An 11-state organization that helps manage migratory birds is urging federal land managers to back off a plan to expand oil and gas leasing on the tundra north of Teshekpuk Lake in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.
An 11-state organization that helps manage migratory birds is urging federal land managers to back off a plan to expand oil and gas leasing on the tundra north of Teshekpuk Lake in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.
The land is vital to black brant, a goose whose population is in steep decline and now stands at a record low, according to a letter from the Pacific Flyway Council to Interior Secretary Gale Norton.
The worry is that drilling, roads and other industry activity could disturb the geese at a critical time when they're trying to feed and grow new feathers, worsening their decline, the letter says. Already, regulators are imposing drastic cutbacks on sport and subsistence hunting in Alaska, down the West Coast and into Mexico to protect the brant, the letter adds.
"This is a very critical piece of habitat and we're very concerned," said Terry Crawforth, director of the Nevada Department of Wildlife and chairman of the Pacific Flyway Council.
U.S. Bureau of Land Management officials in Alaska have sent a proposal to Norton calling for expanded oil and gas leasing in the northeast corner of the Indiana-sized petroleum reserve. They say land with high potential for millions of barrels of crude oil was placed needlessly off limits to drillers during the Clinton administration in 1998.
The final decision on whether to move forward with the leasing now rests with Norton, who has given no indication when she might decide.
Environmental and birding groups, as well as some Alaska Natives, have raised objections to the plan to lease 389,000 acres, including seven tracts totaling 372,000 acres squarely in the middle of goose molting country north of Teshekpuk Lake, one of the state's largest lakes.
The Pacific Flyway Council is one of four such bodies across the country that bring state wildlife professionals together to monitor migrating birds and make recommendations to managers, particularly the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Alaska has a representative on the council, with 10 other Western states.
According to Crawforth's letter to Norton, since 1998 the population of Pacific black brant has sharply declined and in January of this year stood at a record low 101,391 birds.
Wildlife managers have kicked in stiff conservation measures for the 2005-2006 hunting seasons, the letter says. Fall and winter hunting seasons have been shortened by half in Alaska, Washington, Oregon and California, and subsistence hunting will be closed around five major brant colonies on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, where many brant nest before flying north to the Teshekpuk area to molt, bird biologists say.
Crawforth said it's not clear why the black brant population is dropping, but he said the council believes oil and gas exploration and ensuing development, should drillers make big enough finds, could exacerbate the goose decline.
Although some oil companies, including ConocoPhillips Alaska Inc., have been drilling in the northeast petroleum reserve in recent years, no oil find has been developed and the land remains void of roads and pipelines. The reserve lies west of Alaska's major oil fields, including Prudhoe Bay, Kuparuk and Alpine.
BLM officials contend they've crafted a leasing plan that will protect the geese and also give oil drillers access to highly prospective acreage.
"We've been concerned about the brant all along," said Jody Weil, BLM spokeswoman in Anchorage.
The most important restriction on drillers is that exploration would be allowed only in winter, when the lake-pocked tundra is frozen and the geese have migrated south for the winter.
The BLM, which acts as landlord for the petroleum reserve, also plans to forbid drillers from building permanent structures in buffer zones of up to a mile around lakes used by molting geese. However, roads or pipelines could be built under some circumstances.
In each of the seven lease tracts within the goose molting area, oil companies would be limited to 300 acres of gravel work pads.
The BLM also recently added a new protective step to the plan now pending on Norton's desk. It's a three-year study of the goose molting area to determine where best to site oil activity and minimize goose disturbance, Weil said.
But the Pacific Flyway Council letter says the goose molting area is too sensitive for leasing, pipelines or roads and should be permanently protected.
To see more of the Anchorage Daily News, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.adn.com.
Source: Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
