Caribou and Calves Crossing the Utukok River | Coal and the Caribou | 2006 | 59 in. x 74 in.

Early June, Utukok River upland, National Petroleum Reserve, Alaska. The Utukok River upland is the core calving area of the Western Arctic caribou herd, the largest herd in Alaska with nearly 380,000 animals. The herd ranges over a 140,000 square–miles area. About forty indigenous communities from three tribes, Iñupiat, Yupik and the Athabascan, are located within the range of the herd. For the indigenous people, the herd is both a vital link to their cultural heritage and a staple of their diet. Underneath the herd’s calving ground lies the largest coal deposit of North America, an estimated four trillion ton of bituminous coal, about ten percent of world’s known coal reserves. While coal is heavy and difficult to transport, there have been past and current proposals to develop this area for coal. On 14 July 1958, Edward Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb, arrived in Alaska to unveil Project Chariot, a plan to carve a new harbor out of the Alaskan coast by detonating six nuclear bombs. Due to the courageous and creative efforts of a handful of Iñupiat people from Point Hope, and few biologists and conservationists, finally the United States Government was prevented from inflicting a catastrophe worse than Chernobyl. Among other things to lure Alaskan businesses, Teller’s team proposed that such a harbor would enable transport of coal from the Western Arctic. Historian Dan O’Neil’s book, The Firecracker Boys, chronicles that history. On 30 July 2006, the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation (ASRC) signed an agreement with BHP Billiton, a Canadian mining company to explore and develop coal in the ASRC lands, outside of the National Petroleum Reserve; exploration started the same year, despite opposition from the Iñupiat people of Point Hope.