College of Business Administration

Article Reprints:

Jocelyn Kaiser

Caribou Study Fuels Debate on Drilling in Arctic Refuge Science Washington:Apr 19, 2002. Vol. 296, Iss. 5567, p. 444-445 (2 pp.)

The analysis that triggered this furor is quite limited, saysecologist Brad Griffith of DOI's US. Geological Survey (USGS), whois its author. Griffith explains that a superior asked him toprepare an addendum to a major report on Alaskan wildlife focusingon one issue: how drilling in a scaled-back area might affectcaribou. And he modeled just one behavior: calving. But everyonepounced on those details. Some caribou experts outside USGS, forexample, say that DOI has erroneously concluded on the basis onlyof this calving study that drilling would be safe for caribou."Other authors think [this] is an inappropriate use of the model,"says Ken Whitten, a retired Alaska state biologist who contributedto the original report. Griffith believes that his addendum isrelevant-but only if drilling is actually limited to thescaled-back area.

The notion that caribou won't be harmed may prove pivotal inCongress. The Senate was expected to block drilling earlier thisweek and, together with the House, which passed a bill last summerallowing it, will now work out a compromise. The House bill saysdrilling can proceed only if there is "no significant adverseeffect" on wildlife.

The USGS report sent to Norton 29 March, which reviews publishedpapers and includes new peer-reviewed studies, says drilling couldadversely affect a number of species such as polar bears and muskoxen, but it notes that many of these impacts could be reduced.However, the report raises serious concerns about the123,000-strong Porcupine caribou herd, whose June calving ground inmost years overlaps the 600,000 hectares in the north of therefuge, the so-called 1002 area, where drilling was originallyproposed.

To prepare for this report, Griffith began working 6 years agoon a model to assess how oil development would affect calfsurvival. The model uses 17 years of radio-tracking data on wherefemales calve in the 1002 area. It also incorporates data on howmany calves survive in a given year, which depends on how much goodforage the mothers had available and the abundance of predators.Using these data, Griffith developed an equation that predicts calfsurvival if the concentrated calving area were nudged in onedirection by oil development. Griffith then ran this model,assuming that the caribou would behave like another herd to thewest of ANWR, staying 4 kilometers away from oil pipelines androads.

The initial USGS report released last month discusses themodel's predictions mainly for just one scenario: developing theentire 1002 region. "That's what was on the table" when the reportwas prepared, Griffith explains. Development of 1002 could lead toan 8.2% decline in calf survival that would likely cause a declinein the herd population, the report says.

But a few days before the report was released, USGS directorChip Groat asked Griffith to model two new scenarios. These arebased on a 2001 USGS report estimating that about 85% of the oillies northwest of a geological fold, so drilling would likely belimited to this wedge of coast (see map) and some native lands.Griffith says that one need only look at the calving map to seethat the impact would be minimal, as almost no concentrated calvingoccurs there. As expected, under these new scenarios the modelpredicted essentially no decline in calf survival.

Drilling supporters have trumpeted this result, which DOIspokesperson Mark Pfeifle says "concludes that energy productionwould have little to no effect on caribou." But Whitten and othercaribou biologists whose data went into Griffith's model say theirwork is being misinterpreted. Although the herd doesn't calve closeto the coast, up to 19% of the herd congregates there a few weeksafter calving to avoid mosquitoes and flies. If mothers spendenergy avoiding the oil infrastructure, they could lose weight andproduce less milk or fail to get pregnant the following year."You've got to look at the other half of the picture"-aftercalving-says biologist Don Russell of the Canadian WildlifeService, who like Whitten is a co-author on the original report'sPorcupine herd chapter.

Griffith agrees, partly. Postcalving use of the land "could turnout to be unimportant or very important," he says: "There's notenough data to evaluate it." His own hunch is that "calving is mostof the story." But he notes that current legislative proposalsdon't limit development to the northwestern part of the 1002 area.If it were written into law, "I would feel a lot more comfortableas a scientist" saying that drilling won't harm caribou, Griffithsays.

The USGS "reversal," as some media reports have described it,has added fuel to allegations that Norton is distorting the scienceon ANWR. In a 4 April letter to Norton, Senator Joe Lieberman(D-CT), a drilling opponent, wrote that he was "gravely concerned"about Norton's request for the follow-up report and demanded anexplanation for why she sought a new analysis that was not peerreviewed. For his part, Griffith-who once signed a letter ("as acitizen," he says) urging that the 1002 area be protectedpermanently-hasn't felt pressured to come up with a particularanswer and feels free to do his science.

But even Griffith is frustrated that the Porcupine herd isgetting all the attention. Several scientific societies, mostrecently the Ecological Society of America, have weighed in againstdrilling because of the overall impacts on many species and theboreal ecosystem itself. "This issue is more than caribou. There'sway too much hung on this one piece," Griffith says. Unfortunately,that's not the way ANWR politics works.

Return to Professor Dunn's home page.