This article was produced with the support of the Local Journalism Initiative.

When Richard Wyman, president of Calgary-based Chance Oil and Gas, thinks about the Eagle Plains Basin in northern Yukon, he conjures images of a small, bustling oil and gas operation providing a region that’s remote with much-needed energy and jobs. 

That vision was in mind when Chance submitted a proposal to the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Board for a workover of eight idle wells owned, but not currently operated, by the company. The maintenance proposal, which includes flow testing to assess the basin’s resource potential, could lay the groundwork for a new exploration program in the Eagle Plains, an expansive area of rolling hills between mountain ranges 400 kilometres north of Dawson City.

Wyman told The Narwhal upwards of 30 exploration wells could eventually be drilled in the Eagle Plains if there’s enough gas there to make it financially worthwhile.

The possibility of development in the sensitive area is reigniting concerns about the impact oil and gas development would have on the Porcupine caribou herd, one of the largest migratory barren ground caribou herds in North America, which over-winters on the plains. It’s also forcing Yukoners to address whether or not the territory should consider fossil fuel development in a time of climate crisis, the impacts of which are being felt more acutely in the North than in the rest of the world.

The Chance proposal comes in response to a nudge from the Yukon government to assess the suspended wells and either shut them up for good, in a process known as well abandonment, or convert them to active wells once again. Four of the wells are legacy wells bought by Chance that date back to the ’50s and ’60s. The other four wells were drilled by Chance in 2012 and 2013, before the territory introduced a 2015 moratorium on fracking (the company has so far been unsuccessful in its attempt to sue the Yukon government for $2.2 billion in claimed damages stemming from that ban). Now Chance is hopeful that, with enhanced flow testing, some of the wells might show signs of oil and gas resources that could be developed without the use of fracking.

But others say there’s no point in searching for resource potential in an area that should remain permanently closed to oil and gas development.

“It’s always been an extremely marginal project, which is why it’s not gone anywhere,” Sebastian Jones, wildlife and habitat analyst for the Yukon Conservation Society, told The Narwhal. 

“It’s a very remote area. It’s expensive to operate, the conditions are harsh. There’s never been any bankable resources there.”

Jones said oil and gas development in the Eagle Plains “risks causing damage and harm to the environment for no obvious reason.”

But Wyman says the full economic potential for development in Eagle Plains is currently unknown.

“The sedimentary basin has not been fully explored,” Wyman told The Narwhal. 

“If operations are allowed to proceed and the exploration program is successful, it could have a profound economic benefit, both to the territory and the north Yukon, where it’s economically depressed.”

A map showing the location of the Eagle Plains basin within the range of the Porcupine caribou herd. Source: Porcupine caribou management board. Map: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

Eagle Plains drilling a test for Yukon climate strategy

Wyman’s interest in creating jobs in the remote region is shared by some Yukoners and members of First Nations who have submitted public comments in support of potential development. Peter Charlie, from the Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation community of Old Crow, about 195 kilometres northwest of the potential development area, said he supports the idea of oil and gas taking off in the region. “We need work. It would be good to have people working. There is not much happening up here [in Old Crow], right now,” Charlie said in a submitted comment delivered by phone. “Everyone is going through a hard time. We have to get jobs up here. A lot of young people are not even doing nothing up here. Everyone is talking about this project. We have to get something going here. The project would give us work. It would be good for young kids too.” 

The proposal, currently moving through a slow review process with the board, has also attracted a significant amount of criticism, notably for its potential to introduce ecological threats to a delicate northern ecosystem for a fossil fuel project that seems out of step with the territory’s own climate strategy. 

The territory’s emissions grew by 11.8 per cent between 2009 and 2017, the most recent year for which data is available. In its 2020 climate change action plan, the Yukon government emphasized the need for more renewable energy, especially for the territory’s remote and often diesel-dependent communities, to meet a goal of reducing emissions 30 per cent from 2010 levels by 2030.

There is very little oil and gas development in Yukon and the vast majority of the territory’s electricity needs are met by hydroelectricity. But many remote communities not connected to the territory’s grid rely on costly, and highly polluting fossil fuels that are imported from other provinces. The territory currently spends about $50 million annually on fossil fuel imports.

Wyman argues there’s an environmental advantage to developing oil and gas in the territory, pointing out that Yukon is heavily reliant on fossil fuels for energy generation that have a high emissions footprint because they have to be transported in from out-of-territory.

“However you want to slice it, there’s thousands and thousands of kilometres of supply line … with its own greenhouse gas emissions,” he said. “If we were to find some hydrocarbons that were suitable for consumption in Yukon, we would significantly reduce the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the supply line. You’re going to get a net impact that’s positive.”

“The only question is going to be, does the Yukon give a shit about all the greenhouse gas emissions that are emitted outside the territorial boundary?”

Shortly after Yukon’s governing Liberals were voted into power in 2016, Ranj Pillai, Minister of the Department of Energy, Mines and Resources, received a mandate letter directing him to “promote responsible resource development balanced with environmental management and demonstrable benefits for Yukon by promoting oil and gas development outside the Whitehorse trough and without fracking.”

Brigitte Parker, a spokesperson for the Department of Energy, Mines and Resources, told The Narwhal in an email that Pillai’s letter continues to form the department’s mandate.

“Energy transitions take time and demand for oil and gas may continue into the foreseeable future,” she said.

Assessing the impacts of Eagle Plains drilling to Porcupine caribou

Chance first floated the idea of commercial oil and gas development in Eagle Plains in 2014, but a regional office of the Yukon assessment board determined that the company’s proposal to drill 20 new oil and gas wells could have significant adverse effects for the transboundary Porcupine caribou herd, one of North America’s last healthy caribou populations, which has come under increasing threat from oil and gas development in a thawing north.

According to an evaluation report conducted at the time, the impacts on the herd would have included habitat loss, injury and mortality.

The Chance project proposal area falls within the territory of Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation, which is currently undertaking renewed analysis of how Chance’s current proposal could affect the herd.

Eight wells owned by Chance Oil and Gas are located in the Eagle Plains basin in northern Yukon. Map: YESAB

Erika Tizya-Tramm, director of natural resources for Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation, told The Narwhal the Vuntut Gwitchin and Yukon governments “are working together to determine both the state of the herd and what those possible impacts could be and what the implications are” in response to Chance’s proposal. Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation, Tr’ondek Hwech’in, Inuvialuit and other nations harvest the Porcupine caribou for subsistence.

