December 16, 2000
Canada faces energy war with U.S. Ottawa worries about pollution and caribou herd: Bush wants to end 40-year moratorium on drilling in wild Alaska's 'biological heart'
Alan Toulin, with files from Chris Wattie and Michael Higgins National Post
OTTAWA - The Canadian government has vowed to oppose plans by President-elect George W. Bush to allow oil development in an Alaskan wildlife preserve.
The Yukon government, environmentalists and native groups are also preparing for a cross-border battle over possible oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which borders the Yukon.
Mr. Bush, who will be sworn in on Jan. 20, has promised to open up the preserve to oil companies, prompting fears that breeding grounds for caribou that migrate into Canada will be destroyed and the fragile Arctic environment will face devastating pollution.
Jean Chrétien, the Prime Minister, has consistently opposed opening up the wildlife preserve.
And yesterday, Marie-Christine Lilkoff, spokeswoman for the Department of Foreign Affairs, said: "Canada will continue to advocate the permanent protection of those critical calving grounds ... to Congress and the new administration.
"We're currently working to communicate the Canadian position to the new administration."
Pat Duncan, the Yukon Premier, said her government is also opposed to drilling in the wildlife refuge.
"We have ... expressed our opposition to development of Alaska wildlife lands," Ms. Duncan said.
The disputed area is on the coastal plain of the wildlife refuge. The area is a 15-to-65-kilometre-wide strip of land between Alaska's northern mountains and the Beaufort Sea.
The wildlife refuge is home to 129,000 caribou, 300,000 snow geese and an uncounted number of polar bears.
The area is a calving ground for a caribou herd that criss-crosses Alaska and Yukon and it is also sacred ground for aboriginal groups, Ms. Duncan said.
It might also contain vast amounts of oil beneath its ice, snow and tundra. The oil industry wants to drill at what wildlife experts call the refuge's "biological heart," an area that has been closed to oil operations since the refuge was established in 1960.
Companies have been allowed to explore and drill elsewhere in the range under federally issued leases and the Yukon Premier acknowledged the proposal to develop the wildlife lands has divided Alaskans.
Almost all of the 238 residents of the village of Kaktovik, most of them Inupiat Eskimos, support the oil development for the economic benefits it could bring their isolated community, where unemployment is about 30%.
Environmentalists and the Gwich'in Indians, who have members on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border, have pledged to renew efforts to oppose drilling.