Word: alaskas
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Davidson considers himself an environmentalist, and in recent years -- especially in the past three weeks -- he has had plenty of company. But for most of its history, Alaska has not been dominated by the conservation ethic. Almost from its discovery in 1741 by Vitus Bering, Alaska was seen as a land to be exploited for all it was worth. At first the lure was furs, and then whaling, timber and fishing. When the U.S. bought the territory from Russia in 1867 for $7 million, little changed. The gold rushes of the late 1800s brought hordes of prospectors, beginning a boom...
...when enormous quantities of oil were discovered at Prudhoe Bay. In 1969 the state held an auction for oil-drilling leases and suddenly found itself $900 million richer. Almost overnight, tens of thousands of Americans followed the advice in the chorus of the Johnny Horton pop tune, "North to Alaska! Go north -- the rush is on!" The state began to fill with drilling crews, geologists and oil-company executives. The barren North Slope, where only a few Inupiat, or Eskimos, had lived, now bristled with hard-hatted workers who were hardy enough to endure temperatures that could fall...
...long history of invasions has transformed the population. In 1880 there were only about 33,500 people in Alaska, 99% of them natives. But by 1959, when the territory became a state, the population had increased nearly sevenfold, and the typical Alaskan was no longer an Indian fisherman or an Inupiat hunter but a white storekeeper, bush pilot or construction worker. Today nonnatives account for 84% of the state's 530,000 people...
...vast majority of the immigrants, the whole point of coming to Alaska was to profit from the land. Red Swanson, who arrived in 1945, is a good example. For more than 40 years he has bulldozed Alaska, pumped oil out of it, cut down its trees and paved it with asphalt. Says Swanson: "The environmentalists have stopped Alaska from being great. They say hundreds of birds have been killed by this oil spill. But we have millions of birds. These things happen...
While oil is the hottest issue, the Prince William spill could also help the environmental cause in a dispute that has nothing to do with crude: the battle over Alaska's Tongass National Forest, a woodland bigger than West Virginia, located in the southeastern panhandle. Unlike parks, national forests are available for lumbering. But conservationists have protested that the Tongass, one of the few remaining temperate rain forests, should be largely protected from logging, especially considering that the industry is heavily subsidized by the U.S. Forest Service. Says Larry Edwards, founder of the Southeast Alaska Conservation Society: "We have...