LETTER: There actually is a lot in Alaska

Dear Editor,

Your piece on Congressman Jim Hansen’s speech gave your readers some Republican spin on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge oil dispute.

To attempt to defuse concern about wildlife he said, “There are very few things in that part of Alaska.”

As a wildlife professor who has floated a river through this area and studied its wildlife, I can report that about 130,000 caribou move onto the coastal plain, graze there and females give birth to some 20 to 30,000 calves.

The refuge’s coastal plain hosts more than 140 species of birds including snow geese, three species of loons and more than two dozen land mammals and eight marine mammals.

Nearly 500 scientists urged President Bush to support permanent protection of the area. “Few things” indeed.

Barrie Gilbert