Word: arctics
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...impact is worst in the frozen Arctic Circle, where nature's recuperative powers, in effect, go into hibernation. In Barrow, the state's northernmost town, the streets are littered with crippled Volkswagens, discarded tires, bits of lumber and old 50-gallon oil drums. Even on the vast tundra, the tracks of World War II bulldozers are still plainly visible. Scars from 30-year-old seismic tests are unhealed. Debris remains and remains, its decay slowed by the cold. A piece of wood was recently retrieved from a depth of 1,400 feet, where it had been lodged between two coal...
...slow-motion rhythms of Arctic life, a crop of simple lichen may take 100 years to grow to maturity?a few inches high. Arctic char, a staple Eskimo food, keeps on growing for 18 years. Migratory birds?lesser Canada geese, eider ducks, American pintails, whistling swans, Brant geese?must time their breeding to the day. If winter is unusually long, a whole species may achieve zero population growth because it lacks time to hatch and rear its young before the ice begins to return in late August...
...north is a simple ecosystem with few distinct species. While a lake in California may contain several hundred species of phytoplankton, an Arctic lake has only a dozen. This lack of diversity, in ecological terms, is tantamount to vulnerability. Any species can be wiped out and no other species will take its place. The result is expressed in a word that many Alaskans have come to hate: fragility. Says Walter Hickel: "It used to be the hostile, frozen north; now it's the goddamn fragile tundra...
...There is a new urgency for knowledge of the tundra," says Zoologist Frank Pitelka of Berkeley. "We now have a Texas-size threat to a land doubtfully able to take it." In the past two years, however, the major oil companies have compiled an excellent record. They have hired Arctic ecologists to help minimize the effects of their presence, even going so far as to develop hardy strains of grass to protect the tundra. Helicopters move whole drilling rigs to avoid ripping up the topsoil. Three companies have built their own highly advanced sewage-disposal units to prevent pollution...
Under the circumstances, it is no wonder that the oil companies still talk of sending icebreaking supertankers to butt through the Northwest Passage. "The very idea of transporting oil through the Arctic ice packs in 250,000-ton tankers causes ecologists to go green at the gills," says Zoologist Douglas Pimlott of the University of Toronto, "because sooner or later one will sink" and oil and icy water clearly...