Prince William Sound, Alaska
From 1,500 miles of oil-fouled shoreline to the protection of 643,500 acres of critical coastal forests and wetlands
On March 24, 1989, the tanker Exxon Valdez struck Bligh Reef in Alaska's Prince William Sound, spilling 11 million gallons of crude oil in one of the most notorious environmental disasters of the twentieth century.
Earlier that winter, loggers felled old-growth hemlock and spruce above an inlet called Two Moon Bay. The Sound's first industrial clearcut, just ten miles from Bligh Reef, attracted little notice.
Commercial fishermen and residents of Cordova, Alaska began to ask what could be done to help the ecosystem recover from the spill. A few saw a silver lining to this oil-tainted cloud: the chance to direct funds from those judged liable for the accident to protect habitat on coastal lands threatened by the new wave of corporate logging.
University of Alaska marine extension agent and Cordova fisherman Rick Steiner thought a settlement with Exxon could be structured to generate funds sufficient to protect threatened lands, while offering financial benefits to Native communities. In 1990, he discussed these ideas with Ecotrust founder Spencer Beebe, who offered him a yearlong fellowship to build grassroots and government support for the approach.
Copper River
Steiner recruited commercial fishermen, native communities, and environmental organizations to a coalition that began to advocate his proposal for out-of-court settlement. Funds would be used to purchase habitat from willing sellers and promote sustainable alternatives to forest exploitation. Alaska governor Wally Hickel eventually lent his support. On October 9, 1991, the federal and state governments settled criminal and civil charges with Exxon for more than $1 billion.
Government agencies used about half of these funds — an unprecedented sum for habitat protection and restoration — to acquire title or conservation easements on critical lands. Those acquisitions protect 643,500 acres of forest and coastal wetlands around Prince William Sound and areas to the southwest along the Kenai Peninsula and on Kodiak Island — substantial conservation leverage achieved in part by Ecotrust's modest fellowship investment.
Some 205,000 acres of prime coastal habitat along Prince William Sound owned by the Chenega, Tatitlek, and Eyak native corporations have been protected in perpetuity by conservation easements or transfers to state ownership. The corporations earned substantial income from the easements, retain title to a significant portion of their lands, and maintain access for traditional subsistence and recreational uses. This economically attractive alternative to timber harvest proved that money could be made by letting trees grow.
"This helped turn Prince William Sound away from the unsustainable path unfolding in other parts of the state, including the ten-year 'forest fire' of corporate logging in the Tongass National Forest and on Native lands in Southeast Alaska," Steiner says. "The settlement gave us a chance to act in the best interest of the injured ecosystem."
Today the focus is shifting to the 17-million-acre Copper River ecosystem to the east and northeast of Prince William Sound, ringed by the world's tallest coastal mountains and supporting some of the most abundant and commercially valuable runs of wild Pacific salmon. The 700,000-acre Copper River Delta is also a critical resting and feeding area for more than 16 million migratory shorebirds and waterfowl — including the entire populations of western sandpipers and dunlins.
Interest in fossil fuel exploration, road building, logging, and resource development in the Copper River ecosystem is running high. Risks to the Delta's wildlife and to highly prized Copper River king and red salmon runs have raised the stakes for conservationists and for thousands of commercial and subsistence fishermen.
The Copper River Delta Coalition, formed in 1997 by the National Wildlife Federation and others, is working with the Eyak Preservation Council and organizations including Ecotrust to secure permanent protection on public and private lands and waters of the Copper River ecosystem. Steiner has developed a $32 million conservation strategy that employs tactics integral to the earlier success in Prince William Sound: purchase of conservation easements, acquisition of fossil fuel extraction rights from willing sellers, and support for ecosystem science and conservation advocacy.
The strategy depends on using the market creatively to demonstrate that conservation can pay more handsomely than resource extraction. It depends on using the market strategically to protect areas whose disruption would mean most to the wildlife, waterfowl, and salmon that depend on the Copper River and its tributaries — and the people whose livelihoods depend on them in turn.
The lesson of the Exxon Valdez oil spill — a lingering ecological defeat and the unexpected conservation victory it engendered — is that protection of an intact ecosystem is far easier than restoration. The northern reaches of the coastal temperate rain forest offer a new chance to show the lesson has been learned.