Episode 1: Sibling Rivalry

Episode Length: 41:13


Focus

Introduction to the season focusing on how the largest wildlife refuge in the United States came to be next door to the largest oil field in the country


Location

Kaktovik, Alaska; Arctic National Wildlife Refuge


Keywords

oil drilling, wildlife refuge, conservation, Alaska

 
 

Episode Outline

These outlines are intended to help you locate ideas and topics more easily, but these are narrative episodes with many interlocking themes and ideas, so you may want to share segments that cross multiple points in the outline.

 

MINUTES: 00:00 - 05:42

Current attempts to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) are the latest chapter in a multi-generational fight that started in the 1980s:

  • The issue may seem black and white, but the closer you get, especially to the Indigenous people who live here, the more complicated the picture becomes


05:42 - 08:14

ANWR fills the northeast corner of Alaska and the coastal plain—where thousands of caribou migrate—and is the epicenter of the drilling fight.


08:14 - 12:10

The coastal plain is also important to polar bears, which fuel a tourist economy in Kaktovik. 


12:10 - 15:18

What makes the Arctic Refuge unique, and what it looks and sounds like:

  • It’s huge: 20 million acres, or akin to walking across South Carolina

  • Emcompasses three main regions: foothills, Brooks Range in the middle, and northern coastal tundra

  • All these connected habitats, with no human-made obstructions, make it an all-star wildlife habitat


15:18 - 18:33

Deadhorse, Alaska, just a hundred miles away from the Refuge, is the nerve center of one of the largest oil fields in the United States:

  • Oil discovery in the 1960s sparked a transformation here

  • Dozens of miles of pipelines and ice roads spider into the tundra from this industrial hub


18:33 - 20:49

Why public opinion about drilling in the Refuge is nearly flipped in Alaska vs. the rest of the country.

BREAK

22:08 - 28:13

The branching paths of history in the 20th century that put the Refuge and the oil field right next to each other:

  • U.S. military gets much more interested in Alaska in the 1940s, and oil prospectors follow

  • Conservation movement is also growing during this time, and Alaskan conservationists Alice and Marty Murie help get Eisenhower to designate the Arctic National Wildlife Range in 1960

  • Eight years later, the Atlantic Richfield Oil Company discovered the biggest oilfield to date next door, at Prudhoe Bay 

  • Oil companies build the Trans-Alaska pipeline from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez 


28:13 - 29:24

Main characters here are the oil industry, the conservationists, and Native Alaskans, but none of these groups are a monolith:

  • As conservationists fought the oil industry, Alaska Natives fought for a seat at the table 


29:24 - 33:09

The oil crises of the 1970s created more pressure to drill domestically, and in turn, more pressure to protect land from drilling, leading to ANILCA, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980:

  • ANILCA doubled the size of the Refuge, but became a compromise in Congress between drilling advocates and conservationists

  • It created the 1002 area of the Refuge as an option for future oil extraction, allowing the fight over drilling to live on


33:09 - 41:13

The Arctic Refuge is not just home to animals, but also to people:

  • Many different tribes have relationships with this landscape, going far back in time

  • In Kaktovik, most people are Inupiat and have either a lot to gain or a lot to lose by drilling here

Erika Janikoil drilling, wildlife refuge, conservation, Alaska