Bush Fish $ Wildlife OK's drilling in refuge area via protected area swap!

[papau]

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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-yukon22oct22.story
THE NATION
Land Trade Would Allow Drilling in Refuge
Fish and Wildlife agency endorses letting an Alaska Native firm swap wetlands for protected areas. Other Natives and conservationists object.
By Julie Cart
Times Staff Writer

October 22, 2004

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has given preliminary approval to a land exchange in Alaska that would allow a Native-owned energy company to drill for oil on 110,000 acres within the nation's third-largest wildlife refuge along a remote section of the Yukon River.

The deal has the support of Alaska Republican Sen. Ted Stevens, who set a deadline for the agreement in a rider to an appropriations bill pending in Congress.

The land swap not only would allow oil drilling within the 9-million-acre Yukon Flats refuge, which borders the more famous Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, it could necessitate the building of roads and a pipeline through wetlands that Fish and Wildlife had nominated for wilderness protection in 1987.

Native groups that live near the river oppose the deal because of potential harm to wildlife, including salmon, waterfowl, caribou and moose. Critics also note that the Fairbanks-based oil company has paid millions of dollars in fines for dumping toxic waste at drilling sites on Alaska's North Slope.

"This deal is an open-door invitation to carve out any piece of refuge for commercial gain," said Jamie Rappaport Clark, Fish and Wildlife Service director under President Clinton and now executive vice president of the group Defenders of Wildlife. "It's really an affront to what it means to be a national wildlife refuge."

As part of the deal, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would convey land in the middle of the refuge to Doyon Ltd. in return for isolated parcels owned by the company elsewhere in the refuge.<snip>

[phantom power]

1. The last few years, there's been a resolution on the AZ ballots

that would allow land-trades "if it was in the best interest of AZ lands" (paraphrase).

I always voted against it (so far, it hasn't passed, but they keep floating it), mostly because it makes me think of scenarios like that one.

[papau]

2. When Kerry wins, the nightmare will be over!

:-)

[phantom power]

3. At least Kerry will try.

I often have this sinking feeling that changes have been set in motion that nobody has the power to stop. Climate, economics, geopolitics, all of it. This will be the century when humanity rides the tiger.