"Who gives a hoot about habitat?"

"When we try to save species like the antelope we generally do so by setting aside more islands, national parks. A recent study by the ecologist William D. Newmark found that in the United States, fourteen western national parks are too small to save all the mammals that once lived there. The smallest reserve in Newmarks study, Bryce Canyon, 144 square kilometers, has already lost more than a third of its mammal species. Yosemite, at 2083 square kilometers, had lost a quarter of its species even before the fires of the summer of 1988."

"Parks this size are supposed to be arks. They are meant to carry the nation's wildlife, including grizzly bears and antelope, through the next millennium and beyond. But it is now clear that very few parks on earth are really large enough for the purpose. In the American West, only the very largest assemblage of contiguous parks, a constellation of preserves that Newmark calls Kootenay-Banf-Jasper-Yoho, will do the job. Kootenay-Banf-Jasper-Yoho is 20,736 square kilometers, slightly larger than the state of New Jersey. According to Newmark, it has not lost any mammals, yet."

If the giant parks of the West are too small, what about the parks of the East, or the vest-pocket parks in Europe? Creatures that depend upon those arks may not last the next century, much less the next millennium. 'We thought we could put a wall around nature and preserve it,' says one ecologist. 'But we were wrong.'"

Jonathan Weiner, The Next One Hundred Years, 1990.

Department of the Interior
Review of Potential Oil and Gas Development
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge 1002 Area
http://www.doi.gov/arctic/

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
"Conserving the Nature of America"
http://www.fws.gov/

Information on the ecology of ANWR and energy related issues.
http://www.ucsusa.org/environment/bio.anwr.update.html

The United States president is flexing his muscle. The ANWR issue boils down to a power play in which he intends to once and for all show that the American government has zero regard for ecology. The recoverable oil amounts to a 152 day supply spread out over fifty years. The benefit in oil is negligible while the benefit of demonstrating political power is maximal.

" The Current Energy Crisis
Americans consume 25 percent of the world's petroleum but possess only two percent of the world's supply. In 2000, the United States imported 54 percent of its oil products, sending nearly $200,000 overseas each minute. Depending so heavily on energy imports leaves Americans vulnerable to oil's price volatility. After the energy crisis of the 1970s, most areas of the economy reduced their reliance on oil substantially. Today, only two to three percent of US electricity is generated from oil. Thus oil from ANWR would have virtually no impact on US electricity-generation issues, including California's electricity crisis.
Estimates about ANWR's oil potential vary widely, although they almost all use the same study from the US Geological Survey. Using data compiled in 1998, the USGS study estimated that only 3.2 billion to 6.3 billion barrels would be "economically recoverable" from the refuge over the 50-year life of the oil field (USGS Fact Sheet 1998). This 3.2 to 6.3 billion barrels represents a mere six- to eight-month national supply. Or put another way, 3.2 billion barrels is only enough oil to fuel the US economy for seven months (Energy Information Administration, 2000). [Note: Market prices, of course, determine the amount of economically recoverable oil, which is defined in the USGS report as "That part of the technically recoverable resource for which the costs of discovery, development, and production, including a return to capital, can be recovered at a given well-head price" (USGS 1999).]
On the other hand, proponents of drilling claim that the ANWR recoverable amount is in the 10 to 16 billion barrels range. The USGS, however, calculated only a five percent chance that there are actually 16 billion barrels in the coastal plain and surrounding area; and only a portion of that oil -- however much it actually is -- could be recovered economically (USGS 1999). Also to be considered is the reality that even if ANWR were opened to drilling immediately, the oil would not reach refineries for another 10 years, and it would take approximately 15 more years before the region reached maximum production levels (EIA 2000). Even then, over its 50-year lifespan, ANWR would contribute less than one percent of the oil this country will consume.
Furthermore, many drilling proponents try to downplay the impacts by stating that only 2,000 acres will be affected -- yet this acreage is spread over 35 discrete sites on the coastal plain, requiring roadbuilding and pipeline construction between the sites and between ANWR and Prudhoe Bay facilities (USGS 1999; USFWS 2001)."
http://www.ucsusa.org/environment/bio.anwr.update.html

Scientists for a Sustainable Energy Future in, An Open Letter to the American People,May 18, 2001, described the opening of ANWR this way;

Opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration will not improve our energy security, nor will it have any impact on the price of gasoline. The economically recoverable amount of oil in the Refuge is just 152 days of supply for the nation. More importantly, if we started drilling in the Refuge today, the Department of Energy projects that by 2020 it could supply 1.4 million barrels per day. By then world oil production will be in the range of 100 million barrels per day. The Refuge would amount to about 1 percent of global oil supply, and thus have a trivial influence on the ability of oil exporters to influence prices.

Deer, Antelope, Moose, Elk Composite Population Graph

This little graph shows the increase in human numbers in the last few thousand years. In this case, the distance from 1,000 million to 7,600 million is 7.6 times the distance from zero to 1,000 million. 7.6 billion is demographers' mid projection. Graph curve is from Learning Tools, KQED TV, San Francisco, a PBS educational tv station. Overpopulation denialists right and left have asked about the source, so now you know. The leader of the Task Force on Amphibian Decline living in Britain objected calling the graph extreme and, "off the scale." But it isn't. It is simply demographer's mid projection.

Usually when such a graph is drawn, a short time scale is used. But an evolutionarily significant time scale can more easily show relevant amounts of increase per unit of time.

The distance from 1,000 million to 7,600 million is 7.6 times the distance from zero to 1,000 million. The graph is an accurate representation.

Source:
KQED, a PBS program available on video tape to eligible schools and non-profit groups. 60 minutes. To Order: Call Films for the Humanities, 1.800.257.5126
http://www.pbs.org/kqed/population_bomb/hope/teacher.html
Some Buddycom members have been watching and enjoying KQED since the sixties. Some have even been charter members of the station. Now you can see why. And you can get some idea of why the rightists wanted to use leaner budgets after tax cuts as a means of defunding the PBS.
Fraid not, jellybean.
Get back to Kansas where evolutionary time need not be considered. The state legislature has legally sactioned ignorance.

naturalsciences.sdsu.edu/classes/lab2.7/lab2.7.html

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