Monochrome Landscapes - Close Up at a Distance: Mapping, Technology, and Politics - page 98

WHITE
On March 20, 2003, the same day that Operation Iraqi Freedom
began, the United States Senate voted against allowing oil drill -
ing in Alaska, despite the fact that it was a priority for President
Bush. I was happy about the result of the vote, but the coinci -
dence of the two events pushed me to look for an image of the
Arctic National Wildlife Reserve. 49 Geologists estimate that the Alaskan Coastal
Plain area in ANWR harbors about 10.4 billion barrels of recoverable crude oil, as
well as polar bears, musk oxen, caribou, and scores of migratory bird species. Parts
of what is now ANWR have been federally protected since the Eisenhower admin -
istration in 1960, and the present refuge, the largest protected wilderness area in
the United States at about 19 million acres, dates from the Alaska National Interest
Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) of 1980. Its status continues to be a source of
contention in the U.S. House and Senate, even now.
No part is more contentious that the so-called area 1002, which was set aside
in the law creating ANWR for further study. According to a U.S. Geological Survey
fact sheet, “in section 1002 of [the ANILCA], Congress deferred a decision regard -
ing future management of the 1.5-million-acre coastal plain ('1002 area') in recogni -
tion of the area's potentially enormous oil and gas resources and its importance as
wildlife habitat.” 50 The species of primary concern is the porcupine caribou. (The
area is also home to about two hundred and fifty indigenous Inupiat people in the
village of Kaktovik.) Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, the question of drilling in
area 1002 has been a regular source of debate and controversy in U.S. politics.