|
| |
|
|
OUTFIT 103: A 70-day journey across the Barrenlands will create many lasting memories and special photo moments for the paddlers. The chance to canoe downhill or go "caboganing" is a uniquely northern portaging method.
|
Canoesworthy
A battle is shaping up over the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a vast plain of pristine tundra along Alaska's north coast, rich in polar bears, birds, caribou - and crude oil.
While environmentalists have dubbed the region "the Arctic Serengeti" for its ecological diversity, geologists say the permafrost is underlain with 12 billion barrels of recoverable oil, plus trillions of cubic feet of natural gas - making it one of the largest fossil fuel reserves on the continent.
Under U.S. law, the 20 million-acre refuge is protected from oil exploration and development. But over the last decade, Alaskan Inuit have tirelessly lobbied the president and Congress to change the law.
During his eight-year term in office, U.S. President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, stood steadfastly with the environmentalists and opposed the Inuit appeals.
But new President George Bush, a former oil-company executive, says drilling in the refuge will be part of his strategy to reduce America's dependence on foreign-oil imports.
To the 8,000 Inuit of the North Slope - some of whom live in the refuge - oil means money.
The area's Inuit birthright organization, the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, owns the subsurface drilling rights in the refuge, which it could sell to the likes of Exxon and British Petroleum. The group believes a carefully regulated oil exploration and development is possible.
Since its founding in the early 1970s the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation has become the wealthiest company based in Alaska, largely off of oil-field leasing and contracting.
The plan faces vehement opposition from the Gwich'in Indians of the Northwest Territories, the Yukon and interior Alaska - and opposition, as well, from Ottawa.
The Gwich'in, who include residents of Inuvik, Ft. McPherson and Tsiigehtchic in the Mackenzie River Delta, fear oil drilling could imperil one of their key sources of country food: the Porcupine caribou herd. The 200,000 caribou of the Porcupine herd roam across the Alaska-Canada border and constitute one of the largest remaining caribou populations in the world. In the summer, they calve in the narrow coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge - right where the proposed oil wells would be drilled.
The Labrador Inuit - the last Canadian Inuit group without a land claim agreement - are closer than ever before to seeing their long-standing agreement-in-principle approved.
On Jan. 5, Nunavik's Makivik Corporation withdrew a legal challenge that asserted overlapping rights for northern Quebec Inuit in Labrador's Torngat Mountains.
As well, the concerns of non-aboriginals who want hunting and fishing rights within the Labrador Inuit settlement area were also close to being settled.
The AIP was reached in December 1998, and has already been before cabinet on two previous occasions for approval. If and when the provincial and federal governments finally approve the land claim, it will grant the Labrador Inuit Association's 5,000 members a sizable chunk of money, land and control over marine resources.
There's $130 million in compensation funds, provincial royalties from resource development, and another $120 million to set up what Andersen calls "an Inuit central government."
They'll also receive surface title to 6,100 square miles of land. Another 21,900 square miles will be set aside for the Inuit settlement area. About 3,000 square miles of this area lies in the Torngat Mountains and is slated to become a co-managed national park.
The LIA was established in the early 1970s to start the land claim process, and includes Inuit as well as persons of mixed ancestry, "Kablunainuit" or descendants of European settlers who arrived in the area in the 1700s. The LIA's membership lives in seven communities, from Nain to Happy Valley-Goose Bay in central Labrador.
As Nunavik's Raglan mine starts to churn out more and more nickel officials insist operations are going "flat out," simply in order to cover costs.
The world price of nickel is high, but Raglan's production isn't being boosted to make more money for Falconbridge Ltd., the giant mining company whose subsidiary- the Societe miniere du Raglan - runs Raglan, which sits at the top of Quebec at the source of the Povungnituk River.
And this increased production isn't even intended to help Falconbridge make up for losses suffered due to strikes at its Sudbury, Ont. mine. Raglan is increasing its production levels by 25 per cent because the expense of operating the Raglan mine is turning out to "much higher" than initially predicted.
The company faces some expensive environmental challenges figuring out how to store the one million tonnes of junk rock leftover from the milling process every year. There are already three football-field-sized tailing hills near the Raglan mine mill at Kattiniq.They're supposed to be frozen solid in permafrost, but some tailing debris, which contains potentially toxic heavy metals, has been blown off the surface of these mounds.
To prevent any more tailings from escaping they will be buried under six feet of rock - an expensive solution for the company.
