KATAKTURUK RIVER, ALASKA — Here, where North America humbly slopes into the arctic waters of the Beaufort Sea, is one of the last great tracts of wilderness in the world.
On an August day, a warm breeze blows over the tender green tundra, a treeless terrain as vast and unvarying as the Great Plains. A herd of musk oxen lolls on a riverside. Later, far upriver, a lone bull caribou marches by. The air carries no sound, not even a bird song or a rustle of leaves; the plants are too stunted to catch the wind.
Here, the years mean nothing. Life is as it was 5 years ago or 500.
And so it might remain. As part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a 30,150-square-mile preserve in the northeast corner of Alaska, the coastal plain here is closed by federal law to development of any kind.
But treasure the wilderness today, because these undisturbed flatlands-the only stretch of arctic coastline off-limits to oil and gas interests-have been targeted for development by the oil industry.
For in addition to being home to musk oxen and caribou as well as polar and grizzly bears, wolves, arctic foxes, moose and hundreds of thousands of migratory birds, the plain holds oil-probably lots of it.
The U.S. Interior Department estimates the refuge`s recoverable reserves at 3.2 billion barrels. The oil industry goes further. It supposes the tundra could overlay one or more Prudhoe Bays, the 10 billion-barrel oil field that lies less than 100 miles away.
Now, in a fight reminiscent of the multiyear battle to build the Trans Alaska Pipeline, the industry is pressing Congress to open up a Delaware-size chunk of the refuge to exploratory drilling to confirm its hunch.
Should development be allowed, oil company executives and government officials swear that test boring and even full-scale production could be done with little or no effect on wildlife. Eskimos agree.
As evidence, all three groups point proudly to Prudhoe Bay, where caribou wander the sprawling complex of raised roads and hulking industrial structures as carefree as squirrels in a city park.
But Prudhoe Bay also testifies to something else: that even limited work done with the utmost concern for the habitat will damage this unspoiled landscape, perhaps irrevocably.
``There`s no question in my mind that this area can be developed in an environmentally sensitive way,`` says Don Voros, acting refuge manager for the Fish and Wildlife Service. ``But I don`t think it can be brought back to its original state.
``We will have to accept that the wild character of this refuge will be lost.``
So far, that has been too high a price. Though the Interior Department and the State of Alaska have advocated full leasing of the coastal plain, Congress has stifled any bill permitting exploration on refuge lands.
Whatever chances the legislation had this year were wrecked by the grounding of the Exxon Valdez.
Time, however, appears on development`s side. Last month, for the first time since 1977, imports accounted for more than half the petroleum consumed in the United States, according to the American Petroleum Institute, a trade organization.
Such reports will become commonplace in the next few years, say industry analysts, as domestic production slides-U.S. crude oil output has fallen 13.8 percent since 1985-and demand rises.
Sooner or later, the oil industry predicts, this increasing reliance on foreigners for oil, particularly Middle East members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, should persuade Congress to tap the refuge.
``I cannot say what will happen next year,`` says Charles DiBona, the petroleum institute`s president, ``but if there is some problem in the Middle East and we had a shortage of supply, we would see a very, very rapid interest in this.``
Adds David Heatwole, vice president for public affairs of Atlantic Richfield Co.: ``America just needs to maintain this domestic production to have economic and national security.``
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was created in the last weeks of the Eisenhower administration in 1960.
In terms of ecological importance, the refuge, roughly as big as South Carolina, ranks with the Amazon rain forest and Africa`s Serengeti plain, says Tim Mahoney, chairman of the Alaska Coalition, an organization of 58 environmental groups.
Technically, the refuge is a desert; it receives less than 6 inches of precipitation a year. In summer, though, it becomes a marshland because permafrost prevents the melted snow and ice from seeping into the ground.
Each spring, in a mighty display, more than 125,000 caribou migrate to calving grounds on the coastal plain, 250 miles above the Arctic Circle. Grizzly bears and wolves track the herds. In winter, polar bears come ashore from the pack ice to den.
But along the refuge`s rivers are hints of a different future.