiful country. We are fools to allow this continue.

Why can't we just leave a piece of our world wild?

What a gorgeous place you describe! So why on earth did you start by conveying just the opposite? "... like something freezer-burned ..." -- what an unfortunate choice of words.

I am a cautious optimist that it will never be drilled. It takes big money to do a drilling program on the north slope, and the majors don't seem to be very interested. https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Alaskas-Last-Oil-Frontier-Will-Never-Be-Developed.html The largest interest comes from the state government of Alaska, looking for ways to increase the Permanent Fund dividend.

Pure greed we are not short of Oil I won't really create many jobs. Pure unadulterated greed. Making America Gross, Greedy and Gluttonous again. What yo get form a party that worships money and mammon. What the rich and powerful want trumps the common good.

It's not a gamble. It's a certainty. The oil will leak. The tankers will run aground. The oil companies will claim to have cleaned it up. And the refuge will be lost forever. These folks would mine and drill every square inch of our national parks if they had the chance. This is the world we live in until we choose to change it. Assuming the game isn't rigged. Oooops!!

Beautifully written! Thank you.

That people are even considering such development at this moment of catastrophic climate change and mass extinction shows that the cancer that is greed has ravaged our humanity. What a waste of our potential this poison is.

There's simply no place on earth an oilman doesn't want to destroy. After all he KNOWS he's God's gift to us.

KEEP OUT! by order of: Maker of Heaven and Earth

Beautifully and poetically written, thank you! I felt this piece reveals one end of the conservation spectrum - the still-wild and inaccessible lands where natural rhythms struggle to keep balance against the warming. On the other end might be the extremely busy and overcrowded, underfunded national parks, with millions of visitors a year and a different set of challenges that come from almost too much accessibility. It all needs our protection and careful stewardship.

What a wonderful description of this amazing place! I hope someday that I--and my kids and their kids--will be able to experience it the way the author did. Thank you for helping to give life and shape to what the bureaucrats would prefer we only refer to by the dry acronym ANWR, and not learn to care about it, and for it, as we should.

In 2001, the last time a Republican administration was short-sighted enough to push for drilling in the 1002 area, my wife, my best friend, and I traveled along the Hula Hula to see ANWR for ourselves. While we were in Arctic Village, Gale Norton was visiting in a vain attempt to smooth over local's ire. We spent 3 weeks walking from a gravel landing strip in the Brooks Range out to the coastal plain. It was late June, and we had 24-hour sun and fell into the same kind of reverie described in this article: walk until tired, sleep until rested, absorbing the majesty of our surroundings on no particular schedule. What we found there was a landscape covered densely with life. Every step trod on the footprints of the residents of the area: grizzly, moose, wolf, caribou, musk-ox. There were ptarmigan and ducks, arctic char and slow, fat bumblebees going about their earnest business on the early-summer wildflowers. We too laughingly called all these things "nothing" as even then, the talking point that the coastal plain was a 'wasteland' was in common parlance amongst those who would sully this amazing place. The experience of visiting ANWR was beyond anything we could have imagined: overwhelming, exhausting, magnificent, humbling, wild, rich, awe-inspiring, terrifying. It is a national jewel, a treasure beyond reckoning. Huzzah and godspeed to all the attorneys fighting the lease sales. No drilling should ever take place in the 1002 Area of the coastal plain.

In March of 1989, the Exxon Valdez, a single-hulled ship carrying a heavy cargo of oil, crashed in the pristine Prince William Sound in Alaska. Prior to the wreck, the sound was teaming with so much life that the sounds of wildlife were deafening. After the wreck as oil seeped out, killing much of the wildlife, there was silence. From what I have read, the Prince William Sound remains eerily silent. It appears cleaned up, but dig your fingers into the shoreline mud, and oil gushes up. It is still there. In the "Great Animal Orchestra," author and soundscape recorder, Bernie Krause, had been asked by a logging company to record the before and after of its work. The company was doing selective logging, and it believed Krause's work would prove its technique did little damage to the environment. The original recording was of layers of bird and insect songs. In the post version, many of those collective voices were missing. Every time humans enter a pristine wilderness to harvest resources, we change that environment. There will be irreparable harm if we drill. At some point, we should protect the few wilderness places that remain. The wealth gained is temporary. The biodiversity lost is eternal.

The assault on our designated wilderness areas in the never ending pursuit of profits has shifted into high gear under this administration. The people who enable these endeavors and those who implement the actual work see no value in places that do not provide money for their coffers. The rational is always that it provides jobs. I recall the battle over cutting the old growth forests in the north western U.S. Jobs, jobs, jobs was the oft heard reason. Saw mills provide jobs. The previously felled trees were shipped "raw" to the far east to be made into disposable diapers and not to saw mills here . The proposed pebble mine in Alaska is next to a salmon breeding watershed that 25 million estimated fish use each year. This is an irreplaceable resource once despoiled is gone forever. Those who wish to develop The ANWR , the Tongass Wilderness area, and Bristol Bay are oblivious to the value of unspoiled natural places. Avarice for short term profits trumps (pun intended) all and history teaches us that it has and probably always will. My sorrow over the consequences of these actions is debilitating.

