By Michael Grunwald
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 7, 2002; Page A01

One week after a U.S. Geological Survey study warned that caribou "may be particularly sensitive" to oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the agency has completed a quick follow-up report suggesting that the most likely drilling scenarios under consideration should have no impact on caribou.

The new, two-page report, obtained by The Washington Post, was written by the same scientist who led the original caribou study. The new report, commissioned by Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton almost immediately after the initial report came out, bolsters the Bush administration's case that drilling can proceed in the Alaska refuge without harming the fabled Porcupine caribou herd.

But drilling opponents derided the latest review as a desperate act of political intervention by Norton and her aides. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) said he found it "hard to believe" that a seven-day review could provide better information than a report surveying the scientific literature about Arctic wildlife from the past 12 years.

"That's a predictable criticism that simply ignores the facts," said Interior Department spokesman Eric Ruff. "This new information demonstrates once again that we can protect wildlife and produce energy in an environmentally responsible way."

The state of the Arctic refuge has been the most prominent environmental battle in the last year, with the Bush administration arguing that oil development will reduce the United States' reliance on foreign oil and stimulate the economy while environmental groups say it would destroy a pristine wilderness known as "America's Serengeti." With the Senate approaching a vote on a comprehensive energy bill, the groups have trumpeted the initial USGS study and its caribou warnings as the final death knell for drilling in the refuge.

The initial report, which was not as devastating to drilling as the sound bites suggested, supplemented the existing caribou literature with a new peer-reviewed model predicting calf survival rates under various development scenarios. Environmentalists had seized on the report's conclusion that a drilling scenario covering the refuge's coastal plain could significantly harm the Porcupine caribou, which use the area for calving and foraging and as a refuge from predators. Even drilling supporters fretted that the study could doom the drive for development, which is languishing in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Sources said that before the initial report was released, Interior officials objected to its emphasis on the potentially damaging full-development scenario, which they say is not plausible. Tom Weimer, Norton's deputy assistant secretary for water and science, set up a conference call with the scientists who conducted the report, as well as Norton aides including senior adviser Drue Pearce, a former Alaska state senator who later worked as a consultant for an Alaska oil development company, and special assistant Camden Toohey, the former director of an Alaska lobbying group dedicated to drilling in the refuge.

That led to a March 29 memo by USGS Director Charles Groat accompanying the report's release. In the memo, Groat said he was "concerned" that the five "fictional development scenarios" the report assessed were not the ones being evaluated by Congress and that he was asking the scientists who led the study to analyze new scenarios. Groat was appointed to the job by President Bill Clinton, who opposed drilling in the refuge. But Interior sources acknowledged that Norton's political aides were behind the request for more information.

"They didn't like the results of a 12-year study, so they ordered a seven-day study to get the results they really wanted," said Charles Clusen, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's Alaska project. "This rush job should not be taken seriously."

The initial report created a stir on Capitol Hill and in the media. Environmentalists noted its warning that "oil development will most likely result in restricting the location of concentrated calving areas" for caribou, leading to possible declines in the Porcupine herd. The report also detailed possible risks to musk oxen, snow geese and polar bears.

"There have been numerous government reports telling the Bush administration what they didn't want to hear, namely that drilling in the Arctic will forever mar this unspoiled wilderness," Lieberman said. "Now they've rushed through a study telling them what they do want to hear, but an objective scientific review would show it to be lacking."

The original report documented the importance of the coastal plain to caribou and other wildlife but also argued that the effects of drilling could be minimal if conducted in a sensitive manner over a limited area. Two of its five scenarios for caribou showed negligible effects. Even the worst-case scenario of a fully developed coastal plain produced a mere 8 percent drop in calf survival rates for the 123,000-member Porcupine herd.

"The point is that oil development is not the end of the world for any of the species in the report," said William Seitz, USGS deputy Alaska regional director, who approved the initial and supplemental reports. "We've documented the importance of these habitats at critical times, so you can work out a development scenario that avoids and protects them."

Interior officials argue that there is no point in speculating about full-scale development of the coastal plain, because the congressional plan would limit infrastructure that touches the tundra to 2,000 acres. So they asked USGS biologist Brad Griffith, who designed the caribou calving model, to plug in two likelier scenarios: one limited to the northwest of the coastal plain, where geologists believe most of the oil is; the other adding Native-owned lands to the east. Griffith, who once signed a letter opposing drilling, found that those scenarios would reduce calf survival rates by no more than 1.2 percent.

Essentially, he wrote, the changes "overlapped zero."

Last fall, Norton was embarrassed after she ignored the caveats of federal biologists in her response to congressional questions about caribou in the Arctic, and provided erroneous information suggesting that oil development has no effect on caribou. Now her aides acknowledge that more extensive development can have at least some impact, but they are clearly frustrated about the scientifically unfounded perception that even modest projects would devastate caribou. The Central Arctic herd has expanded dramatically over the last several decades despite sprawling oil development along the North Slope.

Some drilling opponents who had hailed the report are now questioning Griffith's model, particularly its exclusive focus on caribou calving grounds. Kenneth Whitten, a retired Alaska Fish and Game Department biologist who worked on the study, said that although the Porcupine caribou do not use the western coastal plain much for calving, they do use that area after the calves are a week old, information that does not figure into Griffith's model.

"The truth is, we just don't know what the impact would be," Whitten said.