Date: Sat, 11 Aug 2001 15:09:38 -0400 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Joe Halloran Subject: Re: Second attempt re ANWR - Part 1 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Thanks for this info - I forwarded it to my friends and family and to Senators Mikulski and Sarbanes. Joe Halloran lowkey@speakeasy.net From: "Paul O'Brien" To: Sent: Thursday, August 09, 2001 4:58 PM Subject: [MDOSPREY] Second attempt re ANWR - Part 1 > I forgot that you can't forward anything to MDOsprey, so I'll copy it. But > since it exceeds 250 lines, I'll do it in two parts. This comes from Bill > Evans via Bob Augustine. > > Paul O'Brien > Rockville, Mont. Co., MD > pobrien776@aol.com > > from NY Birds on Birding onthenet > > > Subject: ANWR > > From: "Bill Evans" > > Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2001 01:33:13 -0400 > > > > FYI below; definitely worth a skim if you're interested in the > > fate of Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: > > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > > Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2001 00:31:17 EDT > > From: GreatGrayO@aol.com > > Subject- ANWR > > > > I just got this narrative written by Mark Herndon. Mark is an oilman from > > Oklahoma who has worked with us for many years on our storm intercept > > projects as a volunteer. He just spent a month trekking ANWR... read what > > he has to say. Pass it on to your friends if you are so inclined. > > > Erik Rasmussen > > Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies > > NSSL/OU > > > Hi everyone, > > > For those of you who don't know, I returned yesterday from a month alone > > in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in far northeastern Alaska. I'm > > really beat. I lost 25 lbs and basically feel like I have been beaten up. > > It was a really tough trip. > > > I want to share a little bit about the place with you while it is still > > fresh in my mind; things that I feel are very important. I want to grab > > you by the lapels and tell you a few things that are true, because I have > > seen them. > > > ANWR is probably the biggest chunk of absolute wilderness left in this > > country. I've also been in part of Gates of the Arctic National Park and > > Noatak National Preserve, two other large protected areas in the Brooks > > Range. ANWR is huge compared to those places; it's a place where you could > > walk your whole life and never see it all. Contrary to what you may have > > heard about the place in the media, it is not a vast wasteland. It is like > > heaven on earth, and hasn't been touched by man. There is not a single > > building, not a single trail, in an area that I've heard is about > > comparable to South Carolina. It's 19 million acres and there ain't no > > visitor center. > > > Very few people go there. It is difficult and committing to get there. > > Since I have been there, and with the current political situation about > > ANWR's coastal plain, I emphatically want to tell you what it is like. And > > feel free to tell your friends. > > > First, I paddled the Canning River, on the west side of the Refuge. I > > started up high in the glaciated Brooks Range and hiked for a few days. > > Craggy mountains and a two day snowstorm on the fourth of July. It looks > > wilder than the wildest part of Colorado without the trees. That part of > > the refuge is far north of treeline. > > > As I floated down I saw gyrfalcons, peregrines and golden eagles. I saw > > musk ox and had a long, close encounter with a grizzly bear. Everywhere > > were tracks of caribou, muskox, grizzly, wolf and wolverine. > > > I hiked up side valleys that were miles wide and absolutely flat tundra > > covered with lupines and arctic poppies. A close examination of the tundra > > reveals hundreds of tiny flowers and lichens. Everywhere were old caribou > > antlers and skulls poking up through the tundra. Wolf killed caribou > > skeletons also dot the tundra, often skulls with huge antlers attached. I > > saw more muskox, and managed to walk pretty close to some of them, before > > they got a little agitated. > > > As I floated out of the mountains to the coastal plain I began to see > > caribou in earnest. More than you could ever count. It was like being in a > > herd in Africa. This is also where I came out of the wilderness part of > > the refuge and the river became the boundary between state land on the > > left (where oil exploration goes on) and ANWR on the right bank. On the > > state land I began to see many abandoned fuel drums and huge tracks on the > > tundra where cat trains shoot seismic in the winter. The tracks don't go > > away any time soon. I saw abandoned drums on the tundra constantly after a > > while over on the state land. > > > As I crossed the coastal plain I saw many smaller caribou herds and began > > to see lots of birds; geese, ducks, tundra swans, and many strange types > > of birds that I have no idea what they were, probably migrating up from > > Hawaii or Chile to nest. > > > All this time, I saw more and more garbage on the left bank. Most of the > > animals were on the right bank. In this day and age, I would think that > > BP-Amoco, Exxon, and Phillips would go clean all that crap up. > > > I made my way to the delta of the river where it empties into the Beaufort > > Sea, and in a 2:00am lull in the wind paddled a roundabout 10 miles across > > the four mile lagoon to an island that is about 6 miles long. There were > > many small icebergs about thirty feet across. I saw old sod huts that the > > eskimos used to live in on the island, and found that the entire north > > side of the island was still fast against the sea ice which continues to > > somewhere in Russia, I guess. I walked out on it for a ways, and it is > > really rough. One day I watched ringed seals (polar bears staple food) > > sunning on the ice through binoculars. I saw a huge set of polar bear > > tracks around the lagoon side of the island, but they were pretty old. The > > island was just a few miles outside of the ANWR boundary, and Exxon had > > drilled a dry hole on it in the past two years. It was one of the > > filthiest locations I have ever seen in my 15 years working in the oil > > industry. I was really surprised, because Exxon drillsites in the lower 48 > > are usually the cleanest of them all. I was not impressed with what I saw > > of the oil industry in Alaska. > > ======================================================================= > To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com > with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey > ======================================================================= > ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================