Alaskan Refuge

Wildlife politics

President Bill Clinton has threatened to veto the GOP’s 1996 budget plan unless Republicans remove a provision to open the unique coastal plain of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas exploration.

The drilling legislation has been inserted into the budget reconciliation bill. The House and Senate will consider the drilling legislation in September.

Interior Department solicitor John Leshy said the Clinton administration objects to placing the highly contested assault on arctic wildlife in the “protective cocoon of a budget bill.”

Oil companies have long sought to overturn the 35-year-old ban, arguing that the nation needs the oil.

In a poll commissioned by The Wilderness Society, 70 percent of Americans were found to oppose drilling in ANWR.

Survey respondents said they favor protection of the refuge even if leasing the area to oil companies might produce revenue that could be applied to the federal budget deficit.

The poll also found that 74 percent of the public opposes selling public land to reduce the deficit and 77 percent consider protecting all national parks “very important.”

, DataTimes