The Conservation Alliance

Home

Northern Alaska Environmental Center

Website
http://www.northern.org
Contact Name
Pamela A. Miller
Contact Email
pam@antispamnorthern.org
Past Grants
2008 · $30,000
1996 · $35,000
Grand Total
$65,000

The Northern Alaska Environmental Center is Alaska’s leading conservation voice for Interior and Arctic Alaska – an area of roughly 180 million acres.  Founded in 1971 by a group of concerned residents and noted conservationists, the Northern Center’s mission is to promote conservation of the environment in Interior and Arctic Alaska through advocacy, education and sustainable resource stewardship. The Northern Center has a Board of Directors (11 are Fairbanks-based), a staff of 8, 1,000 members - of whom 45% hail from Alaska - and upwards of 100 motivated local volunteers.

Northern Alaska is preponderantly federal public land.  Some 55 million acres lie within National Parks and Wildlife Refuges; another 59 million acres are managed by the BLM, Currently, the Northern Center operates four programs, all oriented to protect America’s Arctic Wilderness and wild lands from the forces of later-day Manifest Destiny.  All programs raise awareness about global warming in Alaska.

The Arctic Program leads local campaigns against oil drilling in the Arctic Refuge and the Western Arctic, and supports the national campaigns to the same ends.

The Clean Water Program seeks environmentally sensitive, lawful mining operations by offering technical support to affected communities and by challenging pork barrel transportation infrastructure projects.

The Local Issues Program works proactively on matters of importance to Fairbanks, including recycling, Borough land use planning, and residential and commercial conversion to biomass fuel. 

Finally, our Education Programs bring ecological literacy to the children on the Alaskan frontier through Camp Habitat, a series of summer nature education and ecology camps, and through Camp Habitat After School enrichment programs, and by facilitating youth activities through the Fairbanks chapter of Alaska Youth for Environmental Action.  For adults we offer the Northern Voices Speaker Series each year; a lively forum for Alaskan writers, artists, composers, and other visionaries inspired by the Alaskan environment - to share their connection to our incomparable land through their creative works.

The Conservation Alliance supports a project that protects important wild lands at risk.  Three little known but “protected” wild lands are threatened by oil and gas drilling: Beaver Creek Wild River, White Mountains National Recreation Area, and Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge, the third largest in the National Wildlife Refuge System.  Located across the Yukon River from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, these are vast wetlands, wild rivers, and boreal forest supporting millions of waterfowl, moose, Dall Sheep, and Pacific salmon.  A proposed land exchange would allow oil and gas drilling in the Yukon Flats Refuge’s proposed White-Crazy Mountains wilderness by trading what are now public lands to a private corporation.  A proposed road and pipeline corridor would punch along Beaver Creek Wild River into White Mountains National Recreation Area at a key take-out location for wilderness rafting trips.  The Bush Administration presses to get the land trade signed before it leaves office, so this campaign is urgent.

Project Update

YUKON FLATS LAND TRADE PUSHED PAST BUSH ADMINISTRATION

The Northern Alaska Environmental Center (NAEC) achieved a critical benchmark in our work to protect the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge, Beaver Creek Wild River and the White Mountains National Recreation Area from harmful oil and gas development.  Overwhelming public opposition has resulted in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USF&WS) pushing their final decision on the proposed land swap allowing oil and gas development within Yukon Flats Refuge past the Bush Administration.  Further, the USF&WS will delay completion of its final environmental impact statement on the land exchange in Yukon Flats Refuge until August 2009.  NAEC is optimistic that with continued pressure we can eliminate the land exchange in the new Administration.

NAEC exceeded its goal of public comments submitted to the agency five-fold.  Of nearly 100,000 submitted to the agency, 95% opposed the land swap and oil drilling.  Rep. Holt (D-NJ) and 11 members of Congress wrote a letter to Secretary Kempthorne opposing the land exchange in response to our educational work.  The USF&WS extended the public comment period and re-opened it again in May due to requests from local communities, tribes, conservation organizations and tribal organizations Yukon River Intertribal Watershed Council and Tanana Chiefs Conference representing 40 Interior Alaska villages.  Additionally, strong public turnout at the hearings in both Anchorage and Fairbanks showed USF&WS officials just how important it is to preserve the Yukon Flats Refuge.

 “Let the record show that the public just went wild for Alaska’s wildlands,” said Ed Alexander.  The Gwichyaa Zhee Gwich’in tribal council member began his testimony at the Yukon Flats land trade hearing in Fairbanks by asking hundreds crowded into the library to stand up. 

 “Our tribal council felt eight hours of public hearing testimony was not adequate to represent our 25,000 years of

land use in the Yukon Flats,” he continued.  “See this smile,” he said, “this is salmon, this is moose meat.”  So, for the second night in a row, first in Fort Yukon, now in Fairbanks, Alexander spoke to the USF&WS and again, the crowded hearing lasted past midnight. 

In most communities, and in Alaska’s two largest cities, most hearings testimony opposed the land trade.  This land swap would remove lands from the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge to allow for-profit corporation Doyon to drill for oil there – an activity that is not compatible with the purposes of the refuge.   Part of the plan is to snake a road and pipeline corridor along Beaver Creek Wild River and through remote Victoria Creek in White Mountains National Recreation Area.

In Fairbanks, 43 people opposed the trade and discussed the major deficiencies of the draft environmental impact statement.  Dog mushers, paddlers, skiers, hikers, trappers, birdwatchers, and many Gwich’in and other Alaska Natives told Fish and Wildlife that this deal was not in the public interest.   Only 3 people testified in favor of it in Fairbanks.  

Edna Carroll, who operates a tour company in Fort Yukon, said that the biggest compliment the visitors give is “how clear the air is, how clear the sky is,” and that drilling threatens this.  Joe Matesi, a former North Slope oil worker, said he’s seen the “brown smudge” of air pollution at one of the newer fields, Badami, and that due to the inversions in the Yukon Flats it would hang in there as cancer-causing smog. 

Tribal council member Georgina Solomon said, “I grew up on Beaver Creek and on the river.  At fish camp you have everything you need, all summer, no need to go back to town.”  Marilyn Savage, whose family lived in the Beaver Creek area said, “I don’t want to tell my grandkids we gave it up.”

“The Yukon River is an international treasure,” said Rob Rosenfeld, Yukon River Intertribal Watershed Council.  “Beaver Creek Wild River and White Mountains are a national treasure,” noted author Carolyn Kremers.
 
“The Yukon Flats land trade risks the national wildlife refuge system, a wild river and proposed wilderness,” said Fran Mauer, retired U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service biologist.  He summed it up saying, “It should be immediately suspended and buried in the graveyard of bad ideas along with Rampart Dam.”

LEARN MORE
See the Refuge Map: http://yukonflats.fws.gov/pdf/waterfowl_map.pdf
Read tribal concerns: http://www.fortyukon.org/swap.html
Find maps and more: www.northern.org