This is what Bush want us to pay his cronies to devastate. This is a post from Chris on the GW thread, about the reality of that "useless wasteland" Bush lobbyists lie about to us.
I have also been to Alaska and was amazed how evidence of human activity takes many years to bio-degrade (orange peels littered still orange after ten years for instance) and how any major development would result in permanent destruction to Christian conservatives should recognize as some of greatest and most precious works. Bush's statement we will leave no foot-print is an out-right lie.
"An oil man's personal encounter with the ANWR
This narrative was written by Mark Herndon, an oilman from Oklahoma . Mark just spent
a month trekking ANWR. Please read what he has to say, and pass it on to your friends.
"I saw gyrfalcons,peregrines and golden eagles. I saw musk ox and had a long,
close encounter with a grizzly bear. Everywhere were tracks of caribou, musk ox, grizzly, wolf
and wolverine. I hiked up side valleys that were miles wide and absolutely flat tundra
covered with lupines and arctic poppies. A close examination of the tundra
reveals hundreds of tiny flowers and lichens.
Everywhere were old caribou antlers and skulls poking up through the tundra."
Hi everyone:
I have just returned from a month alone in the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge in far northeastern Alaska. It was a really tough trip. I lost
25 lbs and basically feel like I have been beaten up.
I want to share a little bit about the place with you while it is
still fresh in my mind; things that I feel are very important. I want to grab
you by the lapels and tell you a few things that are true, because I have
seen them.
ANWR is probably the biggest chunk of absolute wilderness left in
this country. I've also been in part of Gates of the Arctic National
Park and Noatak National Preserve, two other large protected areas in
the Brooks Range. ANWR is huge compared to those places; it's a place
where you could walk your whole life and never see it all.
Contrary to what you may have heard, it is not a vast wasteland. It is like heaven
on earth, and hasn't been touched by humans. There is not a single building, not
a single trail, in an area that I've heard is about comparable to South Carolina. It's 19 million
acres and there ain't no visitor center.
Very few people go there. It is difficult and committing to get there. Since I have been there,
and with the current political situation about ANWR's coastal plain, I emphatically want to tell
you what it is like. And feel free to tell your friends.
First, I paddled the Canning River, on the west side of the Refuge.
I started up high in the glaciated Brooks Range and hiked for a few days.
Craggy mountains and a two-day snowstorm on the fourth of July. It
looks wilder than the wildest part of Colorado without the trees. That part
of the refuge is far north of tree line.
As I floated down, I saw gyrfalcons, peregrines and golden eagles. I
saw musk ox and had a long, close encounter with a grizzly bear.
Everywhere were tracks of caribou, musk ox, grizzly, wolf and wolverine.
I hiked up side valleys that were miles wide and absolutely flat tundra
covered with lupines and arctic poppies. A close examination of the
tundra reveals hundreds of tiny flowers and lichens. Everywhere were
old caribou antlers and skulls poking up through the tundra.
Wolf- killed caribou skeletons also dot the tundra, often skulls with huge
antlers attached. I saw more musk ox, and managed to walk pretty close
to some of them, before they got a little agitated.
As I floated out of the mountains to the coastal plain, I began to
see caribou in earnest. More than you could ever count. It was like being
in a herd in Africa.
This is also where I came out of the wilderness part of the refuge and the river became the boundary
between state land on the left (where oil exploration goes on) and ANWR on the right bank.
On the state land I began to see many abandoned fuel drums and huge tracks
on the tundra where cat trains shoot seismic in the winter. The tracks
don't go away any time soon. I saw abandoned drums on the tundra
constantly after a while over on the state land. As I crossed the
coastal plain, I saw many smaller caribou herds and lots of
birds; geese, ducks, tundra swans, and many strange types of birds
that I have no idea what they were, probably migrating up from Hawaii
or Chile to nest.
All this time, I saw more and more garbage on the left bank. Most of the animals were on
the right bank.
In this day and age, I would think that BP-AMOCO, EXXON, and PHILLIPS would
go clean all that crap up.
I made my way to the delta of the river where it empties into the Beaufort Sea, and in a 2:00 am lull in the wind
paddled a
roundabout 10 miles across the four-mile lagoon to an island that is about 6 miles long.
