Reply #2: Very informative [View All]

[sandnsea]

WOULD BE FIRST Refuge opened to drilling since the 1960s.

They are pushing the winter time pictures when the Coastal Plain is barren, frozen and dark. Gail Norton mailed the network and cable news anchors a videotape supplied by Arctic Power, a pro-drilling lobbying group in Alaska, showing the coastal plain in wintertime. They say pictures of Muskoxen are not on the Coastal Plain.

All of this misses the point:

RIPARIAN HABITAT frequently used by muskoxen are also likely to be used as sites for gravel and water extraction and winter road construction….” Muskoxen had become extinct across most of Alaska, 51 were introduced to the Coastal Plain in 1969 which has grown to the herd of approximately 400 today.

THE COASTAL PLAIN of the Arctic Refuge is America’s only on-shore denning site for polar bears.

THE PORCUPINE RIVER CARIBOU herd, numbering some 129,000 animals, migrates from south of the Brooks Range in the Arctic Refuge and Canada, to give birth to their young on the Coastal Plain.

130 SPECIES OF BIRDS nest and feed on the Coastal Plain of the Arctic Refuge, coming from as far away as Asia, Antarctica, and the Chesapeake Bay.