RE: NANFA-- Fwd: Environment down the tubes

Crail, Todd (tcrail_at_northshores.com)
Mon, 18 Nov 2002 17:04:11 -0500

Hi Bruce :)

That very well may be the case. So let's just assume that ANWR isn't a real
biodiversity hotspot, which compared to The Amazon or the Western Ghats of
India, it's not (although you probably couldn't see the diversity of lichens
and boreal shrubs from your plane :). Let's look at this from another
standpoint...

What kind of precedence do we set if we allow business to go wherever *they
feel* it's appropriate to do their business, without any concession for what
they do, wether it's debateable that it's a risky business gamble for them to
be there in the first place?

If it were not designated as a WILDLIFE PRESERVE, say it still remained as
private land, that's a whole other set of arguments and issues. But in court,
where precedence is of the utmost greatest, an entire pandora's box has been
opened once the word "preserve" means basically, nothing but "someone thought
this was a nice place to eat lunch once".

I really don't want to see where that begins and ends. Especially in other
countries that are already arguing "well they did it and look at all their
money and crap they have".

Todd

-----Original Message-----
From: BR0630_at_aol.com

I don't know how many of you have been to or flown over the ANWR, but I have
both been in & flown over a portion of ANWR. This, of course does not make me
an expert or anything close to it. Also, I own land in northern British
Columbia with active oil wells & pump stations with pipe lines on it; which
once again does not make me an expert on oil exploration. With that said, I
do have a few insights from my observations in these two areas. Actual oil
exploration & extraction can & has, in my opinion, been done with a minimum
impact of environment - we had wolves, caribou, moose, beaver, fox, deer,
grizzley, etc. etc. on our land prior to oil exploration and still do. Not as
many, perhaps, as 30 years ago, but that's definitely due to the clearing &
development for farms around our land, not from the mineral extraction
activity. As to ANWR, most of what I saw was muskeg in the creek/river
bottoms & windblown shrubs & grasses on the relatively barren hills. It's not
like
a bunch of forest or some other really majestic landscape there - and I
realize that isn't a valid reason to do or not do something. As I see it, oil
exploration & extraction would have such a miniscule impact upon this area
that most of one's opposition has to based up emotional information not
factual information. And to answer the question about how the pipeline
benefits the caribou, it acts as a windbreak; if you've ever been up there,
you realize the wind blows most of the time & most of that land is without any
kind of natural windbreak except down in the riverbreaks.
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