In its maintenance proposal, Chance noted it would only be able to carry out its work in the winter months, when the ground and snow conditions would be conducive to heavy trucks and machinery moving around on access roads. But the winter months are when the Porcupine caribou are most likely to be nearby. 

Chance said if more than a dozen caribou are observed from the project area, or if caribou show up and hang around for more than three days, then the company will engage a qualified environmental professional to determine if site-specific mitigation measures are needed.

That plan struck members of the public and even Environment and Climate Change Canada as insufficient. 

In response to Chance’s application, the federal department requested the company “describe the site specific mitigation measures that would be implemented in response to observations of more than a dozen caribou or caribou remaining in place for greater than three days.” 

Environment Canada also noted Chance should describe the specific measures it would take should caribou show up. 

The Yukon Environmental and Socio-Economic Assessment Board also wants to see more from Chance when it comes to assessing and planning for impacts to the herd. In April the board sent 21 specific questions to Chance, including a request for more information about the scientific foundation of the company’s plans.

Among other things, the board says it isn’t clear why Chance chose the threshold of more than a dozen caribou, or the need to establish mitigation plans if caribou linger for more than three days. 

“It is not clear why these numbers have been chosen as thresholds or the conditions and triggers that would result in the need for site-specific or tailored management measures,” the board wrote to Chance.

Amelie Morin, manager of the board’s Dawson designated office, said numerous public comments have noted concerns about impacts to Porcupine caribou. 

“We have seen comments through our seeking views and information period that identified potential impacts to Porcupine caribou and linking that to proposed activities … we’re certainly aware of that and will consider that in the evaluation,” Morin told The Narwhal. 

Tizya-Tramm said there is a lot more work to be done when it comes to understanding how Eagle Plains oil and gas development could impact the herd and to ground mitigation plans for Chance in stronger analysis.

“We’re working to produce more materials around caribou, including safe operating distances and determining significant numbers of caribou that would trigger oil and gas development work to stop or continue.”

In its proposal to the board, Chance did not clarify how its project proposal was informed by engagement with the Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation or identify how the nation would be involved in cleanup activities should an accident or spill take place, according to the First Nation’s submitted comments.

“We need to be at the table every step of the way,” Tizya-Tramm said.

On the trail of the Porcupine caribou herd

Waste injection, flaring at Eagle Plains also a concern

Before full-scale development can even be considered in Eagle Plains, Chance would have to submit a formal application to receive permits for that level of development. 

Wyman said in the meantime, Chance needs to conduct this currently proposed work to determine if there are, in fact, resources available in the basin. 

“There is no certainty that all this work will happen,” Wyman told The Narwhal. “The actual amount of drilling and seismic data acquisition will depend on results as the program unfolds.”

“At this time, we do not have specific locations where we will drill or where we will gather more seismic data.”

“The idea would be to get some more information about well capabilities, reservoir performance and help provide more insight as to what a development might look like with those wells,” he said. 

To get that information, Chance hopes to perform extended flow testing, an activity that involves measuring volumes of natural gas and any associated liquids, such as propane, that may be produced from specific wells. 

“All of this is relevant for designing development plans and engaging potential purchasers of natural gas and any associated liquids,” Wyman said.

He said the wells would be returned to a suspended state following the tests.

According to the company’s project, the tests would involve flaring for roughly six weeks. Flaring is used to dispose of any natural gas that may be produced during testing.

Jones said flaring would cause “considerable disturbance” for wildlife in the area.

“When you burn the gas off, it doesn’t just vanish,” he said. “There are byproducts from burning — carbon dioxide is obviously one of them. There are going to be fallouts of soot and chemicals and stuff like that onto the land around there. It’s also pretty noisy, it’s also pretty hot, it’s also pretty bright.”

Wyman said flaring stacks would be tall to mitigate potential environmental impacts. “The risk of doing anything untoward to the surface should be pretty limited,” he said.

Chance’s proposal also identified another opportunity to use some of the wells for waste disposal. 

Two wells in particular “represent opportunities for deep zone injections,” Wyman said.

Injection wells, which are used primarily to dispose of certain fluids, including propane and waste water, are not readily available in Yukon.

“Rather than taking fluids 2,000 kilometres to a disposal site in British Columbia, which has its own environmental risks, we’d just dispose of them locally,” Wyman said, noting he wants to see the wells already drilled in Eagle Plains put to good use for local communities, either now or in the future.

“This [proposed] project is to protect assets that are viable for future use,” he said.

Wyman said any future exploration work would be done intentionally to be smaller in scale and span a longer period of time, “partly to minimize environmental impacts, but also to help develop local capacity to participate.”

The exploration program has been presented on “several occasions” to affected First Nations, including Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation and the Gwich’in Tribal Council, he said.

But many wonder if extended flow testing or flaring ought to be permitted under the auspices of a well maintenance proposal. 

When asked if flow testing is considered an aspect of well maintenance, Morin from the Dawson designated office told The Narwhal, “I can tell you extended flow testing is an exploration activity. It’s related to exploration. It’s not related to the maintenance activities.” 

Chance Oil and Gas was unable to respond to all of the board’s requests for additional information by its May 10 deadline. The company indicated it would answer those questions within a one-year timeframe.

Chance has until Feb. 22, 2022, to provide responses to the board’s questions. 

— With files from Julien Gignac

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By Katie Orndahl,  Northern Arizona University. This article originally appeared on Nasa Blogs.

I spent my summer searching for arctic spirits: barren-ground caribou who are, somehow, both omnipresent and elusive.

My journey, it turns out, would trace the migration route of the Porcupine caribou herd, linking boreal forest and arctic tundra ecosystems unlike any other northern mammal. The wild landscape I traveled forms the northern extent of the North American Cordillera, one of the last intact mountain ecosystems on Earth.

As I prepared, gathering groceries and loading the truck with scientific equipment and camping supplies, I heard whispers of the entire Porcupine herd moving southeast through the Richardson Mountains. Our small research team drove hurriedly north – hoping for a (figurative) collision course with hundreds of thousands of caribou at the Yukon/Northwest Territories border.

Anticipation ran high, but the border was eerily quiet. A gentle breeze blew and the sun shone through thin clouds. We climbed mountain after mountain, rocks clattering underfoot, to scan the horizon. Looking, hoping, wishing, we even tried to conjure up caribou in our minds to fill the vacant tundra. But the landscape remained still and the disappointment palpable.