Beautifully written with great photographs. This is clearly a place that deserves to be left whole and untarnished.

Gulp. The beauty and majesty of the photos and the urgency of the narrative have captured my heart. I loved the Gwich'in book called Two Old Ladies and was grateful to see the author referred to the native peoples wisdom. What I want to know know are the specifics of how we can help as ordinary citizens?

We spent a couple of weeks in this magnificent land this summer. Everywhere you look, the impacts of global warming are clear - fast receding glaciers, unusual weather, temperatures in excess of 90 degrees, the list goes on. I understand the urge to drill and potential benefits, but is it really worth turning Alaska into Florida? It's like burning Mona Lisa to keep yourself warm for a few minutes.

So these travelers and their guide are complaining about the possibility of oil drilling ruining a part of the Alaskan wilderness. Just to make money. I agree, the oil drilling should never be permitted, but it seems ironic hearing this from the rich people who can afford this special adventure and the guy who is making his living off of taking people into a Wildlife Refuge for kicks.

the daily fighting in government pales in contrast to this battle. we may not be able to save our democracy, our relations with other nations, our children's lives with guns zealots. it may not matter in the end if we can't save the earth.

I don't need to see it to know we must protect it. I am so tired of this short-sighted world we live in.

If there was just one place where we all could agree to leave the oil in the ground, this would be a strong candidate. Anyone who thinks drilling here would be a good idea lacks the spark of humanity that respects all that is worth living for.

“This,” someone whispered, “is sacred.” People will not protect what they do not understand, and this administration has shown time and time again that they they hold nothing sacred. Not our democracy. Not their governing responsibility. And certainly nothing--nothing at all--that is wild. It is our sacred duty to stand up for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in any way we can. Here and now, with whatever talents we may possess. Wildness is almost entirely gone from the planet, and what is sacred now flickers at the borders of extinction.

I do not understand the use of the word "gamble" in this beautiful article. Are we really gambling this wilderness? It seems more like throwing it away.

Great article. Thank you for providing some perspective to this massive, far away place.

These wild lands are well worth fighting for, and we should be pushing back with great force. Trump can raise the deficit to 1 Trillion, he can damage our relationships abroad, he can tank our economy, but these things are reversible. Trump's attacks on the environment and the selling off of public lands are what we should be fighting hardest against, and it is getting lost in the fray and spectacle.

Thank you for this view into this most sacred environment. “Sacred” is the operative word for nothing in this current administration’s lexicon would consider anything as profoundly precious in this part of the world or unfortunately, other parts of this earth.

Again and again and again humans have torn and damaged the natural world for the sake of a few years of wealth for a few people. Most Americans and nearly all politicians see nature as a basket of goodies to be plundered. If there are no riches the place is worthless and invites our bitter destruction by ATV, drill, tractor, highway, air strip, refinery, golf course. The ineffable open expanse of the wild sends us into a rage of frustration. Nature means only opportunity to most humans. There is always more, we think. But there is no more. This article, like so many others preceding it describing wild lands about to be destroyed, makes me heartsick.

This is a beautiful article, very difficult for me to read, with one huge gap. I wish the author had suggested things that we can do to fight this. If anyone has good suggestions, please weigh in here. Thank you.

If we are that desperate for more oil, shouldn't we be drilling and fracking trump's golf courses first, before destroying what's left of America the beautiful? "what we’re willing to gamble for oil and money." Lots and lots of money for a very very few people with astronomical wealth while socializing the consequences and damage to every living creature. Indeed, it is the theft - eminent domain for the rich - and redistribution of everyone's wealth to a very few. How dystopian! Add insult to devastation, there is no immediate need for drilling there or elsewhere - it's not needed right now. There's already a glut and plenty of existing sources of fossil fuels - gold and copper mines too - now being exploited. Why destroy such a unique corner of the world before exhausting other sources first? Is nothing sacred over the dollar? Not even human life, let alone all of life, takes precedence over money. 'Great' business model - tourism's last rush to see and appreciate the end-of-days of life as we know it before it is trashed. Future generations will rely on the last witnesses, like the author, to testify to future generations how the trumps and Bolsonaros and the rest of their ilk giddily destroyed their world to enrich themselves in their merely brief lifetimes. Awesome photographs - though like when I travel and photograph Iceland, I feel like I am cheating - it is all too easy to take amazing photos of such amazing picturesque vistas. Still pales compared to being there