The company is also looking at the feasibility of using an open pit at the former Puturniq asbestos mine to store the tailings in a water-filled pit 20 miles from the mine There, tailings could be stored under water, similarly to how they're stored at the Polaris zinc mine on Little Cornwallis Island.
Nunavut's Rangers are ranging farther to protect Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic. The Canadian Forces are recommending that Rangers conduct regular exercises in the High Arctic to assert Canada's ownership of the region.
This year, squads of the volunteer soldiers will travel to the Arctic Archipelago to make at least two so-called "sovereignty patrols."
In April, one team of Grise Fiord Rangers head to Alexandra Fiord on the east coast of Ellesmere Island. From there they will use snowmobiles to make forays out onto the land and sea ice.
|
|
Another special Arctic moment is to be part of a beautiful rainbow near Walker Lake enroute to Baker Lake. |
Another patrol in June or July will be staged out of Mould Bay on Prince Patrick Island in the Northwest Territories. Participants in that exercise will be drawn either from Resolute Bay or from the community of Holman in the Northwest Territories.
The patrols will likely involve between four and eight Rangers, and spend around a week out on the land. This year's trips will follow up on a High Arctic sovereignty patrol conducted jointly by the Rangers and the RCMP on Ellesmere Island last March.
Though participants on that exercise were on the look-out for foreign hunters rumoured to be poaching polar bears in the Alexandra Fiord region, Larouche said they didn't encounter anything illegal.
According to the report, called the Arctic Capability Study 2000, the sovereignty patrols are part of a new push to insure Canada's ownership of the High Arctic remains unchallenged.
In sovereignty, as in anything, possession is nine-tenths of the law. Central to that concern is the Northwest Passage, where, the report suggests, the onset of global warming could bring a surge in shipping activity. The passage is thousands of nautical miles shorter than the standard sea-route through the Panama Canal, and could be a profitable short-cut for transport companies if the polar sea ice thins.
Canada considers the passage to be a domestic waterway, and demands that other nations secure permission before passing through it. But other countries, including the United States, say the passage is an international channel. Canadian law, including Canadian environmental regulations, should not apply in the waterway, they say.
Several hundred Nunavut residents, mostly Inuit, serve as Canadian Rangers. They are organized into 25 community-based patrols, each headed by an elected sergeant. Every year the Rangers undergo 11-day training sessions, where they practice first-aid, navigation and traditional survival skills.
A battle is shaping up over the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a vast plain of pristine tundra along Alaska's north coast, rich in polar bears, birds, caribou - and crude oil.
While environmentalists have dubbed the region "the Arctic Serengeti" for its ecological diversity, geologists say the permafrost is underlain with 12 billion barrels of recoverable oil, plus trillions of cubic feet of natural gas - making it one of the largest fossil fuel reserves on the continent.
Under U.S. law, the 20 million-acre refuge is protected from oil exploration and development. But over the last decade, Alaskan Inuit have tirelessly lobbied the president and Congress to change the law.
During his eight-year term in office, U.S. President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, stood steadfastly with the environmentalists and opposed the Inuit appeals.
But new President George Bush, a former oil-company executive, says drilling in the refuge will be part of his strategy to reduce America's dependence on foreign-oil imports.
To the 8,000 Inuit of the North Slope - some of whom live in the refuge - oil means money.
The area's Inuit birthright organization, the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, owns the subsurface drilling rights in the refuge, which it could sell to the likes of Exxon and British Petroleum. The group believes a carefully regulated oil exploration and development is possible.
Since its founding in the early 1970s the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation has become the wealthiest company based in Alaska, largely off of oil-field leasing and contracting.
The plan faces vehement opposition from the Gwich'in Indians of the Northwest Territories, the Yukon and interior Alaska - and opposition, as well, from Ottawa.
The Gwich'in, who include residents of Inuvik, Ft. McPherson and Tsiigehtchic in the Mackenzie River Delta, fear oil drilling could imperil one of their key sources of country food: the Porcupine caribou herd. The 200,000 caribou of the Porcupine herd roam across the Alaska-Canada border and constitute one of the largest remaining caribou populations in the world. In the summer, they calve in the narrow coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge - right where the proposed oil wells would be drilled.
The Labrador Inuit - the last Canadian Inuit group without a land claim agreement - are closer than ever before to seeing their long-standing agreement-in-principle approved.
On Jan. 5, Nunavik's Makivik Corporation withdrew a legal challenge that asserted overlapping rights for northern Quebec Inuit in Labrador's Torngat Mountains.