We sampled vegetation and drove on.

The Firth River is a formidable obstacle for Porcupine caribou on their yearly migration. Photo: Katie Orndahl

At Imniarvik Base Camp we missed the herd again. Just a few weeks before, the rocky benches above Sheep Creek in Ivvavik National Park had swelled with thousands of caribou. The pulsing mass filled the spaces between spruce trees, blending together first as life personified, and then in death as the roaring Firth River canyon claimed frenzied victims attempting to cross.

Although no longer near, the caribou had made their presence clear – tracks, hair, droppings and browsed willows everywhere we looked. And this, it turns out, was the point. It is hard to be convinced of things we cannot see. As scientists it is our duty to make these things more tangible.

We felt the Porcupine herd’s presence in the things they left behind: tracks, dung, bones, antlers, hair, and signs of browse. Photos: Katie Orndahl and Aerin Jacob

I am a PhD student at Northern Arizona University. My collaborators and I study how millions of migrating caribou interact with their environment: the habitat selection choices the caribou make, as well as the impacts they impart on the landscape. We are particularly interested in how these interactions fit into a complicated web of processes: climate warming, carbon cycling, wildfire and vegetation change. We hope by including caribou we can “animate the carbon cycle” and fill in gaps in scientific understanding about climate change in the Arctic.

This brought me to the Canadian Arctic.

Fieldwork helps us map above-ground biomass of different types of plants in Alaska and northwest Canada. We identify species of shrubs, flowering plants, lichens and grasses/sedges, estimate the amount of ground they cover, measure their heights, and harvest them to weigh in the laboratory. This gives us closest to true estimates of how much plant matter (caribou food) exists in each place.

However, these measurements are small points on a large landscape. I am particularly excited about new technology that can help us map plant matter (“above-ground biomass”) across the entire region. This means future researchers can choose anywhere on a map and understand how much caribou food exists there. And, what’s more, we can link these maps with GPS data from the movements of collared caribou to understand the relationship between caribou density and on the ground vegetation.

The drone picked up signs of caribou, too. This drone image shows caribou trails weaving through spruce near Sheep Creek in Ivvavik National Park. Photo: Katie Orndahl

For this reason, at each location where we sample vegetation, we also use a drone to collect super high resolution photographs. Not only are these images beautiful, but they also act as a bridge between fine-scale field data and satellite images that cover the whole globe, but contain less detail. We hope drone images might also make future vegetation surveys more efficient.

Using an iPad, Katie (left) and Rachel (right) monitor the drone as it completes its flight in a cottongrass tundra. Photo: Aerin Jacob

This summer, we sampled cottongrass tundra as fluffs of wind dispersed seeds floated by, tall willow thickets that bruised our shins and hummed with mosquitoes, and barren ridgelines with little but lichen and resilient dwarf shrubs. Caribou use many different habitats—from the boreal forests of central Alaska to the flat plains of the Yukon North Slope—and our field sites reflect this variety.

At each site, the drone buzzed overhead on a pre-programmed flight, taking detailed photos I’ll use to classify plant cover and create 3D models of vegetation and topography.

Meanwhile, we scurried about on the ground, getting our hands dirty measuring vegetation cover and height, then meticulously harvesting and bagging vegetation.

Our field sites varied from luscious cottongrass … Photo: Katie Orndahl

… to bare rocks and hardy lichen … Photo: Katie Orndahl

… to thick riverside shrubs. Photo: Katie Orndahl

At each site, I thought about caribou.

Eventually, the midnight sun started dipping below the horizon and the arctic summer sputtered out.  As I made the long drive back to Fairbanks, I finally stopped obsessing about finding the caribou. Only then did they appear.

Hundreds of caribou flee pursuing wolves near the Yukon/Northwest Territory border. Photo: Laurence Carter

We crawled out of our tents early one morning to see 100 or so caribou nearby. Steaming coffee in hand, our field team watched as the animals we had talked and dreamed about for months grazed peacefully. A sharp intake of breath broke the silence. My colleague pointed into the distance as two small white dots appeared beside the unsuspecting caribou. Moving slowly at first, the wolves broke into a sprint and chased the caribou across the tundra. Kicking up their long legs, the caribou sped away in unison – up a ridge and through a saddle to the other side of the mountains. Defeated, the wolves slowed to a stop and slumped into the grass. This time, caribou won.

Our summer unfolded like a game of hide-and-seek. We found caribou in intricate tracks woven across the landscape, in bits of hair left behind in birch boughs and in willows stripped bare. We found caribou in satiated grizzly bears that gained strength from the unlucky few washed ashore on the Firth River banks. We found caribou in our data which will help us understand how they interact with the changing arctic environment. And finally, we found caribou in the flesh, outrunning two wolves, where the Yukon and Northwest Territories meet.

Rachel (left) and Kayla Arey (right) soak in our first caribou sighting as summer winds down in the Arctic. Photo: Laurence Carter

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“Caribou!” somebody shouts. 

Dozens of people spring from their seats and hurry for the doors of Old Crow’s community hall, sweeping me along. The caribou stew I’d just ladled into my bowl sloshes dangerously around as I stumble out into the sunlight. The Porcupine River is swollen with snowmelt from the Richardson and Nahoni mountains. Chunks of ice wash downstream. Fifteen caribou struggle against the current, the ripples in their wake catching the sun. 

Onlookers watch as caribou swim across the Porcupine River outside Old Crow, Yukon. Photo: Malkolm Boothroyd

After five minutes of swimming they reach the far bank. The caribou scramble out from the river and vanish into the spindly spruce trees. People are beaming. The caribou have finally returned.

Visits to Old Crow, Yukon, are the best part of my job campaigning against oil drilling in the calving grounds of the Porcupine caribou herd with the Yukon chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society. I’d come to the Gwich’in community in the Yukon’s northern corner for “Caribou Days.” Locals and visitors compete to fry the best bannock, skin a caribou leg the fastest or toss the most rings onto a set of antlers. In the evenings we feast on fresh caribou then jig and waltz to fiddle music. 

A caribou leg-skinning contest is one of the many community competitions held during Caribou Days in Old Crow, Yukon. Photo: Malkolm Boothroyd

Caribou Days is meant to celebrate the return of the herd, as caribou flood north toward their calving grounds in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Except lately, caribou have been hard to come by. People here have been starving for caribou meat.

