Refuge at Risk

About the Participants

Doug McConnell is the popular host of Bay Area Backroads, the highest rated locally produced television program in the Bay Area. The show focuses on travel in northern California. Under Doug's leadership, Bay Area Backroads has produced more than 50 stories on California State Parks.

Subhankar Banerjee is an award-winning photographer who devoted two years of his life to documenting the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge — the land, its wild species, and its Native peoples. With Inupiat guide Robert Thompson, Banerjee traveled 4,000 miles through the refuge on foot and by raft, kayak, and snowmobile during all four seasons. His book, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Seasons of Life and Land, published in March 2003, has received critical acclaim. With hundreds of breathtaking color images, he made this case: Leaving the refuge intact in all its mysterious beauty is vital to the survival of this unique ecosystem.

Severin Borenstein is a Professor of Business Administration and Public Policy in the Economic Analysis and Policy Group of the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley, Director of the University of California Energy Institute, and Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Richard Hart is an electric car enthusiast and one of the world’s most widely recognized hosts of technology programs. He has reported on technology for NBC, CBS, Discovery Channel, Sci-Fi Channel and USA Network. Richard Hart created and hosted The Next Step, the Discovery Channel's highest rated technology series and is the only broadcaster to win a DuPont-Columbia Journalism Award for investigative reporting (one of the highest honors in journalism) and Emmy awards for comedy writing and producing. The National Association of Television Arts and Sciences awarded him a CableACE award for his ability to explain new and complex technology in an understandable and entertaining way.

Adeline Peter Raboff is a writer and activist and a Neets’aii Gwich’in Indian from the Arctic Village.

Carl Pope is the Executive Director of the Sierra Club. A veteran leader in the environmental movement, Mr. Pope has been with the Sierra Club for nearly thirty years and was appointed director in 1992. In that time he has served as Associate Conservation Director, Political Director, and Conservation Director.

During Mr. Pope's tenure as Executive Director, the Sierra Club added 150,000 new members, growing to more than 700,000 of your friends and neighbors. The Club's importance extends beyond numbers, though. The Aspen Institute, after surveying every member of Congress and key federal officials, named the Sierra Club as the most influential environmental organization in Washington, D.C.

Under Mr. Pope, the Sierra Club has helped protect nearly 10 million acres of wilderness and has continued to hold the line in protecting the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from oil drilling.

Photo licensed to Sierra Club by Subhankar Banerjee; used with permission.