Ecological jewel on brink of change

TESHEKPUK LAKE, Alaska — Amid the sprawling sameness of Alaska's tundra is an oval pool of fresh water nine times the size of Lake Washington.

Teshekpuk Lake supports one of the largest bird-nesting sites in North America. Inupiat hunters camp here among the heather and wild poppies to track wolverines or shoot ducks or net eellike burbot and catch whitefish. Biologists consider Teshekpuk as ecologically significant as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Now the Bush administration is on the brink of opening it to oil drilling, infuriating even the Native Alaskans who benefit most from oil, and many who have pushed to open up ANWR.

Yet the debate is virtually unknown throughout the rest of the country.

"Here we have a huge biologically active area that's precious to us," said Marie Carroll, an Inupiat whose family hunted here for generations. "But all you hear down south is 'Save the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.' "

"It's God's country"

On a clear day this summer, 70 miles from the nearest road, thousands of spindly-legged shorebirds fluttered in from as far as Japan or South America to shed their feathers.

Newborn caribous traipsed along a crooked scratch of creek, feeding on cotton grass.

A black loon slid across a pond that looked like it was stamped into the tundra by giant boot heels.

Life flourishes on this marshy plain, biologists say, because of what's absent: roads, artificial lights, trails — and people.

"It's the beating heart," said George Ahmaogak, an Inupiat whale hunter who just retired as mayor of the North Slope Borough, Northern Alaska's municipal government. "The area is abundant with fish, caribou, brant, white snow geese. It's full of berries. It's one of the last completely undisturbed areas. It's God's country."

Ahmaogak would know. Last summer, after the mosquitoes stopped swarming so thick that a swat of the palm could kill dozens, he took his boat along the Arctic coast from Barrow on a white-knuckle journey to his Teshekpuk Lake cabin.

"I don't go to Hawaii or Mexico for vacations," said Ahmaogak, who shot 12 caribous in a few days. "I hunt."

Caribous give birth around Teshekpuk, then follow narrow corridors of land between lakes to reach the coast, where icy breezes blow away burrowing flies.

Up to 60,000 migrating birds nest here, from dowichers to plovers and 30 percent of the world's population of a species of goose called the black brant.

"For molting geese in North America, certainly for Pacific black brant, this is the single most important place — hands down," said North Slope Borough biologist Brian Person.

There's no telling how long that will last.

Shifting values

Ahmaogak is a powerful supporter of ANWR drilling. But earlier this year he sent the Bush administration a letter arguing that oil development "would utterly fail to protect" Teshekpuk Lake, which is inside a huge patch of tundra called the National Petroleum Reserve.

President Harding created the 23.5-million-acre reserve in 1923 as an emergency oil source for the Navy. World War II shortages led to some exploration, but the hunt quickly moved to other areas, leading to the discovery of Prudhoe Bay, the country's largest oil field, in 1968.

The Reagan administration put some areas of the reserve — including Teshekpuk Lake — off-limits, arguing they were too ecologically important.

But by the late 1990s, Alaska's Democratic governor wanted more lands explored. So the Clinton administration opened millions of acres to oil hunters who have sought — but not developed — new supplies. But President Clinton agreed to stay out of Teshekpuk.

In January, however, the Bush administration proposed opening seven tracts of about 50,000 acres each on the lake's eastern edge. New tests showed that area holds some of the reserve's best oil prospects — perhaps 2 billion barrels, roughly a quarter of the oil believed to be recoverable from the entire petroleum reserve.

The White House is still weeks or months from deciding to make the final moves to lease that land to oil companies, said Henri Bisson, head of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in Alaska, "but our charge is to carry out a leasing program and protect the sensitive values there."

Government biologists aren't sure that's possible.

A rush of studies

One day last summer, Larry Moulton basked in the sun outside his tent at Teshekpuk, warming his hands on a mug of coffee, and taking a break from being paid to fish.

A helicopter had dumped the government consultant here to catch, tag and mount transmitters on fish. He and other scientists were trying to understand the systems of streams that reach like tentacles from Teshekpuk Lake — and learn how oil drilling might affect these waters.

"Once they start building permanent oil structures, you'll have roads, pipelines — all of which can alter the flow, and the flow of wetlands is complex," Moulton said.

Moulton is part of a scientific blitzkrieg that has descended on these meadows with biologists trying to study everything from snow geese to caribous before oil rigs arrive. The reason: Much remains unknown about Teshekpuk.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has warned that shorebirds return to the same areas each year, so some could be wiped out if breeding sites are disturbed.

State of Alaska scientists have told the BLM that molting geese — featherless and unable to flee — are vulnerable because noise and movement harm their young, and oil development draws foxes and bears, which eat the garbage people leave behind. Scientists have even shown that helicopters so stress Pacific brant that the birds burn more calories.

And "the petroleum reserve is far better than the Arctic Refuge as far as sheer numbers and variety of birds," said Rick Lanctot, a bird expert with the federal fish and wildlife agency. "The diversity and density is just much higher."

BLM's own documents suggested oil development would drive Inupiat hunters off more land and alter caribou movements.

But Bisson said his agency is guided by a mission.

"This is a petroleum reserve," he said. "It's not a wildlife refuge. It's not a wilderness."

Craig Welch: 206-464-2093 or cwelch@seattletimes.com