🚣 Arctic National Wildlife Refuge via Hulahula River

Описание: 🛶 CANOEING THE WILD NAHANNI RIVER    • 🛶 Canoeing the wild Nahanni River  

This is a film about a 12 day rafting trip down the remote and wild Hulahula River through the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska. This 19-million-acre Wildlife Refuge is slightly larger than Ireland. At latitude 69 degrees north, 520 kilometers north-northeast of Fairbanks, ANWR contains no roads or trails, offers no shelter, and encourages no contact. It’s one of the wildest and most remote places in the world.

This is a land of permafrost, rock, tundra and horizon. Too far north for trees, it is never far from ice. During each short growing season, from mid-June to mid-August, life is as vital as it is vulnerable.

In the summer months, the Porcupine caribou annually migrate to ANWR in huge numbers to feed on the rich plant life and sustain populations of brown bears and wolves. Aerial visitors include a wide variety of birds from distant ranges in South America and the Lower 48 states. Native species include the mosquitoes that sometimes drive both human and animals visitors to distraction.

The fate of the Coastal Plain area of the Refuge has been up in the air since 1980 when the U.S. Congress passed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, which greatly expanded the original wildlife range; designated most of it as wilderness, off-limits to development; and renamed the whole place the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. However, Congress did not include the 1.57-million-acre Coastal Plain, but directed in Section 1002 that the area continue to be studied. Hence for 50 years a battle has been waged between those who think drilling for oil in the “1002 Area” can be done with minimal impact, and those who say the place is too valuable as an undisturbed natural area to permit drilling. Adding to the pressure to drill is the 2017 tax law that opened the Refuge to potential oil development by requiring a minimum of two lease sales in the Refuge of at least 400,000 acres each. One must be held by the end of 2021, the second by 2024.

This rafting trip allowed us to see this Wildlife Refuge before any oil development occurs.

*** Table of Contents ***
00:08 Introduction
00:55 Fairbanks International Airport
03:16 Discovery III stern paddlewheel riverboat
06:11 USAF jets at Eielson AFB (Red Flag-Alaska)
10:25 downtown Fairbanks
11:09 bush plane to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR)
14:36 Campsite #1 on the Hulahula River
16:17 bush planes taking off
22:36 Campsite #2 on the Hulahula River
25:50 Campsite #3 on the Hulahula River
27:54 muskox
35:36 Campsite #4 on the Hulahula River
38:16 Campsite #5 on the Hulahula River
44:46 Campsite #6 on the Hulahula River
45:52 caribou swimming across Hulahula River
52:32 Campsite #7 on the Hulahula River
53:46 flying back to Fairbanks
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