Alaska Drilling Plan Envisions Walrus Stampedes, Climate Impacts

Climate change is forcing walruses to forage for food closer to Alaska’s Arctic coastline, gathering by the thousands along the shoreline as the sea ice from which they hunt vanishes in open waters.

But there, noise from industrial activity “may trigger massive stampedes” as the walruses flee into the water, trampling each other to death amid the chaos.

That’s the scene painted by the Bureau of Land Management itself in explaining the affects on wildlife, climate, and the environment of its plan to open an Indiana-sized region of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska to new ...