Where: Northern Alaska, United States

What's at stake: Calving ground for Alaska's largest caribou herd; haven for millions of shorebirds and waterfowl

Threatened by: Oil and gas development

Animals include: Beluga whales, caribou, loons, tundra swans, Canada geese, peregrine falcons, Pacific brant

	Millions of birds, including the stilt sandpiper and the bar-tailed godwit, migrate to the lakes, ponds, streams and river deltas of the Western Arctic Reserve each spring from every continent except Europe.
	The Western Arctic Reserve provides crucial nesting habitat for the Steller's eider, one of several species named for Georg Wilhelm Steller, a German naturalist who accompanied Vitus Bering on his pioneering voyage from Russia to Alaska in 1741. Now threatened, this black-and-white duck was once common in parts of western and northern Alaska.
	Nearly 40 percent of the world's population of Pacific brant, a small black goose, reside in the Western Arctic Reserve's Kasegaluk Lagoon, part of one of the earth's largest coastal lagoon-barrier island systems.
	Roughly half of Alaska's Arctic peregrine falcons nest in the river systems and highlands of the Western Arctic Reserve's interior coastal plain.
	Researchers have discovered the fossils of 13 different dinosaur species along the Colville River, which flows through the Western Arctic Reserve along the northern slope of the Brooks Range before joining the Arctic Ocean.
	The Utukok Uplands, which span some 4 million acres in the southwest corner of the Western Arctic Reserve, provide a critical migration route for the vast Western Arctic caribou herd. Numbering roughly 430,000 animals, the herd sustains some three dozen Alaskan Native villages.

Photo credits: Cottongrass, © Gary Braasch. Caribou, © Steven Kazlowski, Alaska Stock.