As well, the concerns of non-aboriginals who want hunting and fishing rights within the Labrador Inuit settlement area were also close to being settled.
The AIP was reached in December 1998, and has already been before cabinet on two previous occasions for approval. If and when the provincial and federal governments finally approve the land claim, it will grant the Labrador Inuit Association's 5,000 members a sizable chunk of money, land and control over marine resources.
There's $130 million in compensation funds, provincial royalties from resource development, and another $120 million to set up what Andersen calls "an Inuit central government."
They'll also receive surface title to 6,100 square miles of land. Another 21,900 square miles will be set aside for the Inuit settlement area. About 3,000 square miles of this area lies in the Torngat Mountains and is slated to become a co-managed national park.
The LIA was established in the early 1970s to start the land claim process, and includes Inuit as well as persons of mixed ancestry, "Kablunainuit" or descendants of European settlers who arrived in the area in the 1700s. The LIA's membership lives in seven communities, from Nain to Happy Valley-Goose Bay in central Labrador.
As Nunavik's Raglan mine starts to churn out more and more nickel officials insist operations are going "flat out," simply in order to cover costs.
The world price of nickel is high, but Raglan's production isn't being boosted to make more money for Falconbridge Ltd., the giant mining company whose subsidiary- the Societe miniere du Raglan - runs Raglan, which sits at the top of Quebec at the source of the Povungnituk River.
And this increased production isn't even intended to help Falconbridge make up for losses suffered due to strikes at its Sudbury, Ont. mine. Raglan is increasing its production levels by 25 per cent because the expense of operating the Raglan mine is turning out to "much higher" than initially predicted.
The company faces some expensive environmental challenges figuring out how to store the one million tonnes of junk rock leftover from the milling process every year. There are already three football-field-sized tailing hills near the Raglan mine mill at Kattiniq.They're supposed to be frozen solid in permafrost, but some tailing debris, which contains potentially toxic heavy metals, has been blown off the surface of these mounds.
To prevent any more tailings from escaping they will be buried under six feet of rock - an expensive solution for the company.
The company is also looking at the feasibility of using an open pit at the former Puturniq asbestos mine to store the tailings in a water-filled pit 20 miles from the mine There, tailings could be stored under water, similarly to how they're stored at the Polaris zinc mine on Little Cornwallis Island.
Nunavut's Rangers are ranging farther to protect Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic. The Canadian Forces are recommending that Rangers conduct regular exercises in the High Arctic to assert Canada's ownership of the region.
This year, squads of the volunteer soldiers will travel to the Arctic Archipelago to make at least two so-called "sovereignty patrols."
In April, one team of Grise Fiord Rangers head to Alexandra Fiord on the east coast of Ellesmere Island. From there they will use snowmobiles to make forays out onto the land and sea ice.
Another patrol in June or July will be staged out of Mould Bay on Prince Patrick Island in the Northwest Territories. Participants in that exercise will be drawn either from Resolute Bay or from the community of Holman in the Northwest Territories.
The patrols will likely involve between four and eight Rangers, and spend around a week out on the land. This year's trips will follow up on a High Arctic sovereignty patrol conducted jointly by the Rangers and the RCMP on Ellesmere Island last March.
Though participants on that exercise were on the look-out for foreign hunters rumoured to be poaching polar bears in the Alexandra Fiord region, Larouche said they didn't encounter anything illegal.
According to the report, called the Arctic Capability Study 2000, the sovereignty patrols are part of a new push to insure Canada's ownership of the High Arctic remains unchallenged.
In sovereignty, as in anything, possession is nine-tenths of the law. Central to that concern is the Northwest Passage, where, the report suggests, the onset of global warming could bring a surge in shipping activity. The passage is thousands of nautical miles shorter than the standard sea-route through the Panama Canal, and could be a profitable short-cut for transport companies if the polar sea ice thins.
Canada considers the passage to be a domestic waterway, and demands that other nations secure permission before passing through it. But other countries, including the United States, say the passage is an international channel. Canadian law, including Canadian environmental regulations, should not apply in the waterway, they say.
Several hundred Nunavut residents, mostly Inuit, serve as Canadian Rangers. They are organized into 25 community-based patrols, each headed by an elected sergeant. Every year the Rangers undergo 11-day training sessions, where they practice first-aid, navigation and traditional survival skills.
This article first appeared in Che-Mun Outfit 103 in 2001.
| |
|
