Dear Tweets, I apologize for the format and length of the following letters but
wanted to pass them on. I just copied them from the U.S. Dept. of the
Interior web site. I was amazed. Here they are. Note the web address
on the bottom, you may want to go there yourself.

Paul Moorehead
n9135066 at henson.cc.wwu.edu
Guemes Island, Washington NO ON 48!

Letter from the Secretary

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge:
As Close as Your Own Backyard

By Bruce Babbitt
Secretary of the Interior

Most Americans will never visit the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. But
wildlife from the
refuge probably visits your state every year.

The caribou, wolves and other animals we associate with America's largest
wildlife refuge
are only half the story of its rich diversity. More than fifty species of
birds who make the
refuge their home are welcome guests in our hometowns in the Lower 48"
during migration
and the winter season.

It is the delicate natural balance supporting these birds and dozens of
other animals which
is threatened by parts of the oil and gas industries and the Congressmen
who do their
bidding. Opening the refuge to oil and gas development doesn't just
affect a small spot of
land above the Arctic Circle. It impacts the birds we see in our
backyards, and the fierce
pride we have as a nation that values protection of wildlife and natural
beauty.

I was lucky enough to spend time in the Arctic refuge shortly after
becoming Secretary of
the Interior in 1993. The tundra, a thousand shades of emerald and jade,
sparkled in the
soft light of the midnight sun. On a field of cotton flowers and
saxifrage, musk oxen circled
to protect their calves as a pack of wolves stalked nearby. It was late
summer and the
caribou had already trekked southward into the passes of the Brooks
Range; the tundra was
touched with the scarlet hues of autumn, and the snow geese would soon be
coming down
from Wrangell Island to fatten up before the long flight southward.

A total of 135 species of birds have been recorded on the Coastal Plain
of the Arctic Refuge.
Each year these birds use the coastal plain to nest, raise young, feed or
rest for their
migration to destinations across the United States and beyond.

Snow geese will eat cotton grass on the Coastal Plain for up to 16 hours
a day, increasing
their body fat by 400 percent in only two or three weeks. They leave and
fly nonstop more
than 1,200 miles before resting again. They descend like thick white
clouds on the central
valley of California. Thousands of people come to the Sacramento National
Wildlife Refuge
on cool, sunny mornings to see them return from feeding in nearby rice
fields.

Tundra swans on the Refuge s coastal plain are part of the eastern
continental population.
They winter on the east coast of the United States. Mattamuskeet National
Wildlife Reserve
in North Carolina has more than 30,000 swans each winter and attracts
more than 50,000
visitors.

The golden plover and the lapland longspurs from the Arctic Refuge
migrate to the
northeastern United States. The red-throated loons and oldsquaw go to the
Midwest, the
ruddy turnstone and gray checked thrush to the Southeast. The long-billed
dowitcher and
savannah sparrow head for the South and the short-eared owl and golden
eagle roost in the
northern Rockies.

The presence of these winged visitors adds a grace note to our lives. We
wait their arrival,
marking our calendars by the sound of their flight. They are part of what
makes our towns
and regions special, these visitors from the north. The migration of wild
creatures is an
ancient constant in our uncertain modernity.

Oil and gas companies, through their Congressional supporters, are
pushing for the chance
to upset these ancient constants. They want to invade the last small
piece of Arctic
sanctuary for an oil supply that would satisfy only a few months of our
national demand.
More than 85 percent of the great arctic coastal plain is already open to
oil exploration and
development, but they want more.

An impact study looked at the snow goose and found aircraft disturbance
would displace
the geese from critical feeding habitats. Disturbance impacts weren t
measured for the
other birds I've mentioned here, but you can be sure the massive
disruption being proposed
by the oil companies would have an effect.

Should Congress vote to end the long-standing protection of the heart of
one of our premier
refuges, it will inevitably shatter the balance of land and life into a
thousand fragments.

Development will not only be the death knell for the refuge. It will also
cast a pall over the
dozens of towns and areas nation wide that celebrate, like clockwork, the
yearly return of
the arctic birds.

If big oil has its way, I wouldn't be confident in setting my watch by
the snow goose
anymore.

-DOI-

October 23, 1995, http://www.usgs.gov/ien/doibboc2.html

And one more ........


Letter from the Secretary

DRILLING IN THE ARCTIC REFUGE

WHAT'S IN IT FOR YOU?

By Bruce Babbitt
Secretary of the Interior

Three newly-powerful Republican members of Congress from Alaska are
working furiously
through the dead of night to carry out a project that would be rejected
by the majority of
U.S. citizens if they knew about it. The new Congress did not campaign on
this issue; it
flies in the face of public opinion and a presidential veto; and yet the
GOP's leaders are
suddenly in a rush to carry out their top environmental priority in both
the Senate and the
House of Representatives: Hand over the public's last arctic wilderness
refuge to
exploitation by oil companies.

The coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is the last
protected fragment of
Alaska's Arctic coastline, comprising a pristine, unique ecosystem where
hundreds of plant
and animal species live wild just beyond the looming shadow of the oil
and gas drilling
equipment that sprawls across the landscape 100 miles to the west at
Prudhoe Bay.
Prudhoe Bay is, in many ways, an American success story. It has provided
billions of barrels
of oil for the American economy. The Clinton Administration strongly
supports domestic oil
and gas production --in appropriate places-- and in fact hundreds of
miles of Alaska's Arctic
Ocean shore is open to further exploration.

