Local environmental activist Chad Kister has been busy giving live and taped interviews for
talk radio shows around the country about his book, Arctic Quest: Odyssey Through a Threatened
Wilderness.
Kister has been on Alaska Public Radio for an hour-long interview and for long interviews in
Detroit, Northern California, Fresno California, Dallas, Texas, Colorado, New Jersey and many more.
Kister's publisher, Common Courage Press hired a publicist who set up the interviews. This
is after Kister finished a 30-day, 12,000 mile speaking and book signing tour throughout the United
States and Canada by train from mid-June to mid-July. Trains get ten times better fuel efficiency per
passenger mile than cars or planes.
On December 12, Kister delivered an award to Senator Michael Dewine for his efforts and
votes to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge on behalf of the Alaska Coalition.
The Alaska National Public radio presentation accepted phone calls. Several were from oil
company workers, one of whom admitted that with the brisk winds of the Arctic winter, that trash often
blows 50 miles away, and that there was no way the oil company could retrieve it. Another demanded to
know who funded Kister's trip to the Arctic. Kister explained that he had saved money for 8 ½ years for
college, then received a full-ride scholarship to Ohio University and was able to use that money for the
90-day expedition by foot and raft through 700 miles of the remotest wilderness left on Earth (see
www.arcticrefuge.org for more details).
Kister will do two more month-long speaking tours by train November 15-December 14 and
February 15-March 16. They are sponsored by the Alaska Wilderness League and the Alaska Coalition.
Kister grew up in Columbus, Ohio and now resides in Athens County.
