A single piece of the Republican tax plan is set to do major harm to the environment and to Native Alaskans:
“We are fighting for our way of life right now,” said Bernadette Demientieff, the executive director of the Gwich’in steering committee, who is spending the week in Washington DC to frantically plea the tribe’s case to Congress.
“Caribou provide 80% of our food, as well as our clothing. This is a sacred place and we will be wiped out if there is drilling there. We live off the land and this is our garden. Take that away and we starve.” [...]
The 170,000-strong porcupine caribou herd, named after a river in the heart of a range the size of Wyoming, are hunted along their lengthy migratory route but the Gwich’in steer clear of them once they reach their coastal calving grounds each spring, so they can give birth and feast on lichen, moss and other foliage. More than 40,000 caribou are born each year before they trudge onward along the coast, to avoid the summer mosquitoes.
It’s in this nursery area on the coastal plan of the Arctic refuge, also known as the 1002 zone, that drilling is set to be permitted, with two lease sales for oil and gas to be sold off in the next decade. Scientists, aware of the refuge’s geography, where mountains and foothills press up against the coast, have warned that this narrow corridor could be broken up by new fossil fuel development.
But despite the environmental concerns, the harm to Native Alaskans’ way of life, and the fact that oil is really cheap right now, the Republican rallying cry of “drill baby drill” must prevail.