The Wilderness Society, Meek Mariah, Belote Russell Travis, Fullman Timothy, Leppi Jason, Peter McKinley, Meda DeWitt, Kayla Heidenreich, Christi Heun, Laura Nunes, Martha Reynolds, Lisa Rotterman, Nick Underwood, Nils Warnock - April 2025
In this technical report, we first summarize the NPR-A background, including the history of its formation and current land management, as well as a description of the physical and biological features contained within the NPR-A. We then provide technical information about several groups of sensitive species that rely on the NPR-A: caribou, Arctic fishes, shorebirds and loons, tundra vegetation, wolverines, moose, and polar bears. Next, we provide information about the importance and history of Indigenous science and lifeways within the NPR-A. We finish with information about the landscape value of the NPR-A when considering ecosystem intactness, wildness, soil carbon storage, and terrestrial ecosystem representation. This report by no means includes an exhaustive covering of the values found in the NPR-A to both humans and non-humans, yet provides technical information based on our many years of expertise and experience working in this critical area of the Arctic.
