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Syllabus [ what this course is about | course schedule | what you'll be reading | field trip to Alaska and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge ] The 1980 Alaska National Interest and Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) established the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, 19 million acres of North America’s most remote and wild land. Nearly all of the Refuge is designated as part of the National Wilderness Preservation System, but as part of the political compromise that led to the passage of ANILCA, the 1.5 million acre coastal plain (Section 1002) was omitted from wilderness designation, and further studies of the oil potential and biological resources were mandated. The Arctic Refuge provides habitat for a broad diversity of flora and fauna, including highly migratory shore birds from around the world, breeding areas for the Porcupine Caribou herd and muskoxen, denning areas for Polar and Grizzly Bears, with an intact suite of other predators like raptors, wolves, foxes, and wolverines. The coastal plain also contains what some consider the best possibility for another “Prudhoe Bay-sized” oil and gas discovery in North America. Ever since ANILCA’s passage, oil development interests have fought to open the 1002 area to oil exploration, while conservation interests have fought to designate the coastal plain as a wilderness area. This long-running political battle continues to rage today, with the energy versus environment debate intensified with recent rises in global oil demand and prices and the compelling evidence for rapid climate and environmental change in the Arctic reported in the Arctic Climate Impacts Assessment. This course will explore the ways in which the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is linked to national politics, energy supplies, wilderness literature, global and local ecosystems, cultural values, and political and natural history. We will learn about the ways in which people talk and write about development (energy and jobs for America) versus protection (the biological heart of the Refuge and America’s Serengeti) of the coastal plain. A crucial part of the course is a field trip to Alaska that includes 8 days of camping, hiking and rafting in the Arctic Refuge, and visits with Native Alaskans in Arctic Village and Kaktovik. The final team-developed project for the course will be to prepare a public presentation for conveying the cultural, natural, and historical issues involved in the discourse about how to manage the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Inspiration for this course This field course is offered by the UW Program on the Environment, which is committed to offering outstanding, innovative, and responsive courses. Environmental issues are uniquely interdisciplinary in that they draw upon the physical, biological, and social sciences, as well as the arts and humanities, in almost equal measure. The past, present, and future of the controversy over oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) forms a perfectly packaged microcosm of critical regional and global sustainability issues. In partnership with the Burke Museum, which hosted a traveling exhibit of Subhankar Banerjee's spectacular photos of ANWR, we decided to offer a course focusing on rigorous analysis of the full range of issues inherent in the ANWR controversy. It soon became clear that while UW undergraduate and graduate students could study the issues via reading and discussion at home, a field trip to the Refuge would add extraordinary value to the educational experience, and offer students a high arctic experience shared by only a tiny handful of Americans. Combining some of PoE's own resources with those of UW Summer Quarter, and especially our generous donors the Lucky Seven Foundation and Tom Campion, we were able to create that field experience for our students. We also thank the Helen Riaboff Whiteley Center and the UW Earth Initiative for their support. [ top ] Selections from the National Research Council's Cumulative Environmental Effects of Oil and Gas Activities on Alaska's North Slope (pdf copies of the book chapters are available for download via the UW Libraries E-reserves; just click on the book title link) Frigid Embrace: Politics, economics, and environment in Seasons of Life and Land, by Subhanker Banerjee; available at the University Bookstore Selections from ANWR.org web-pages -- developed by the pro oil-development organization Arctic Power Selections from the Arctic Climate Impacts Assessment Synthesis Report (free download) Additional articles and book chapters will be handed out in class
Additional Recommended Reading Midnight Wilderness: Journeys in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, by Debbie Miller The Open Space of Democracy by Terry Tempest Williams A Naturalist's Guide to the Arctic, by E.C. Pielou Nameless Valleys, Shining Mountains, by John Milton Two in the Far North, by Margaret Murie and Olaus Murie Alaska's Brooks Range: the ultimate mountains, by John Kauffmann The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, by Thom Hartmann [ top ] Dates: July 3rd – July 14th, 2006 [ top ] |