A political appointee at the Department of Interior has played a key, and sometimes controversial, role in opening a pristine wildlife refuge to drilling
This story was reported in partnership withLater this year, the Trump administration is expected to fulfill a decadeslong Republican dream. The Department of the Interior will likely sell the first leases for oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, opening up to development the last remaining stretch of protected land along the North Slope.
who previously held the position of senior adviser, Wackowski has frequently involved himself in scientific matters typically left to career employees and has often favored corporate interests. Wackowski, who previously worked for a company that conducts polar bear research on behalf of the energy industry in Alaska, has also been closely involved in the review process for seismic surveys of the refuge—used to locate oil and gas reserves—an activity that could threaten the already imperiled polar bear population in the southern Beaufort Sea. The federally listed subpopulation has declinedin the past few decades.
“Given Wackowski’s background,” said Deborah Williams, who held Wackowski’s job for five years during the Clinton administration, “it is important to ask whether he, in his role as senior adviser, is representing the public interest.”of the defining features of the Arctic landscape and also a staple of what is still predominately a subsistence diet among Native communities on the North Slope.
In a preliminary analysis largely drafted under the Obama administration, BLM had concluded the development would likely have a significant impact on when and where hunters pursued caribou—a finding that in theory could lead to the implementation of mitigation measures to make up for any losses. This is exactly what had happened with the earlier Greater Mooses Tooth 1 development in 2015 and it had prompted new mitigation rules by the Obama administration.
One former BLM employee raised concerns that removing the impact criteria might violate scientific integrity. “Without knowing how far this will go, I would say that I seem to be verging on violating some of the core ethical principles of [my field],” the employee wrote to a supervisor. Sitting on the board has given Wackowski an opportunity to influence the group’s response to what will be the most profound change the refuge has ever seen. “It was a surprise to us,” said Craig Machtans, the Canadian co-chair of the caribou herd board. “FWS had a member in good standing as chair. And they replaced him.” It was a surprise to the FWS, too, which was not notified of the change until a month after it happened, according to an FWS employee.
But this time, USGS was slow to respond to several queries.
Even as Wackowski has influenced the flow of information within his agency, he has actively sought data outside the department from a former colleague, a violation of his ethics pledge,general. Wackowski has been intimately involved in the research and review process for seismic surveys in the refuge. He communicated and met with a former colleague who does polar bear data collection and mapping on the North Slope. This triggered an ethics investigation by DOI’s inspector general.
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