Last spring was a poor time for caribou around Old Crow and during recent autumn migrations the herd hasn’t lingered around the community. Caribou are critical to the culture and subsistence way of life of the Vuntut Gwitchin and essential to food security in Old Crow, where a bag of apples can cost $17 and two litres of milk costs $9.99.

Nobody is certain why the caribou have been sparse of late. I’ve heard people suggest low-flying cargo planes are disturbing caribou, while others wonder if changes in the climate and increasing shrub growth could be factors. The scarcity of caribou around Old Crow is a paradox, because the herd is at a record high. However, the recent meat shortages the Vuntut Gwitchin have experienced foreshadow what could happen should the health of the Porcupine caribou herd take a turn for the worse, like many other caribou herds across the North.

Competitors attempt to toss rings onto a set of caribou antlers at Caribou Days in Old Crow, Yukon. Photo: Malkolm Boothroyd

Caribou decorate a post outside Old Crow’s community centre, Yukon. Photo: Malkolm Boothroyd

In 2017, the U.S. government opened the coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge — the heart of the herd’s calving grounds — to oil drilling. Now the administration is fast-tracking an environmental review that would auction away the birthplace of the herd to the fossil fuel industry. 

For decades the Gwich’in have led the movement to protect the calving grounds — efforts that have ramped up since 2017. Lorraine Netro, Norma Kassi, Chief Dana Tizya-Tramm and countless other Gwich’in advocates have made journey after gruelling journey to Washington, D.C., to call for protecting the Arctic Refuge. In March, Chief Tizya-Tramm testified before the U.S. House of Representatives, telling lawmakers “development on the coastal plain amounts to the cultural genocide of the entire Gwich’in Nation.”

It’s in large part thanks to the work of the Gwich’in that the Arctic Refuge stayed off-limits to oil and gas for as long as it did. Once again, the Gwich’in and environmental groups are working to keep drilling out of the refuge by scrutinizing the U.S. Government’s environmental review process, building support for wilderness legislation on Capitol Hill and campaigning for banks to withhold financing for drilling.

The Porcupine caribou herd is one of the last large, healthy, migratory caribou herds on the planet. Farther east in the Arctic, the Bathurst and Baffin herds have declined 96 per cent and 98 per cent over the past 30 years. Collectively the two herds have lost close to 700,000 caribou. 

The Fortymile caribou of the central Yukon and Alaska are a shadow of their former selves — once so plentiful the herd could take ten days to cross the Yukon River, bringing the steamships that plied back and forth to the Klondike goldfields to a halt. The fate of many caribou herds is reflected in the alarming loss of biodiversity around the planet. That makes the Porcupine caribou herd’s vitality all the more incredible, and protecting the herd even more critical.

The late-evening sun, still high above the horizon, gleams through one of the windows in the community centre and casts a square of dazzling light in the centre of the hall. Lorraine Netro lays out caribou antlers, a hide and spruce boughs on the hardwood floor. Many of the people filtering in are dressed in vests and mocassins made from caribou or moose hide and decorated with hand-beaded flowers. There’s a fashion show tonight, then a talent show and another dance. 

A community waltz is part of the Caribou Days celebrations in Old Crow, Yukon. Photo: Malkolm Boothroyd

The return of the caribou have lit up the weekend’s festivities and are a reminder of why the Porcupine caribou herd is so important to life in Old Crow. Still, it’s hard to forget the danger that lies ahead. Keeping oil drilling out of the Arctic Refuge calls for monumental efforts from the Gwich’in, and groups like ours that support them in this campaign. Securing permanent protection for the calving grounds could take years, maybe even decades. That’s a long time. But for tonight, it is time for more jigging and fiddle music.

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When the sun rose on the final day of our 12-day hike in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and we still hadn’t seen the Porcupine Caribou herd, the reality that we might not see caribou at all was beginning to sink in for many of us, and the collective mood was sombre.

A team of photographers, artists and Indigenous leaders had been assembled by the International League of Conservation Photographers to document the herd’s epic migration — one of the longest and harshest of any land mammal.

For the bulk of the trip, as we hiked across tussocky tundra, baren shale mountainsides and frigid Arctic rivers in search of caribou, we took the opportunity to document the myriad other flora and fauna that make up this unique ecosystem, while reflecting on the unexpectedly cold temperatures that were foiling our plans.

An unusually cold spring and summer in the northern reaches of the Yukon and Northwest Territories meant the herd’s usual migration through the safety and comfort of Alaska’s coastal plain was disrupted and rendered unpredictable.

Slightly warmer temperatures are needed to spark the mass migration of this herd that begins their near-mystical journey — one of the longest and harshest of any land mammal — for the most prosaic of reasons: fleeing a seasonal plague of mosquitoes.

We were, rather perversely, praying for a swarm of distant pests.

By day 11 we reached the edge of the Hulahula river, where, in two days time, we were scheduled to be picked up by a bush pilot.

Spirits were low as we awaited the plane. Eleven days and neither hide nor hair of the caribou we had come to see.

Then, almost miraculously, as we finished breakfast on that last day, a group of paddlers sent word of the unimaginable: thousands of caribou sighted a mere 20 kilometres from our camp.

That brief satellite message would send us scrambling 19 hours straight over harsh terrain and through a dense fog — into which one member of our party would eventually disappear.

The Hulahula river flows north to the Beaufort Sea, from the Brooks range mountains in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Photo: Matt Jacques / The Narwhal

The waiting game

Each year, the Porcupine caribou herd embarks on one of the longest migrations on earth. From the northern reaches of the Yukon and Northwest Territories, they make their way to the relative safety of Alaska’s coastal plain where, by late May, they calve and nurse the next generation.

I was lucky to witness the herd’s migration in the Yukon in the summer of 2016. It was a revelation to see thousands of caribou stream by at close range over the course of a few days. What struck me most then was the realization that those six-week-old calves had already journeyed 200 kilometres or more in their short lives.

Since that time, the news has been both good and bad for the herd. The Porcupine is the only barren-ground caribou herd across the north that is not in steep decline.

However, while the caribou themselves know no border, the American political climate and details buried in a controversial tax bill have created a crisis for the herd and the Gwich’in people who span northern Canada and Alaska and have depended on them for tens of thousands of years.

