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The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), a national wildlife refuge in a remote region of Alaska, has captured the national spotlight for decades due to conflicting viewpoints on how to manage the refuge's resources. ANWR is home to a large population of diverse species and Alaska Native communities. However, it may also contain large quantities of oil. Debates over ANWR resource management often provide only two options: preserve the Coastal Plain as wilderness or allow energy development. In 2017, a congressional budget resolution opened a portion of ANWR (the Coastal Plain) to oil and gas leasing for the first time. Concerned with the environmental impacts of this resolution, the Biden Administration is currently evaluating oil and gas development in ANWR. This Note outlines how managers historically have balanced resources in ANWR and evaluates options for balancing resources in the future. It also explores practical ways the Biden Administration and Congress could cancel oil and gas leases, and ways to reimagine this debate to expand beyond the binary options of wilderness or oil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Travel to impact-sensitive destinations has been on the rise in recent years. Coined "last chance tourism" (LCT), visitors are increasingly coming to these destinations to see them before they are gone. To offset their presence, which ultimately contributes to site degradation, a possible positive outcome of these LCT experiences is the creation of environmental ambassadors. Utilizing data collected from 189 visitor surveys, the purpose of this study is to provide a basis for understanding the visitor experience and outcomes of boat-based polar bear viewing in the Kaktovik area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. A typology of visitors was created based on importance of various trip elements, and demographic and trip characteristics were examined by resulting groups. Analyses show that the polar bear viewing experience does have the potential to increase visitors' pro-environmental and ambassadorship behavioral intentions. Regression analyses revealed, for the sample population, that total minutes educated and the occurrence of an epiphany had a positive impact on visitors' reported pro-environmental behavior and ambassadorship intentions. Surprisingly, seeing more polar bears was negatively related to these same intentions. Implications for the management of similar experiences are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large‐scale industrial activities can have negative effects on wildlife populations. Some of these effects, however, could be reduced with effective planning prior to development. The Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, in northeastern Alaska, USA, is an important maternal denning area for polar bears (Ursus maritimus). Recent legislation has opened the area for potential oil and gas development. As a result, there is interest in conducting winter seismic surveys across the area that could disturb denning female polar bears and lead to decreased cub survival. We sought to demonstrate how different seismic survey designs, with and without aerial den detection surveys, could affect the level of potential effect on denning polar bears during spring (Feb–Apr). We developed 5 hypothetical seismic survey designs for a portion of the Coastal Plain ranging from no spatial or temporal restrictions on activities to explicit consideration of when and where operations can occur. We evaluated how many dens might be disturbed by seismic surveys and the average distance activity came within simulated polar bear dens. Survey design had a large effect on the estimated number of dens that could be disturbed; the scenario with the highest spatial and temporal specificity reduced the number of dens disturbed by >90% compared to the scenario with no restrictions on when and where activity could occur. The use of an aerial den detection survey prior to seismic activity further reduced the number of dens disturbed by 68% across all scenarios. The scenario with the highest spatial and temporal specificity always had the lowest level of disturbance for all scenarios with and without the aerial survey included. Our study suggests that large reductions in the probability of disturbance can occur through careful planning on the timing and distribution of proposed activities even when surveys are planned in areas with a high density of polar bear dens. Published 2019. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA. The Journal of Wildlife Management published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of The Wildlife Society. The design of winter seismic surveys can lead to large differences in the number of polar bear dens disturbed. Strategic pre‐planning may therefore be necessary to reduce disturbance and potential negative effects on polar bears. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The politics of climate change are the politics of energy and in turn the politics of Indigenous people's rights. The clash of these political realms is nowhere more vivid than the north slope of Alaska, where the acute impacts of climate change to the livelihoods of Alaska Indigenous peoples places energy development decision-making in a new light. Considering the elevated exposure and sensitivity to the impacts of climate change, the development of oil and gas resources in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska will exacerbate the acute livelihood challenges already being faced by the Indigenous peoples of this region. The tendency to marginalize the rights of Indigenous peoples in US natural resource development planning, moreover, constitutes a missed opportunity for advancing development decision-making toward more effective socio-ecological planning in the context of climate change. Indigenous communities in the North are uniquely qualified, both as sovereign peoples and as knowledge holders, to enrich government policy and decision-making about development in the context of climate change, constituting strong justification for their involvement in the planning process. This article integrates recently published research with an in-depth in-person interview with the Executive Director of the Gwich'in Steering Committee. We argue that accommodation of the cumulative threats posed by climate change and development to the rights of Indigenous communities in oil development plans for the Coastal Plain area of the ANWR will be essential to protect the livelihoods of these communities and the ecosystems within which they live. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trends and transitions in the growing-season normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite sensor at 250-m resolution were analyzed for the period from 2000 to 2018 to understand recent patterns of vegetation change in ecosystems of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska. Statistical analysis of changes in the NDVI time series was conducted using the breaks for additive seasonal and trend method (BFAST). This structural change analysis indicated that NDVI breakpoints and negative 18-yr trends in vegetation greenness over the years since 2000 could be explained in large part by the impacts of severe wildfires. At least one NDVI breakpoint was detected in around 20% of the MODIS pixels within both the Porcupine River and Coleen River basins of the study area. The vast majority of vegetation cover in the ANWR Brooks Range and coastal plain ecoregions was detected with no (positive or negative) growing-season NDVI trends since the year 2000. Results suggested that most negative NDVI anomalies in the 18-yr MODIS record have been associated with early spring thawing and elevated levels of surface moisture in low-elevation drainages of the northern ANWR ecoregions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the challenges of global warming in Arctic region. Topics mentioned include the effects of oil spill in the Arctic ice, the effort by the Unite promotion of environment and sustainable development, and the international cooperation in the environmental protection of Arctic region. Also mentioned was the management of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a natural area, in Alaska.

