Word: alaskas
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...worked as a high-energy cleanser of rocks and beaches. Thus the Shetlands are likely to be spared the costly and environmentally disruptive cleanup that followed the spilling of nearly 11 million gal. of crude (less than half the amount lost by the Braer) into Prince William Sound in Alaska. Says Robert Spies, chief scientist for the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council: "There is ample evidence that overzealous cleanup can be harmful." The chemical detergents, high-pressure sprays and brushes used to clean beaches and rocks after a spill destroy microorganisms that are an important part of the seaside...
...state of Alaska made an abrupt about-face on its plan to destroy hundreds of gray wolves next year. In an effort to attract more tourists and big-game hunters, state officials had announced in November that they would cull the state's 7,000-member wolf population (wolves are not endangered in Alaska). They argued that the move was needed to boost the number of caribou and moose on which the wolf packs generally feed. But a growing boycott of Alaskan cruises by some of the very tourists the state had meant to attract forced officials to cancel their...
Chalk another one up to mankind's micromanagement of nature. Recklessly arrogant and myopic, Alaska's decision is rooted in special-interest economics, not biology. It's all the more distressing for what it tells us about ourselves as a species and our estrangement from nature. Alaska's folly is the product of a theme-park mentality in which nature exists for our amusement, to be enhanced by adding one species and subtracting another. An indiscriminate assault will kill off pack leaders, leaving wolves in hierarchical disarray, and harm eagles, foxes and wolverines, which dine upon the carcasses wolves leave...
...more we monkey with nature, the more we seek assurance that somewhere it is beyond our tinkering. To a world idling in traffic, "Alaska" strikes a primal chord. Our longing expresses itself in mail-order catalogs full of the back-to-nature look and in the popularity of films like Dances with Wolves, The Last of the Mohicans and A River Runs Through It, viewed by urban audiences sitting elbow-to-elbow in the dark. Most will never know what it is to be dwarfed by an old-growth forest, spy brook trout sipping mayflies or hear a wolf howl...
...home, within human beings themselves. To progress from nature's despoiler to its custodian, we must first redefine our place in -- not over -- nature, accept the role of resident rather than architect and resist the temptation technology affords us to mold a world responsive to our whims alone. Alaska, which once sanctioned the shooting of polar bears from the air, now dreams of creating a second Serengeti, fulfilling the fantasy of those who begrudge nature its sparseness and exquisite balance. This is more than bad biology, and it is sadly fitting that it should befall the wolf. A majestic symbol...