Word: plaines
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...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 bbl. of oil and 64.5 trillion cu. ft. of natural...
Last week the U.S. Department of the Interior joined forces with the developers. The department's Fish and Wildlife Service recommended that the plain -- a carpet of delicate wild flowers in summer, an icy wasteland in winter -- be opened to exploration and leasing by oil and gas concerns. The report, which concedes that the environment would be affected, is due to be released in final form next March by Interior Secretary Donald Hodel...
...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...
Around them, the victory-drunk B.C. Eagles danced with joy, happy to escape with an 87-86 victory at home, happy that the Crimson had neglected to commit an intentional foul in the last 12 seconds, just plain happy...