Word: arctics
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...promises to be a classic struggle. On one side: environmentalists, guardians of the 18 million-acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which sits on Alaska's North Slope near the Canadian border. An untouched domain of musk oxen, polar bears, golden eagles, wolves and a cherished herd of 180,000 caribou, the preserve is one of the nation's last pristine animal ranges. The opposition: developers who seek the vast energy riches believed to lie beneath the refuge's 1.5 million-acre coastal plain. These reserves may hold as much as 5 billion to 30 billion...
Congress has waited for Interior's decision since 1980, when it passed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. The legislation set aside more than 104 million acres of federal territory in Alaska for parks, refuges and wilderness areas, including the Arctic Refuge. But the lawmakers left undecided the fate of the coastal plain. Instead they authorized the Interior Department to determine the region's potential stores of oil and gas and make a detailed -- and expensive (about $45.5 million) -- assessment of the biological impact of tapping them...
...comparison does not sway defenders of the Arctic Refuge. They point out that the preserve's coastal plain is one-third the width of Prudhoe Bay's and that the caribou herd that migrates there to calve is 15 times as large as Prudhoe's. Says Mark Troutwein, a consultant to the House Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment: "The area is a priceless wildlife resource that cannot tolerate airstrips and pipelines without a serious loss of quality...
...WERE NOT daunted. Rutger had been assigned by The National Enquirer to investigate an alleged Raisa Gorbachev-Yeti love baby. Neither cold of arctic night nor professional ethics would stay his appointed rounds. I followed, to aid him in danger, to comfort him in difficulty, and to recover the $100 he owed...
...have an economic spin-off. When resins given off by these ancient trees are buried 6,000 ft. underground, according to McMillan, they are eventually converted into very good oil. The resins, he believes, are the major source of oil found in the Beaufort Sea and elsewhere in the Arctic. "The more we know of the climate and vegetation," he says, "the better we'll be able to assess the oil and gas potential there...