Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

Well I tried to add another Day onto my Haida Gwaii post, but my comp crashed. If you've benr eading along so far, you'd remember me mentioning the movies I saw at UNBC on the proposed oil drilling site within the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska that may severely hurt the Porcupine Caribou (Porcupine comes from the name of a river they migrate near) and the Gwich'in people in the Yukon that rely on the Caribou for a large portion of their diet. This is a link to a petition that PM Paul Martin has read and seems to be gaining momentum. The site claims to have over 70,000 signatures so far. Some may say that as Canadians, we really have no input, since this is happening on US soil, but this isn't entirely true, because the Gwich'in people that rely on the Caribou live in the Yukon and the caribou herd is evenly spread between Alaska and the Yukon, it's only when they move to their calving grounds do they congregate solely on US soil. By all means, look into the topic yourself, there's all sorts of info out there. Bush says they can do the drilling in a way that will have little environmental impact, whereas the other side says that there's no way they could carry out the drilling without massive repercussions. Quite polar views (pun!). Personally, I've seen the footage and we're not talking about drilling a small hole with a hand tool, the machines (and the noise and pollution created by them ) is no small matter. Plus they'd have to create roads to get up there. We're talking about a gigantic project here and if the US wasn't so desperate for oil, they probably wouldn't bother. That's another thing that's disputed - how much oil will they actually find? anyways, take a look at the facts for yourself and decide if you wanna sign the petition.