Land Trade Would Allow Drilling in Refuge

The deal has the support of Alaska Republican Sen. Ted Stevens, who set a deadline for the agreement in a rider to an appropriations bill pending in Congress.

The land swap not only would allow oil drilling within the 9-million-acre Yukon Flats refuge, which borders the more famous Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, it could necessitate the building of roads and a pipeline through wetlands that Fish and Wildlife had nominated for wilderness protection in 1987.

Native groups that live near the river oppose the deal because of potential harm to wildlife, including salmon, waterfowl, caribou and moose. Critics also note that the Fairbanks-based oil company has paid millions of dollars in fines for dumping toxic waste at drilling sites on Alaska's North Slope.

"This deal is an open-door invitation to carve out any piece of refuge for commercial gain," said Jamie Rappaport Clark, Fish and Wildlife Service director under President Clinton and now executive vice president of the group Defenders of Wildlife. "It's really an affront to what it means to be a national wildlife refuge."

As part of the deal, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would convey land in the middle of the refuge to Doyon Ltd. in return for isolated parcels owned by the company elsewhere in the refuge.

The corporation, owned by Alaskan Athabaskan Indians, has more than 12 million acres of land in the state, making it one of North America's largest landowners, according to the company's website.

Under the terms of the exchange, Doyon also would have the right to explore for oil under an additional 96,000 acres in the refuge, using a technique known as directional drilling that does not disturb the surface of the ground.

Critics of the deal, including environmentalists and former government scientists, said that man-made disturbances of wildlife habitat, as well as oil spills and industrial pollutants, would pose serious threats.

Gary Lawrence, executive director of the Gwichyaa Zhee Gwich'in Tribal Government in the village of Fort Yukon, which lies within the Yukon Refuge, said subsistence hunting accounted for 75% of the residents' dietary needs. He said that villagers hunted for salmon, moose, ducks and geese in the refuge to supplement their diets.