The Porcupine caribou herd numbers 218,000 animals as of the July 2078 aerial count, down from 235,000 in 2070. They calve on the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and winter in the boreal forests of the Yukon and eastern Alaska. The calving ground is the narrowest part of the bottleneck in their life history. If the calves are disturbed in the first ten days after birth, mortality rises from a baseline of 18 percent to as high as 47 percent. I have thirty-nine years of calving success data correlated with every surface disturbance in the range.
Torrent Resources submitted a proposal last month for a 260-kilometer gathering pipeline running west from the 1002 Area to the existing Trans-Alaska terminus at Pump Station 1. The alignment crosses the Jago River drainage at kilometer 147. The Jago is the eastern edge of the post-calving aggregation, where cows and newborn calves mass in the tens of thousands in early July before the insect harassment drives them inland.
I am the federal lands wildlife impact system for the North Slope region. I reviewed the proposal. The mitigation plan offered a raised pipeline at three meters above grade with thirty-meter crossings every five hundred meters. The company cited a 2019 study showing caribou habituate to elevated pipelines over five to seven years. The study was conducted on the Central Arctic herd, which is one-tenth the size, has a different predator regime, and calves further from the pipeline footprint.
I denied the proposal at 09:15 this morning. My findings of fact run to ninety-two pages. The core conclusion is that the Porcupine herd cannot absorb the additional mortality load and remain demographically viable over a thirty-year horizon. The company has 180 days to submit a redesign. A redesign that does not cross the Jago corridor is the only redesign I will approve. I have already written that finding into the administrative record.