TGPT:
According to your U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, oil drilling on the coastal plain would significantly alter caribou migration patterns and could cause a 40 percent decline in the population. This is why the natives and Canada strongly oppose this plan...it affects both concerned parties.. In this same link, it details the natives who do oppose this... the inland native peoples who hunt the caribou are unanimously opposed to it.. and even the tribe mentioned in the article that does to some extent support drilling is evenly divided...
Gwich'in Nation members maintain that without the caribou,
their lives would have ended a long time ago.
"It is very important for our young to learn our values," said Gwich'in leader Faith Gemmill. "Without the caribou we wouldn't have our identity and we wouldn't be a distinct people. We shouldn't have to give that up for short-term economic gain.
cnn.com
More evidence of wildlife disruption:
Wildlife-management experts are concerned the winter activities of oil companies could disrupt the denning of pregnant female polar bears along the shoreline. Musk oxen could be driven from their riverside habitats, where oil
companies come to find gravel and freshwater. And grizzly bears, which come out on the plain in summer, will likely again prove they are incompatible with oil camps. In the Prudhoe area, grizzlies were often relocated and sometimes shot when they became too intrusive.
Most important of all are the more than 130,000 caribou of the Porcupine herd, which migrates each spring onto the coastal plain to calve. These caribou are at the heart of the environmentalists' case against drilling. In late May, the animals arrive on the plain after traveling 400 miles around the mountains, to give birth far from their predators: the eagles, wolves and grizzlies that live principally in the mountains. After calving, they forage on the rich greenery that springs up in the 24-hour sunshine. As new snow approaches, they return to the forests on
the south slopes 400 miles away, where they find shelter and feed off lichen growing on trees. If drilling begins in the refuge, environmentalists fear, the migration will be disrupted.
"Caribou will move away from oil fields as disturbance increases," says David Klein, professor emeritus at the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of
Alaska-Fairbanks. In the Prudhoe oil field, he says, the 25,000-head Central Arctic herd of caribou was displaced from oil developments. "The pipeline and [nearby] haul road have essentially fractured the Central Arctic herd into two
groups," Klein says.
time.com
Lastly.. read this article the whole way thru
"Last Call Of The Wild"
Specifically.. look for a couple of sections that show that ANSWR doesnt need to be drilled right now even in the so called energy crisis right now.. as well as more evidenceof environmental detrimental effects.
time.com
I trust CNN and TIME arent considered "crap" sites.
By the way... the area directly adjacent to the ANWR on our side of the border is a fully protected federal park.
Also.. Isee your site you referenced doesnt update its articles.. or at least.. not the ones it doesnt want people to read.. its got that "new poll" claiming 54% of Americans support drilling the ANWR... well.. that poll was taken in October..
The CNN/TIME Poll in Feb showed that 52% of AMericans now OPPOSED the drilling of the ANWR.. despite the Bush scare mongering tactics.. but of course.. why would they want to put that up on their site? That is extremely misleading in my view. |
