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To the editor:
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge coastal plain, 30 miles wide and 100 miles long, is the only stretch of our 1,100-milelong Arctic coastline not open to oil development. Yet, Interior Secretary Hodel is pressuring Congress to open this area, one of our few remaining pristine ecosystems, to oil development, if possible, within the next twelve months, to preclude any legislative veto.
The coastal plain is one of Planet Earth’s most biologically productive systems. Much of Alaskan native subsistence comes from the huge migratory Porcupine caribou herd (about 165,000 animals) which uses this area as a key calving ground. Muskoxen, polar bears, brown bears, wolves, Arctic foxes, peregrine falcons, snow geese, and more than 100 other species live and breed there at least part of the year.
Oil and gas exploration would inflict considerable damage to these wildlife populations, reducing the caribou herd by 40 percent and the muskox population by 50 percent. Other species would sustain similar injury. Such devastation would be wrought for the purpose of securing 200 days’ worth of oil (present estimate of the quantity of
95.5%