Oil in the Arctic has been a subject of great controversy in recent years. Though a handful of caribou come around the drilling rigs, refineries, and pipelines of Prudhoe Bay, it is their calving grounds in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to the east that have caused all the commotion. The largest herd of ungulates in North America, the Porcupine Caribou Herd, needs the pristine coastal plain of ANWR as a calving ground. The steady ocean breezes found there keep their young free of the mosquito swarms that can take so much blood the calves weaken and die. Biologists say that if oil development were allowed in ANWR, the herd would suffer irreparable harm.
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