Sustaining the Future

Themes

Cases

Industrialization
v Preservation of Nature

Environmental Health v Economic Health

Political Interests v Human Interests

Dependency v Independency of Natural Resources

 

Notepad

Discussion Forum
Oil Drilling in National Wildlife Refuge CeliloDam in Portland Oregon Baia-Mare Gold Mine in Romania Natural Gas Pipeline in Brazil Oil-Dri Mining Company in Nevada

The American Serengeti

President Bush is urging Congress to do something that Americans overwhelmingly oppose -- surrender the nation’s largest and most pristine arctic wilderness refuge to exploitation by oil companies.

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is the wildest place left in America. It’s often called the "American Serengeti" for no where else in the United States comes close to matching the sheer wildlife spectacle of the famed African plain. The refuge is home to caribou, polar bears, muskoxen, arctic foxes, wolverines, grizzlies, snow geese -- a myriad number of creatures, all of which depend on this fragile, unique land for survival. But President Bush and his Big Oil allies want to drill right smack in the refuge’s biological heart.

Americans would lose this Arctic wildlife sanctuary, and we wouldn’t get much out of it, either.

This could forever destroy the ancestral calving ground of tens of thousands of Porcupine caribou, which journey 300 to 400 miles from Canadian wilderness to the coastal plain every year to give birth. It could force polar bears to abandon their maternity dens, which they dig in the snowdrifts, and leave their cubs to die. And it would endanger the delicate balance of habitat that supports a rich diversity of wildlife. You may never go there yourself, but the threat may be as close as your backyard. Millions of migratory birds – more than 160 species – make their summer home in the refuge, and at least some of them probably visit your state every year. Tundra swans from the refuge winter on the east coast of the United States, for instance, and the savannah sparrow heads for the South.
This a particial account.