SUN JOURNAL • January 15, 2026
In 1983, I was performing caribou research for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service across the entire coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. One day, as we aerially censused the Porcupine caribou herd at their peak post-calving aggregation, I found myself sitting in a canoe in Beaufort Lagoon just over the bank and not 10 feet away from something like 140,000 caribou. It’s long past time to protect the entire Refuge in perpetuity. This is a land where dreams are born and sometimes realized. As our bumper stickers, back in the day, used to read: “140,000 Caribou Can’t be Wrong.” ~ Ed Friedman, Bowdowinham