Ecological jewel on brink of change

[gulfcoastliberal]

By Craig Welch

Seattle Times staff reporter

TESHEKPUK LAKE, Alaska — Amid the sprawling sameness of Alaska's tundra is an oval pool of fresh water nine times the size of Lake Washington.

Teshekpuk Lake supports one of the largest bird-nesting sites in North America. Inupiat hunters camp here among the heather and wild poppies to track wolverines or shoot ducks or net eellike burbot and catch whitefish. Biologists consider Teshekpuk as ecologically significant as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Now the Bush administration is on the brink of opening it to oil drilling, infuriating even the Native Alaskans who benefit most from oil, and many who have pushed to open up ANWR.

Yet the debate is virtually unknown throughout the rest of the country.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002716137_arctic02sidebar.html

[TallahasseeGrannie]

1. Okay now I feel dumb

I thought this was over. This is a different area altogether??

[gulfcoastliberal]

2. It's part of the "National Petroleum Reserve":

Ahmaogak is a powerful supporter of ANWR drilling. But earlier this year he sent the Bush administration a letter arguing that oil development "would utterly fail to protect" Teshekpuk Lake, which is inside a huge patch of tundra called the National Petroleum Reserve.

President Harding created the 23.5-million-acre reserve in 1923 as an emergency oil source for the Navy. World War II shortages led to some exploration, but the hunt quickly moved to other areas, leading to the discovery of Prudhoe Bay, the country's largest oil field, in 1968.