The ‘1002 lands’ of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge align almost perfectly with the caribou’s traditional calving grounds and Trump’s ‘Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017’ has suddenly opened up this slice of untouched Arctic wilderness to oil and gas developers, after a decades-long battle with the Gwich’in First Nations and members of the scientific and conservation communities.

Map showing overlap of 1002 area lands and the Porcupine caribou herd range. Illustration: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

I recently made my way to Fairbanks, Alaska, to join a team of photographers and artists with the International League of Conservation Photographers, as well as Jeffrey Peter, member of the Vuntut Gwich’in First Nation from Old Crow, Yukon.

“There’s a lot at stake here,” Peter said, adding his experience of becoming a father for the first time had altered his perspective on the caribou, making him take stock of the legacy he hopes to pass on to future generations.

“I’ve always been concerned about the issue, but now I’m at a point in my life where I’m able to clearly describe why the caribou are so important to Gwich’in, and help others understand that.”

For the Gwich’in, the fight to protect and prolong the life of this wild herd is no less than existential.

Jeffrey Peter surveys the landscape for signs of caribou and other wildlife in the Brooks Range mountains. Photo: Matt Jacques / The Narwhal

‘Any more development in the refuge at all will wipe us out’

Bernadette Demientieff, the U.S. executive director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee, works on behalf of the collective of First Nations to raise awareness of the refuge with decision-makers in Washington, D.C.

“Any more development in the refuge at all will wipe us out,” Demientieff told me. “This is our health and our way of life that this administration is stomping all over.”

So far, according to Demientieff, the pleas of the Gwich’in have gone unaddressed in the halls of power.

“The refuge is now open for the first time in history, so they have ignored our concerns,” she said.

“They don’t seem to understand what we’re saying. For the Indigenous people in this country, oppression and genocide continue to this day. It’s 2018 and we’re still fighting for our human rights.”

Just two days earlier, the bi-annual Gwich’in Gathering wrapped up in Tsiigehtchic, N.W.T., where a declaration was signed reaffirming the Gwich’in commitment to protect the calving grounds.

“The first Gwich’in gathering in over 150 years was held in 1988, and that was when our elders and chiefs got together, because of drilling in the coastal plain,” explained Demientieff, “so now every two years, we come together and reaffirm our commitment. Our identity is not up for negotiation.”

Bernadette Demientieff, executive director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee in Fairbanks, Alaska. Photo: Matt Jacques / The Narwhal

Thin ice in caribou country

When our bush plane finally dropped us off at the Collins airstrip in the heart of the Brooks range mountains and then flew away, leaving us alone with our 70-pound backpacks and a startling silence, an adrenaline rush packed with both excitement and apprehension kicked in.

We were on our way, hiking over tundra and forging rivers.

As our journey stretched on, we used a satellite phone to connect with a research biologist from the Government of Yukon. We hoped some external insight could help us pinpoint the location of the herd.

The incoming news was bad: the herd’s usual post-calving aggregation in the foothills still hadn’t begun.

We needed temperatures on the coastal plain to warm up, prompting mosquitoes to drive the herd into the foothills and then the mountains in search of higher ground.

We had planned for months — done everything we could to give ourselves the best opportunity to see the herd on our planned 12-day journey — but the caribou still weren’t on the move up into the Brooks range mountains where we hoped to intercept them.

And so, we hiked, day after day.

Expedition members traverse open tundra north of the Collins airstrip in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, on day one of the trip. Photo: Matt Jacques / The Narwhal

It was obvious, even in their absence, that this is caribou country: every patch of mud bore the tell-tale tracks of earlier caribou movement, and our group followed in millennia-old caribou trails weaving through tussocks and carved into shale-covered mountainsides.

When we finally received news on our last day that there were caribou nearby, our group was elated. We quickly mobilized for a day trek, taking just the barest of essentials.

A significant portion of the herd had been spotted heading toward us, 20 kilometres from our camp.

On terrain as rugged as this, we could expect that to make for a challenging six-hour hike. As we had to return to our same camp site at the Grassers airstrip beside the Hulahula, we were lucky to be able to pack light, but realized our day could end up being closer to a 40-kilometre round-trip saga — about the distance of a marathon.

After an extended river crossing, the team stopped to wring out wet socks and re-apply tape to blistered feet. Our group broke out the binoculars and took turns peering northward down the Hulahula valley, desperately scanning for any sign of caribou.

I mounted my longest lens and noticed hundreds of tiny brown ‘rocks’ that appeared to slowly crawl across the valley slope several kilometres away.

A feeling of jubilation washed over our group as the ever-growing spectre of failure evaporated: we were finally within sight of thousands of caribou, dotting the slopes of the valley across from us.

The herd was still over an hour’s hike away and we were also conscious of the fact that we had at least another six hours to go before getting back to camp.

Sitting atop a pingo, a type of ice-cored mountain unique to the Arctic, we consumed some of the very last calories of food packed for the trip, and planned our final push to bring us close enough to document the herd.

When our northernmost vantage point was finally reached, our view opened up upon what we estimated to be nearly 10,000 caribou.

Bulls pushed up slope toward rockier precipices, cows grazed and rested periodically, while calves sprinted about awkwardly, experimenting with their frisky legs beneath them.

Porcupine caribou cover the valley of the Hulahula river in the Brooks range mountains of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Photo: Matt Jacques / The Narwhal

A Porcupine caribou crosses a braided section of the Hulahula River. Photo: Matt Jacques / The Narwhal

Caribou move along the banks of the Hulahula River. Photo: Matt Jacques / The Narwhal

Lost in the fog

We had spent about two hours in the presence of the caribou and began to calculate how many hours of sleep we’d get after our long journey back.

We reluctantly packed up and headed out just as a light but steady rain began. A claustrophobic fog slowly settled over the valley.

What was already sure to be a challenging hike home became a cruel reminder that wild places like the refuge owe nobody safe passage.

The fog and rain grew heavier and our tiring team of 10 gradually began to spread out. With camp tantalizingly close, and believing navigation to be straightforward, one of our members forged ahead alone.

Just after 10 p.m. a few of us paused to scrape the bottom of our peanut butter jars and rehydrate in lieu of an actual dinner. Back on the trail, we came upon a creek that had risen to the point of raging thanks to several hours of rain.

