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The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR or Arctic Refuge) is a national wildlife refuge in northeastern Alaska, United States. It consists of in the Alaska North Slope region.〔(USFWS Annual Lands Report, 30 September 2009 )〕 It is the largest National Wildlife Refuge in the country, slightly larger than the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge is administered from offices in Fairbanks. Just across the border in Yukon, Canada, is two Canadian National Parks, Ivvavik and Vuntut. ==History== The move to protect this corner of Alaska began in the early 1950s, with an article published in the journal of the Sierra Club by then National Park Service planner George Collins and biologist Lowell Sumner entitled "Northeast Alaska: The Last Great Wilderness" in 1953. Collins and Sumner then recruited Wilderness Society President Olaus Murie and his wife Margaret Murie into an effort to permanently protect the area. In 1956, Olaus and Mardy Murie led an expedition to the Brooks Range in northeast Alaska, where they dedicated an entire summer to studying the land and wildlife ecosystems of the Upper Sheenjek Valley. The conclusion resulting from these studies was an ever deeper sense of the importance of preserving the area intact, a determination that would play an instrumental part in the decision to designate the area as Wilderness in 1960. As Olaus would later say in a 1963 speech to a meeting of the Wildlife Management Association of New Mexico State University, "On our trips to the Arctic Wildlife Range we saw clearly that it was not a place for mass recreation... It takes a lot of territory to keep this alive, a living wilderness, for scientific observation and for esthetic inspiration. The Far North is a fragile place." The region first became a federal protected area in 1960 by order of Fred Andrew Seaton, Secretary of the Interior under U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower. In 1980, Congress passed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. Eight million acres (32,000 km2) of the refuge, the Mollie Beattie Wilderness, are designated as wilderness area. The expansion of the refuge in 1980 designated 1.5 million acres (6,100 km2) of the coastal plain as the 1002 area and mandated studies of the natural resources of this area, especially petroleum. Congressional authorization is required before oil drilling may proceed in this area. The remaining 10.1 million acres (40,900 km2) of the refuge are designated as "minimal management," a category intended to maintain existing natural conditions and resource values. These areas are suitable for wilderness designation, although there are presently no proposals to designate them as wilderness. There are currently no roads within or leading into the refuge, however there are a few scattered Native settlements within. On the northern edge of the refuge is the Inupiat village of Kaktovik (population 258)〔http://factfinder.census.gov/home/saff/main.html?_lang=en〕 and on the southern boundary the Gwich'in settlement of Arctic Village (population 152).〔 A popular wilderness route and historic passage exists between the two villages, traversing the refuge and all its ecosystems from boreal, interior forest to Arctic Ocean coast. Generally, visitors gain access to the land by aircraft, but it is also possible to reach the refuge by boat or by walking (the Dalton Highway passes near the western edge of the refuge). In the United States, the geographic location most remote from human trails, roads, or settlements is found here, at the headwaters of the Sheenjek River. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Arctic National Wildlife Refuge」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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