Word: arctics
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...could be developed by oil companies looking for new sources of petroleum, as well as by lumber and mining interests. The most sweeping land conservation legislation in U.S. history, the bill would preserve an area slightly larger than California. It would also protect the great caribou herds in the Arctic Wildlife Range, the spawning beds of the Pacific salmon in the Misty Fjords along the state's southeast coast, the nesting grounds of the dwindling numbers of American bald eagles on Admiralty Island and the habitat of the whistling swan in the southwest...
...environmental impact. But the Dempster is slated for a formal ribbon-cutting in September, and, with some backstage horse trading, the Haul Road may not be too far behind. Then virtually anyone with a sturdy enough car, a firm hand on the wheel and a taste for the outdoors, arctic-style, can contemplate a splendidly eye-opening joyride to the far north...
...gold rush, laces through the deep green forested valleys of the North Klondike and climbs the rugged Ogilvie Mountains, where it peels off in to rolling alpine meadows and the tundra beyond. At the 253.7-mile mark, a simple sign announces the 66° 30 min. latitude of the Arctic Circle. Then the road continues into the Northwest Territories, meets the Peel and Mackenzie rivers, and heads deep into the low, flat, piney Mackenzie Delta until at last it reaches Inuvik...
Other environmental effects may be more subtle. One involves the numerous arctic streams that pass under both roads via culverts. These can speed up or slow down the water and disturb the salmon battling upstream each spring to spawn. Indeed, biologists say that there has already been a drop-off in the number of fish in streams intersecting the Haul Road. Gravel and dust can be another problem. Tossed onto the permafrost by car wheels, they cause the snow to melt early in the spring. Waterfowl then nest prematurely in these moist spots and lose their young to frost...
...greatest fears center on the herds of caribou, whose annual migrations across the arctic wastes began long before the first Siberians touched North America. Biologist David R. Klein of the Alaska Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit has already spotted trouble in a herd of some 6,000 caribou that has traditionally ranged north to south from the Arctic Ocean to the foothills of the Brooks Range. Since the coming of the pipeline, says Klein, cows with calves have shown a marked reluctance to pass under the raised stretches of the conduit and to cross the road itself. Migratory patterns also seem...