It was immediately apparent that this obstacle would prove too much for a solo crossing — our minds turned to our friend who had pushed ahead of the group.

Had he attempted to pass and been swept down the river, it could be fatal. Searching for an alternate route, he could become lost in the unrelenting fog.

Back at camp, our fears were confirmed: our solo hiker had not arrived.

Forming a search party, pairs patrolled the edge of the river and adjacent valleys, where he may have ventured had he become disoriented.

One hour later, nothing. The night crept on. With the darkness and wet and fear settling into our bones, we hit hour two. Not a trace.

It wasn’t until after four in the morning that we’d finally reunite.

The lost team member was located back near that flooded creek, cold, wet and still searching in vain for a safe place to cross.

Rattled by this close call, our entire crew crashed hard just before 5 a.m. — just a scant few hours before our scheduled extraction flight.

We ultimately succeeded in our mission to see the caribou, but were also served a serious reminder of the harsh and unforgiving environment the caribou have to endure, even in the middle of summer.

Peering out over the sprawling grandeur of the refuge from the bush plane the next morning, I felt an exhausted mix of joy at having witnessed the caribou herd on their distant terrain and relief at our team having escaped that terrain intact.

Arctic fox remains atop a small pingo in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge serve as a reminder of the high stakes at play. Photo: Matt Jacques / The Narwhal

The disturbance

For more than a decade Jeffrey Peter worked in Vuntut National park, tucked into northwest corner of the Yukon and separated from the wildlife refuge by no more than an imaginary international border.

Prior to this trip, he had never actually crossed over into the refuge. Now, having done so, he struggled to comprehend how the caribou can be so well protected on one side of the border, while their existence — and the existence of the Gwich’in nation across the north — is threatened by developments on the other.

“There are thousands of Canadian Gwich’in directly affected by this, and the herd spends a large part of the year in Canada,” he said. “If there is development in the calving grounds, we would see less and less caribou in Canada. They’re such an important part of the ecosystem and they have a big role to play on the Canadian side as well.”

Our group witnessed firsthand how something as minor as a few degrees temperature change, and something as small as a mosquito, can dictate when and where the herd will move.

And while our entire group took every precaution to not disturb the herd, we noticed how sensitive the caribou were to the presence of two-legged creatures, lurking with cameras in the shrubs a couple hundred metres away.

Having seen that, it seemed a stretch that oil and gas development in calving grounds would not have a significant effect on the herd.

Indeed, we have known for decades that human-caused disturbance on the landscape — roads, pipelines, drilling rigs and more — can have long-lasting impacts on caribou, even many kilometres away. It can cause individuals to lose weight, a devastating impact on a species that works endlessly to build fat reserves to survive the cold.

In just a few years in the late 1970s and through the 1980s, a surge of oil and gas activity near Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, redistributed the Western Arctic caribou herd on the landscape as they avoided roads and developments — even going to places where the food is less plentiful to avoid the disturbance — resulting in fewer calves.

The findings of scientists are in lockstep with the traditional knowledge and first-hand experience of the Gwich’in.

For Peter, the idea of brute industrial activity in the calving grounds is unthinkable.

“For all of human history, and predating that, it’s been unspoiled,” he said.

“To have this happen in our lifetime, and look back on it decades from now asking ‘how could we have let that happen?’ It just seems so irresponsible and short-sighted.”

Expedition members cross an alpine river in the Brooks Range mountains of the refuge. Photo: Matt Jacques / The Narwhal

‘We’re not going anywhere’

For the photographers on this particular trip, not seeing the caribou would have been a tremendous disappointment, but for Gwich’in the stakes are much higher.

For tens of thousands of years, Peter said, it’s been a matter of life and death whether they saw caribou.

“They had to really understand the movement of the herd and rely on traditional knowledge to allow them to survive,” he said.

“As Gwich’in, if there’s no more caribou, we lose our cultural identity, our connection to the land, to our ancestors. A lot of things get lost if the caribou don’t come back.”

The connection between the landscape, the caribou and the Gwichi’in spans multiple borders, ecoregions and hundreds of generations, and yet that seemingly robust relationship could be easily disrupted by subtle shifts in climate or a sudden re-arrangement of the political landscape.

With the Trump administration’s approval, seismic testing deploying 90,000-pound trucks with metal plates to shake the earth, could begin in the calving grounds as early as this winter.

The resolve of those determined to prevent this from happening has never been greater.  

“Our culture’s been here for thousands of years — we’re not going anywhere,” Peter said. “This is our homeland. We want to continue to be healthy, happy people. To do that, we need caribou.”

Demientieff draws strength from the solidarity she sees across the border, and has faith that the final chapter of the Porcupine caribou has not been written.

“Our relatives in Canada are standing with us. We’re not going to back down. We’re not going to step aside. We’re going to continue to stand strong, in unity and in prayers, just as our elders directed us to. This fight is not over — far from it.”

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Canadians are being urged to fight against a push by U.S. President Donald Trump to fast-track drilling for oil and gas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, in the calving grounds of Porcupine caribou herd.

The Trump administration, which last fall slipped a provision allowing drilling in the Arctic Refuge into an unrelated tax bill, is forging ahead with plans to prepare for a mandatory environmental review of the decision and the Bureau of Land Management will be accepting comments from Americans and Canadians for the next 60 days to map out the scope of the review.

The Porcupine caribou herd, with up to 200,000 animals, undergoes the longest land mammal migration on earth, travelling 2,400 kilometres between their calving grounds in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, through the boreal forest and into the Yukon and Northwest Territories

Gwich’in communities — home to Indigenous people who have subsisted off the land for millennia — call the calving grounds “the sacred place where life begins.”

Now, with the future of the herd and the people who rely on the caribou under threat, the Gwich’in people, along with non-governmental agencies and environmental groups are urging Canadians to speak out and speak loudly, especially as the Arctic is already being affected by climate change.

‘A deeply Canadian issue’

“This is a deeply Canadian issue,” said Chris Rider, executive director of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society Yukon Chapter.

“Disturbing this fragile ecosystem could have a disastrous effect on the health of the Porcupine caribou herd and the Gwich’in. We need to tell the Trump administration that the only option at this point is simple: stop. Oil and gas development has no place in the heart of the Porcupine caribou’s calving grounds.”