There were many small icebergs about thirty feet across. I saw
old sod huts that the Eskimos used to live in on the island, and found that
the entire north side of the island was still fast against the sea ice
which continues to somewhere in Russia, I guess. I walked out on it for
a ways, and it is really rough.
One day I watched ringed seals (polar bears' staple food) sunning on
the ice through binoculars. I saw a huge set of polar bear tracks
around the lagoon side of the island, but they were pretty old.
The island was just a few miles outside of the ANWR boundary, and
EXXON had drilled a dry hole on it in the past two years. It was one
of the filthiest locations I have ever seen in my
15 years working in the oil industry. I was really surprised, because
EXXON drill sites in the lower 48 are usually the cleanest of them all.
I was not impressed with what I saw
of the oil industry in Alaska.
Then my bush plane landed on a sandspit and took me to the headwaters
of the Jago river, which is supposed to be one of the most beautiful
places on earth. I spent ten days in this valley, hiking up to the
glaciated peaks at its headwaters. Part of the Porcupine caribou herd
had gone south up the valley a couple of days before my arrival and
there were millions of tracks, all heading south. Interspersed were
the occasional wolf or grizzly track. I saw a few stray cow caribou, but
the show had already moved south for the winter.
On the Jago, I was trapped for two days waiting for a rain-swollen
river to recede so I could wade across. I fell in the same river on
the way up. Wet gear up there is serious trouble because of the
cold.
The only way to describe this valley is to take the prettiest
valley in Montana or Idaho and double it. It just took your breath
away. It was so different that it may as well have been the moon. One
night while I slept a grizzly walked by my tent. There was a set of
fresh tracks there that weren't there the night before. He paid me no
mind.
Anyway, I was picked up on a gravel bar on the lower river and
flown out to Kaktovik, on the coast. I heard there were nine white
people in Kaktovik. The native people who live there were very
nice people. You'd see someone cleaning a freshly killed bearded seal
in the front yard of their house. A local hunter (they basically all
hunt and whale) heard I'd been on the Canning and sought me out for
skinny on where the caribou still were. From there, I made all of the
flights home.
Before I went to see ANWR for myself I already had some conceptions.
After last year in Alaska I thought that modern oil exploration could
be done responsibly. Certainly most Alaskans were for it. They got
$1600 each last year from the north-slope oil money.
After visiting ANWR....seeing that coastal plain myself-- I
realized that there are a lot of lies being told about this place. It is not a
vast wasteland. It is achingly beautiful, and if you value wild places,
the refuge could be considered a sanctuary or a cathedral.
To me, it was an intense experience far beyond what I expected. I have been going
to wild places most of my life, but I have never been to a place like
this. Not even close in the lower 48.
There are a few places that are just not appropriate for large
scale oil exploration. This place is far more fantastic than
Yellowstone or Grand Teton, but it is far away and few care.
If we put a bunch of drill pads on that coastal plain, we will be
making a terrible mistake. Our country will never again be energy
independent anyway. Those numbers don't lie. Drilling in ANWR will
only help about 4 major oil companies and the state of Alaska (which is
completely addicted to the oil tit). The numbers don't lie. It will
only make a few percent difference to the nation.
The first morning back, I read in the paper that the House approved
drilling in ANWR. I felt like crying. That coastal plain is very
narrow, and the most environmentally sensitive exploration would put a
giant blot on it.
Most of you will never meet anyone else in your life who has
actually been to ANWR. and fewer still who have crossed the coastal
plain. I emphatically urge you to listen to what I am saying and take it into
account as you form your own opinions.
The vote to open ANWR still has to make it through the Senate, and those of you in Oklahoma are
wasting paper by writing to our senators; to those of you in other states, maybe you can help.
And remember. I AM in the oil industry. I'm all for drilling in many, many places. Not here.
The price is way too high.
I can't emphasize enough how special this place is. I don't
believe the promise that they will only disturb 2000 acres.
When they get through shooting seismic in that place, it will look like a
chessboard from the air. It's kind of like a football field; 22
players standing on their feet probably occupy far less than 100 square
feet of that football field. But they sure do make an impression.
The coastal plain is the living part of the refuge. The rest is very
mountainous and almost sterile by comparison. To go stomping on the
coastal plain with a series of industrial sights is just too much. I
don't want to have to say that I saw ANWR way back BEFORE it got all
messed up. |
