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Letter: Arctic refuge part of Earth’s delicate balance

Wednesday, April 6, 2005 | 9:37 a.m.

I would like to remind Vicki Hilden, who in her April 4 letter supported drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife, that the refuge is just that -- a refuge. It's for the preservation of wildlife.

I cannot count how many folks, including supposedly intelligent members of Congress, continue to use her reasoning as an excuse for drilling in this area.

"It's not as if these frigid sites are popular tourist attractions," Hilden wrote. "Most people see Alaska from a cruise ship and structured tours." Well, guess what? It's a wildlife refuge, not a tourist refuge!

Perhaps there are places on this planet that should be set aside for no human consumption of any kind, be it sightseeing, resource stripping or "wildlife population management." Let us try to remember that we symbiotically share this planet on a very basic physical level with life of all levels. This is the web-of-life that we all supposedly learned about in elementary school.

When attitudes like Hilden's abound, it is not at all difficult to imagine an Earth that is exponentially nearing it's carrying capacity, as we continue to eliminate more links in the chain that holds us all so delicately together.

TERESA KROLAK-OWENS

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