Canada’s federal government objected last year to drilling in the refuge, which is also home to polar bears and hundreds of migratory bird species, but now, with the Trump administration poised to sell leases in the refuge as soon as possible, a public outcry is needed, say opponents of the drilling plans.

One tool could be a treaty signed between the government of Brian Mulroney and Ronald Reagan in 1987. The treaty requires both governments to “take appropriate action to conserve the Porcupine caribou herd and its habitat.”

‘Stand with the Gwich’in for what is right’

Dana Tizya-Tramm, a Vuntut Gwitchin councillor in Old Crow, Yukon, and the lead on Arctic Refuge work for the First Nation, said drilling in the refuge would threaten one of the last healthy, barren-ground caribou herds on earth and jeopardize an entire way of life.

“The needless threat of developing the Porcupine caribou herd’s calving grounds on the coastal plain of Alaska has now elevated this issue to involve all of North America. It is not just the Gwich’in or Indigenous peoples’ loss, but all of North America’s last healthy caribou herd whose future is now in question,” he said.

The push for drilling signals to the Gwich’in that their traditional knowledge and warnings about the stability of Arctic ecosystems are disregarded by U.S. leadership, Tizya-Tramm said.

“Heed the call, stand with the Gwich’in for what is right. We must each ask ourselves what is more important to us, life or oil,” he said.

Gwich’in Call on Canadians to Speak Out Against Trump’s Arctic Drilling Push: https://t.co/kzCcyEv0Jx #ANWR #cdnpoli #indigenous #caribou

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) April 21, 2018

Caribou herds in peril

In Canada, caribou numbers have dropped by more than 50 per cent, with some herds wiped out and others declining by more than 80 per cent, but the Porcupine herd is the exception, largely due to a relatively intact range.

Caribou are incredibly sensitive to light and sound and any construction in their calving grounds, during one of the most vulnerable phases of their lives, could lead them to abandon the area altogether, Rider said.

The race to overcome barriers to drilling, such as the necessity for an environmental review, is seen as the Trump administration trying to ensure leases are sold quickly and work starts well  before the 2020 election, making it difficult to roll back legislation.

However, U.S environmental groups are vowing to fight all the way and believe that a hefty number of Americans are on their side.

“Most Americans oppose the Trump administration’s headlong rush to drill and desecrate this sacred place, which will inevitably end up in court,” said Jenny Keatinge of Defenders of Wildlife.

Jamie Williams, president of The Wilderness Society, a U.S.-based land conservation organization, said that by pushing for a lease sale next year, the administration is admitting that they have no intention of seriously evaluating the negative impacts of oil development on wildlife, even though the science clearly indicates there will be significant effects.

Adam Kolton, executive director of the Alaska Wilderness League, said the Trump administration’s secretive work to push for Arctic drilling is a disgrace.

“When we have an administration using Twitter to fire cabinet secretaries and rewrite plans for the entirety of America’s coastline, maybe we shouldn’t be surprised at the reckless, warp speed approach it is taking to put up oil rigs in one of the most iconic and wildest places left in America,” he said.

“Forget minimal effort, they can’t even be bothered to fake the effort needed to assess the impacts of leasing on wildlife and the environment or meaningfully consult with the Gwich’in people whose culture is at stake,” he said.

Meanwhile, the B.C. government is asking for public input on a three-year, $27-million provincial caribou recovery program.

The money will be used to build a science-based approach to preserving B.C.’s 54 herds, as the number of woodland caribou in B.C. has declined from 40,000 to less than 19,000 since the early 1900s, says a government news release.

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In the mid-1970s, a young lawyer named Ian Waddell took a helicopter ride across the Crow Flats, in northern Yukon. He was accompanying Justice Thomas Berger on his visits to community after community — the so-called Berger Inquiry — to gain their input into a proposed gas pipeline from the Beaufort Sea to Alberta.

When they landed, Berger turned to him and, as Waddell recounts it, said, “You know, Ian, do you realize the magnificence of what we saw yesterday? It’s the last of North America — the eighth wonder of the world.”

That landscape the judge so admired is home to the Porcupine caribou herd, around 200,000 strong, which roam on the world’s longest land-mammal migration between Alaska, Yukon and the Northwest Territories. On the Canadian side of the border, two national parks, Ivvavik and Vuntut, protect much of the herd’s habitat.

But on the Alaska side of the border, the land and the herd that depends upon it have come under threat from oil and gas drilling after President Trump opened up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in his recent tax bill.

Caribou, like many large mammals, require huge tracts of relatively undisturbed land to thrive. The routes of migratory herds can be imperiled by development, such as pipelines or roads, that divides the landscape or gives easier access to predators. The area that could be opened to drilling is the Porcupine herd’s calving grounds, rich territory where the animals migrate each year to give birth.

It’s also the site of another kind of riches: the so-called “1002 area,” a potentially lucrative patch of land near Prudhoe Bay. It could contain more than six per cent of the total recoverable oil in the entire United States, at about 7.7 billion barrels.

Trump made the controversial decision to undo decades of conservation in the region, apparently, on a whim.

“I really didn’t care about it,” Trump told a congressional Republican retreat in early February. “And then when I heard that everybody wanted it, for 40 years they’ve been trying to get it approved, I said, ‘Make sure you don’t lose ANWR.’”

There may be something else Trump doesn’t know much about, though, and it could put the brakes on drilling in the refuge: a treaty, signed between the governments of Brian Mulroney and Ronald Reagan in 1987.

The treaty requires that the governments “take appropriate action to conserve the Porcupine Caribou Herd and its habitat,” including considering effects of activities (like, for instance, drilling), avoiding disrupting migration and considering cumulative effects on the landscape.

After Waddell’s time in the north with Berger, he moved on to politics, serving as energy critic for the federal NDP and later as B.C. environment minister. But that experience never left him, and he recently revived the treaty in an article for The Hill Times.

“Canada should now argue that the treaty provides us the right to be consulted before a drilling permit is issued in ANWR,” he wrote.

In an interview with DeSmog Canada, he explained, “If we’ve got a treaty with the United States, we could press that treaty — use that treaty — to raise a little hell.”

A small member of the large porcupine caribou herd. Photo: Peter Mather

NDP, Greens take on Alaskan drilling in House of Commons

Elizabeth May has had her eyes on the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge for decades, since she was a senior policy advisor to Progressive Conservative environment minister Thomas McMillan, and later as the executive director of the Sierra Club.