But the small 110-mile strip of coastline in the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge is different.
The giant Prudhoe Bay industrial complex simply doesn't fit there.
Studies have shown that
opening this last protected area to oil and gas development would lead to
serious threats to
the native wildlife, including the Porcupine Caribou Herd, and the native
peoples who
depend on the herd to live and maintain their traditional lifestyle. Oil
and gas development
would disrupt these pristine lands by covering them with an industrial
spider web of
pipelines, utility corridors, barracks and equipment sheds, roads and
other facilities. Each
stage of development would bring physical disturbances of the area, risks
of oil spills and
pollution, and long-term damage that would impair wildlife for decades or
centuries. And,
in return for losing this last sanctuary of Arctic wildlife, the American
people will
receive...what?

That's not very clear. To be sure, it's been made deliberately unclear
and swathed in
hyperbole. Alaska's congressional delegation, which has been leading the
charge, promises
billions upon billions of dollars in unspecified benefits for every man,
woman and child in
the nation. At least that's the word from the Alaska Hypeline. But the
reality is much closer
to the tundra. And as the facts are nailed down, their promised billions
begin to melt away
like spring snow.

Republican leaders of the Congressional budget committees have told their
colleagues that
drilling in the Refuge will bring in an estimated $1.3 billion in
revenue. That, presumably,
will allow any Congressman, when eventually faced by angry electorate
asking Why did you
sell our birthright? to brandish the King's X of Deficit reduction -- I
did it for deficit
reduction.

Of course, $1.3 billion represents only 0.3 of 1 percent of the budget
deficit. But even that
estimate is wildly exaggerated. For one thing, it assumes that oil prices
will be more than
$30 a barrel in the year 2000. What are the chances of that? Right now
the price of West
Texas intermediate crude is $19 a barrel, with no real increase in sight.
Middle East
producers can be depended on to keep their price just low enough to make
it more
profitable for us to import their oil than to develop alternative energy
sources of our own.
Their reserves are estimated at 80-100 years, so they're not going to be
pushing the price
up in five years. With the breakup of the Soviet Union, Azerbaijan, one
of the first places
we found oil in the world, is a hot prospect to increase production.
Venezuela, too, is
increasing production.

No, it doesn't appear that prices will topping $30 in the foreseeable
future. In fact, the U.S.
Energy Department's Energy Information Agency predicts oil prices will be
only $19.13 by
the year 2000, not $38. That brings the estimate of revenue from the
Arctic Refuge down to
under a billion dollars. On top of that, new geological analysis shows
there's probably less
oil under the Arctic Refuge than what the Republicans are counting on to
make their
numbers work. Taken together, these factors could bring the total revenue
down to a little
more than half what the Alaska congressional delegation is promising.

Then there's the question of the state's cut. The state has already sued
the federal
government, saying it's entitled to 90 percent of the lease revenue; now
they say they re
willing to settle for only half. No doubt. But in Alaska itself, one of
the Senate sponsors of
drilling has told the press not to worry, that once the bill is safely
passed the state can sue
and get its 90 percent share. That means 49 states and 250 million
citizens of America
receive a $70 million in deficit reduction, while Alaska deposits almost
10 times as much,
$630 million, in its own treasury.

A reasonable person might question the state's need for this new oil
windfall. Alaska
remains one of the few states without a state income tax. This year
alone, it will give back
to its citizens a total of $536 million -- 1/3 of the total amount that
proponents claim will
be generated by drilling in the Refuge. The state recently announced that
for 1995 each
Alaskan will receive a state check for $990.30 from the state. This is
the highest one-year
dividend paid from the Alaska Permanent Fund since the state began
sharing its oil wealth
with its citizens in 1982. No other state has such a program. Frankly,
not even the oil
companies need to drill in the Refuge. If they'll turn around and look
west instead of east,
they'll find they can drill undisturbed for 1,000 miles --all the way to
Siberia. There are
plenty of places to drill for oil without damaging America's Serengeti.

In addition to offering bogus financial benefits to the country, the
Republican sponsors also
warn that America might someday need oil from the Refuge to guard against
another oil
embargo. But even they don't really buy that. If they did, the
Republicans wouldn't be
eliminating energy conservation programs in the Department of Energy that
would save
more oil than we could ever pump out of the Arctic Wildlife Refuge.

Three things are clear: (1) the American people who own the Refuge don't
stand to get
much out of this deal; (2) the political leaders of Alaska and industrial
leaders who financed
their campaigns would reap the biggest, most disproportionate windfall in
recent history;
and (3) if they are prevented from working in the dark of night, kept
from using
Washington's Byzantine budget process to conceal their self-serving
manipulations -- if
they're forced to come out in the daylight and explain themselves -- it
just won't happen
because Americans won t stand for it.

No wonder they re in such a hurry.

-DOI-

October 23, 1995, http://www.usgs.gov/ien/doibboc1.html