See the Arctic Refuge’s Fragile Beauty

After decades of battles with environmentalists, Republicans in Congress this week passed a tax bill—which President Donald Trump signed Friday—that lifts a long-standing ban on oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Photographer Florian Schulz has spent years documenting what's at stake in this 19.6-million-acre expanse in Alaska's northeast corner, where northern lights dance above, and no roads lead in or out.

From the salt marshes and river deltas along the coast to the mosses and sedges blanketing the central plain and the jagged peaks of the Brooks Range, ANWR is a wildlife paradise. Birds from six continents find their way here, including dunlins and yellow wagtails. Sandpipers, swans, and eiders nest in the tundra. There are moose and seals, Dall's sheep, and pygmy shrews. In summer, as ANWR’s vegetation changes color and warmer weather brings hordes of mosquitoes, the Porcupine caribou herd clusters in groups of ten thousand or more and seeks relief from the bitter winds near the coast.

Attempts to find or retrieve the petroleum buried in ANWR could dramatically alter this fragile landscape. Drilling critics point to the roads and pipes and industrial infrastructure at nearby Prudhoe Bay, North America's largest oil field. Since oil's discovery there in 1967, Prudhoe Bay has produced 12.5 billion barrels, earning Alaska $141 billion. But a decade ago, more than 200,000 gallons of oil leaked onto frozen tundra from a corroded pipeline, sparking outrage even among oil-friendly congressional Republicans. Scientists also say Prudhoe Bay's development changed the behavior of another caribou herd, perhaps contributing to that herd's decline.

Caribou, with their elk-like antlers and large hooves, are a cornerstone of the Arctic ecosystem, providing food for Inupiat hunters, as well as for key predators, such as wolves. Caribou are constantly on the move. In the dark season, they mostly survive on lichens, using their hollowed-out hooves to scoop them from under the snow. But as the mountain winter gives way to spring, they move toward calving grounds on the coastal plain. While males shed their antlers in fall, after breeding, females typically shed their antlers only after giving birth.

Caribou spend summers doing what they do best: eating. With the snow gone, they begin fattening up, consuming up to 12 pounds of vegetation a day, including low-growing willow leaves and lupine buds or, in this case, cotton grass dappled by the midnight sun. Margaret Murie, "Grandmother of the Conservation Movement," who studied caribou by dogsled on her honeymoon in 1924, never tired of these animals, or the landscape they represented. "Here was the living, moving, warm-blooded life of the Arctic," she once wrote, “with the wisdom of the ages, moving always, not depleting their food supply, needing all these valleys and mountains in which to live."

Each year, the Porcupine herd returns to the same area to calve. Healthy females give birth to a single calf every year, usually in May or June, and feed their young with such fatty milk that the animals grow quickly. Baby caribou are able to stand within minutes of birth and can gallop and play within hours. Their spirited prancing helps prepare them to escape predators quickly. That’s essential because wolves, grizzly bears and eagles seek them out as prey during calving season.

Members of the Porcupine herd are wanderers. The distance between their winter and summer grounds is about 400 miles, but individuals may travel 3,000 miles in a year. They can move in great masses across icy rivers or scale mountains in swarms. No one can predict when their journey will start or precisely which route they will travel each year.

ANWR is alive, no matter the weather. In summer and fall, while caribou traipse below, lesser snow geese cross the coastal plain by the tens of thousands, their fluttering white bodies breaking up the endless golden brown of ANWR's tundra. Musk ox, with fur coats that are among the animal kingdom's warmest, often huddle together to ride out winter blizzards. Though not large in numbers, wolves play an important role in keeping other animal populations in check. They may prowl for rodents or, during calving season, pick off newborn caribou. White-fronted geese rest on lakes before beginning their southward migration.

A rock ptarmigan in winter plumage perches on a rock in front of the Brooks Range. Rock ptarmigan are often hunted in spring in ANWR by Inupiat residents of the coastal village of Kaktovik. Willow ptarmigan, found in the “1002 area,” the 1.5-million-acre section of the refuge that Congress has now opened to drilling for oil and gas, are hunted in winter. More than 200 species of birds are found on the refuge, and scientists record their movements and population sizes to help track environmental change across the Arctic. Many worry that oil development would disturb nesting, fragment habitat, and attract predators.

In the far north, each animal has a role. In ANWR, an arctic fox, like this one resting among the lupines, may chase geese one minute or use its snout to poke around for collared lemmings the next. These foxes will change color in winter, their fur turning ghostly white, to help them sneak up on lemmings, which construct elaborate burrows known as runways beneath the snow. The lemmings, however, also turn white, making them less visible too. Frustrated foxes may instead follow polar bears to gorge on their leftovers.

A grizzly bear stands tall by the Canning River, the western boundary of the refuge. Grizzlies aren't numerous along Alaska's North Slope, and over the years studies have shown they die at higher rates near Prudhoe Bay. Oil field workers often dispose of waste in unsecured bins, which attracts the predators. The grizzlies then become conditioned to human food. One such animal, Bear 147, was killed and her cubs captured just last summer, after the bear repeatedly broke into kitchens and storage areas.

When sea ice retreats many miles off shore, some polar bears, like this mother and her cubs, settle along the shores of the refuge, where they are stranded until the ice is strong enough to hold their weight, and they can once again use it to hunt for seals. As climate change melts sea ice sooner in spring and delays its formation in fall, polar bears spend more time on land within the refuge. The refuge is home to the greatest density of polar bear dens in Alaska.

The refuge, first dubbed the Arctic National Wildlife Range, was created by the Eisenhower administration in 1960, but more than doubled in size in 1980, when President Jimmy Carter signed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. Carter called it "one of the most important pieces of conservation legislation ever passed in this nation," adding that "never before have we seized the opportunity to preserve so much of America's natural and cultural heritage on so grand a scale." For the next 37 years, the refuge would be fought over again and again. That battle is not over yet.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly moved to lift restrictions on oil and gas development. In April 2017, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, he signed an executive order directing the Interior Department to review drilling policies for the outer-continental shelf. From left are, Vice President Mike Pence, Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, the president, Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. But even after Trump signs this month's tax bill, it could take years for the first lease sale to take place in the refuge. If Democrats retake Congress in 2018, they may be able to slow efforts even more.

Still, drilling proponents are closer than ever to their goal. During the bill signing in 1980, Carter issued a warning: "We cannot let our eagerness for progress in energy and in technology outstrip our care for our land, for our water and for air, and for the plants and animals that share all of these precious vital resources with us." Are the gas flares and pipelines that define Prudhoe Bay now destined for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge? Are we prepared for the potential consequences?

Murie, who dedicated her life to trying to protect the refuge, saw a spiritual need for untrammeled wild lands, but also saw Americans’ hunger for growth and development. Testifying before Congress about preserving ANWR in 1977, she said, "I hope the United States of America is not so rich that she can afford to let these wildernesses pass by—or so poor she cannot afford to keep them."

Can wildlife co-exist with oil development? Should it have to in a place like ANWR? This polar bear mother rests on a barrier island along the western edge of the refuge. Behind it, just outside the refuge, stands the Point Thomson natural gas facility, which began operating in 2016. The impact on wildlife of oil and gas exploration and production varies dramatically by species. But it’s important to remember that all Arctic wildlife lives in a region already under enormous strain from climate change—an unintended consequence of the use of fossil fuels.