Now, as head of the federal Green Party, May is the only MP to have brought the issue up in the House of Commons.

“It’s been appalling to see Donald Trump as president for many, many reasons, but this is one of those things that he might do that represents irreparable harm,” she says.

Even under Stephen Harper’s notoriously pro-oil government, Canada remained resolute against drilling in the refuge.

New Democrat MP Richard Cannings says he plans to raise the issue in the House of Commons if the drilling plan goes ahead.

“This is what this treaty was drawn up for — this kind of situation,” he said, noting that the Liberals are under pressure to protect caribou and that this “might be an easy win for them,” to make some progress on protecting one of the last intact herds.

Gwich’in sounding the alarm

Its habitat is a place Cannings, like Waddell, is familiar with from time spent on the land in his former life as an ecologist. As was the case for Waddell, the northern Yukon left an impression that he carried with him to Ottawa.

“I think that Canada should stand up for the Porcupine caribou herd, for the First Nations that have relied on that herd over the millennia, because our whole ecosystem up there is related.”

The Gwich’in have been sounding the alarm on drilling in the refuge since Trump’s election.

“The Gwich’in call this area ‘Iizhik Gwats’an Gwandaii Goodlit,’ the Sacred Place Where Life Begins,” Vuntut Gwich’in Councillor Dana Tizya-Tramm told DeSmog Canada in November, a year after Trump’s victory.

“It is a keystone in the ecosystems of the Arctic, and the heart that beats outside of the Gwich’in chest.”

Tizya-Tramm expressed horror at the idea of degrading the habitat the caribou depend on, emphasizing the interconnected and fragile nature of the coastal plain, which has been described as the Serengeti of North America.

Cannings says the Gwich’in would be consulted and involved in negotiations with the U.S. over the treaty.

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As snowcover recedes from the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska each spring, thousands of Porcupine Caribou arrive to graze on new plant growth and calve the next generation of this herd that is the ecological and cultural backbone of the region.

Following ancient trails through the Brooks, Ogilvie and Richardson mountain ranges on both sides of the Alaska/Yukon border, the herd’s migratory path to this sanctuary is one of the longest of any land mammal.

Yet with a new President in power that promises to open hydrocarbon development in the Arctic, this iconic herd’s migratory way of life could be threatened.

The North’s great barren-ground caribou herds, a sub-species grouping to which the Porcupine belong, were recently listed as ‘threatened’ by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada.

A combination of habitat loss, industrial development and climate change have provided a formidable challenge for the notoriously sensitive creatures.

While the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has confirmed 2016 as the warmest year on record for our planet, making it the third year in a row to re-write the record books, the arctic as a whole is warming twice as fast as the rest of the globe.

Dramatic changes are already evident across the north, with warming permafrost and earlier lake melts signaling not just a change in weather for places like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but an existential threat to a way of life that has existed for millennia.

Moving even faster than global or regional warming trends, a political step-change in Washington has also sent shockwaves that seem to bode ill for the environment.

Under the patriotic banner of energy security, Donald Trump campaigned on the promise of expanding domestic fossil fuel development.

We haven’t had to wonder long whether president Trump’s “America First Energy Plan” was just empty rhetoric.

Trump’s nominees to lead the Department of the Interior (Ryan Zinke), Department of Energy (Rick Perry) and the Environmental Protection Agency (Scott Pruitt) in particular served as early signals of a clear intention to de-regulate industry and expedite, or outright remove, environmental assessment and protection requirements tied to resource development.

Within days of taking office, the president has now signed executive orders advancing both Keystone XL and the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), while simultaneously placing an expenditure and communications freeze on the EPA.

It may now be only a matter of time before renewed attention turns to the estimated 7.7 billion barrels of ‘technically recoverable’ crude oil laying under the arctic permafrost in a coastal plain area of the wildlife refuge known as the 1002 area.

Map of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge with the 1002 in orange. Source: United States Geological Survey

“The Alaskan congressional delegation has asked that the 1002 lands be opened to development. This would impact the Porcupine Caribou herd,” Yukon Conservation Society energy analyst Sebastian Jones told DeSmog Canada. This 1002 sub-area of the ANWR also happens to be the favoured calving grounds of the Porcupine Caribou herd, particularly when snowmelt occurs earlier.

“Calving grounds for these caribou herd are very, very important,” says Dr. Justina Ray, President and Senior Scientist of the Wildlife Conservation Society of Canada and Co-Chair of the Committee on the Status Endangered Wildlife in Canada, Terrestrial Mammal Species Subcommittee.

“This is the most vulnerable time of year for this animal. They come to these places habitually year after year, and drop their calves at a time that coincides with new plant growth, so it’s perfectly matched.”

“Those first six weeks of life for calves are critical,” Ray continues. “If you have disturbance in this area, whether it’s noise from exploration or infrastructure, that could increase mortality directly or indirectly because the nutrition of the females is disturbed or they don’t even calve.”

Thanks in part to one of former President Obama’s final acts of conservation — banning oil and gas drilling in the Arctic — Trump can’t single-handedly overturn the protections currently in place for the refuge.

For this, an act of congress plus two-thirds majority vote in the Senate would be required, something Jones feels Trump won’t be able to achieve, “unless something really weird happens.”

A mother caribou from the Porcupine Caribou Herd with her young calf. Photo: Peter Mather, used with permission.

He also feels carbon emission reductions of other nations “will start to reduce demand, likely before oil could flow.”

While the impacts of potential development in the 1002 area remain hypothetical for now, Trump’s denialist view of climate change may pose a more imminent threat.

“A Trump presidency looks to be much more climate reckless,” Jones says. “Caribou are among the species most vulnerable to climate change. If tundra disappears, times will get very tough for barren ground herds like the [Porcupine], and it appears we are already seeing climate effects across the north on caribou habitat.”

What makes the potential fallout from a Trump presidency on the Porcupine Caribou particularly critical, is the impact any dramatic drop in the herd would have for the Gwich’in people of Alaska and Yukon who have relied on caribou for their subsistence for over 20,000 years.

It is the resolve and relentless efforts of the Gwich’in and others that give Jones reason for hope about the potential consequences of a Trump presidency.

“Trump and his acolytes will motivate the conservation community and users of the Porcupine Caribou herd,” Jones says. “This has proven to be a formidable coalition that has defended far more focused and competent regimes.”

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