The Department of Interior on Wednesday approved oil and gas drilling on Alaska land considered such sensitive wildlife habitat that it was first protected by former Interior Secretary James G. Watt under President Reagan, and by four Interior secretaries since.
The decision -- decried by Native American, hunting and environmental groups -- comes just weeks after the U.S. Senate rejected drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, about 200 miles to the east.
Bureau of Land Management staff said the decision was made after three years of study and in response to requests by Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force.
The plan, signed by Deputy Assistant Interior Secretary Chad Calvert, will open up more than 500,000 acres in and around Teshekpuk Lake on Alaska's oil-rich North Slope. BLM officials estimate the northeast National Petroleum Reserve, including the lake area, may contain as much as 2 billion barrels of "economically recoverable" oil.
The area is a critical stop for molting geese on the Pacific flyway, with as many as 90,000 birds resting in flat wetlands in the summer. Up to 46,000 caribou also use areas near the lake for calving and migration paths.
Although many Alaskans welcome drilling as an economic boon, some native leaders in the state blasted the decision.
"There are a lot of frustrated people in our community right now," said Dora Nukapigak, who lives in the small Inupiat Eskimo village of Nuiqsut, at the eastern edge of the reserve, where many people depend on caribou as a food source. "It's a very sensitive area. It seems like regardless of what we say or do with BLM, they'll do what they're going to do anyways, and that's drill."
Former Interior Secretary Watt, often derided by environmentalists for other actions, protected more than 200,000 acres of the goose-molting area north of the lake from oil and gas drilling in the early 1980s. His successors under Reagan and President George H.W. Bush maintained those protections. Under President Clinton, Bruce Babbitt expanded bans against drilling around and on the lake to more than half a million acres.
BLM officials acknowledged that the area is important for wildlife and subsistence hunting, and said their plan was "very, very rigorous" in requiring environmental protection and mitigation.
