VIDEO:
The Nature of ANWR
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It is one of the most primitive and undisturbed conservation areas in the nation.
It contains the greatest variety of plant and animal life of any conservation area in the circumpolar north.
It is home to North America's two largest and most northerly alpine lakes.
It is a land of extremes, with long, harsh winters and a very short growing season. Trees do not grow tall here, and many plants are dwarf cousins to those found in southern climates, including willow and birch.
The mountains, part of the geologically rich and complex Brooks Range, extend for hundreds of miles and reach heights of up to 9,000 feet.
Weather plays a large part in the formation of the landscape of ANWR, creating natural phenomena such as glaciers and ice wedges. As an arctic and subarctic ecosystem, the land of ANWR is tundra and taiga, or boreal forest.
There is a relatively small variety of fauna which makes a home in this rugged environment, but in that group are some of the most charismatic members of the animal world: wolves, grizzly bears, polar bears, moose, arctic foxes, seals, and whales, just to name a few. One of ANWR's best-known features is the large porcupine caribou herd, estimated in the hundreds of thousands, whose calving grounds are on the northern coastal plain. The movement of this herd each year is among the largest animal migrations on the planet.
Vast and rugged, ANWR is a truly unique and precious natural wilderness.