While proponents of sustainability reporting believe in its potential to help corporations be accountable and transparent about their social and environmental impacts, there has been growing criticism asserting that such reporting schemes are utilized primarily as impression management tools. Drawing on Goffman’s (The presentation of self in everyday life, Doubleday, New York, 1959) self-presentation theory and its frontstage/backstage analogy, we contrast the frontstage sustainability discourse of a sample of large U.S. oil and gas firms to their backstage corporate political activities in the context of the passage of the American-Made Energy and Good Jobs Act, also known as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) Bill. The ANWR Bill was designed to allow oil exploration within the most sensitive environmental areas in the Refuge and this bill was vigorously debated in the United States Congress in 2005 and 2006. Our results suggest that the firms’ sustainability discourse on environmental stewardship and responsibility contrasts sharply with their less visible but proactive political strategies targeted to facilitate the passage of the ANWR Bill. This study thus contributes to the social and environmental accounting and accountability literature by highlighting the relevance of Goffman’s frontstage/backstage analogy in uncovering and documenting further the deceptive nature of the discourse contained in stand-alone sustainability reports. In addition, it seeks to contribute to the overall understanding of the multifaceted nature of sustainability reporting by placing it in relation to corporate political activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Trump Administration's efforts to comprehensively dismantle Obama-era policies had special force in federal public land management. The disassembling included a substantial reduction in the size of national monuments, a jettisoning of protections for sage grouse habitat, and a widespread fostering of fossil fuel-friendly policies, such as ending leasing moratoria, attempting to revoke methane emission controls, and a scuttling hydraulic fracturing regulation. Congress was a willing partner in this deregulatory campaign, eliminating revised land-planning regulations, authorizing oil leasing in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and threatening to codify in statutes the Administration's regulatory rollbacks in order to make them more permanent. Collectively, these initiatives amounted to the most substantial rollback in public lands protections in American history. This Article surveys these events in the early days of the Trump Administration. The effect was to attempt to revolutionize public land law in arguably undemocratic terms, as there was little evidence of widespread public support for the rollbacks of land protections or the championing of fossil fuel developments. The agenda also included persistent calls in both the Administration and in Congress for more state and local control over federal public land management. We think that the Trump revolution reflected an attempt to fundamentally redefine the public in public land law and policy, narrowing the focus of governmental concern largely to those producing commodity production, especially fossil fuels. The long-term consequences are disturbing in terms of their potential costs and who will be saddled with paying them. Appendices to the Article detail the use of presidential authority to establish national monuments over the past four decades and a "restoration agenda" of action items that might inform a post-Trump administration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This report provides data collected by the climate monitoring array of the U.S. Department of the Interior on Federal lands in Arctic Alaska over the period August 1998 to July 2015; this array is part of the Global Terrestrial Network for Permafrost (DOI/GTN-P). In addition to presenting data, this report also describes monitoring, data collection, and qualitycontrol methods. The array of 16 monitoring stations spans lat 68.5°N. to 70.5°N. and long 142.5°W. to 161°W., an area of approximately 150,000 square kilometers. Climate summaries are presented along with quality-controlled data. Data collection is ongoing and includes the following climate- and permafrost-related variables: air temperature, wind speed and direction, ground temperature, soil moisture, snow depth, rainfall totals, up- and downwelling shortwave radiation, and atmospheric pressure. These data were collected by the U.S. Geological Survey in close collaboration with the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]