Wildlife and Oil Development on the North Slope | Tracking Impacts (Yale Environment 360 & Wildlife Conservation Society)

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Arctic Blog: Tracking the Impact  Of Oil Development on Wildlife

By Steve Zack, Wildlife Conservation Society

19 JUL 2011

As my colleague Steve Kolbe drove us down a gravel road leading away from K-Pad in Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay oilfields, I looked to the side and said, “Whoa, stop!” There, past the multiple pipelines, a common raven was devouring a nest full of eggs, and nearby a glaucous gull waited for leftovers. The nest owners, a pair of white-fronted geese, watched helplessly as this year’s breeding effort came to an end. 

I grabbed my camera with its long lens and clicked away. These geese had flown some 2,500 miles from their wintering grounds in central California to breed in this once-remote region. The Arctic summer is short, so there usually isn’t time to try again. 

Steve Zack of the Wildlife Conservation Society blogs from the Arctic for Yale Environment 360. The second in a series.

Read the previous entry

Predation, particularly nest predation, is a risk for all migratory birds here in the Arctic. The predators, the raven and the gull, are native to the region, and so the predation itself was not unusual. What is telling is that these species, as well as another nest predator, the Arctic fox, have increased in numbers in recent decades with the development of the Prudhoe Bay oilfields. These creatures are, in effect, subsidized predators, as the garbage and the structures associated with Prudhoe Bay — the largest industrial complex in the United States — have drawn predators in greater numbers than in surrounding regions of undeveloped tundra. 

All three predator species have access to year-round garbage, and the common raven has nesting sites – buildings and platforms – that otherwise would not exist on the flat coastal plain. Arctic fox wander far less in the oilfields than in territory farther from development. Gulls are always hovering in the hundreds over the immense garbage dump in the middle of the oilfields. Ravens are seen frequently, whereas spotting one in our remote site at Ikpikpuk is a rare event worthy of evening discussion in the communal feeding tent. 

In the field this year at both Prudhoe Bay and Ikpikpuk, we are remotely monitoring nests with motion-detecting cameras, in addition to closely monitoring nests on our established study plots. My colleagues and I want to get a clearer picture of the most common nest predators. In addition to the three subsidized species, other predators include three species of jaeger (gull relatives); two owl species; and even ground squirrels and lemmings. 


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