A Visit to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, America’s Last, Best Place

They could’ve been small patches of snow, remnants of winter clinging to slopes of the Brooks Range in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in northeast Alaska. Instead, it was a herd of 18 Dall sheep grazing a daunting mountain face smothered in peat and wildflowers. I watched them through my binoculars as they traversed into a lichen-covered limestone cathedral towering above the braided Kongakut River.

Rivers on the North Slope of the range flow into the vast Coastal Plain, fortified by gritty barrier islands, the icy Beaufort Sea, and the Arctic Ocean. The Plain spans 1.5 million acres and is the calving grounds of the Porcupine caribou herd, which is 130,000-plus strong and breeds in Western Canada. The herd’s migration route is the longest of any terrestrial mammal on the planet.

The region is also a vital habitat for thousands of nesting shorebirds like red-necked phalaropes, least terns, and dunlin, and during the harsh Arctic winters, ANWR provides important denning sites for polar bears. Among the 43 species of mammals there, musk ox, gray wolves, grizzly bears, Arctic and red foxes, and wolverines thrive.