WANT SOME EXTRA CREDIT? Well here is your task: Read the following excerpt by Peter Matthiessen. After you do, I want you to research this issue a bit further using the internet. I would like to know what the author is talking about, why this is such a big issue, the PROS of drilling for oil in this region, as well as the CONS. Your writeup should reflect topics in Life Science such as environmental ethics, wildlife conservaton, habitat, and what is best for your children. A good writeup of no less than 100 words will yield you at least 10 extra credit points. I want to hear opinions from the heart. I want students to show me that they care about more than just basketball, silly rumors, and stupid TV shows. Lets start with this...

"Wild northern Alaska is one of the last places on earth where a human being can kneel down and drink from a wild stream without being measurably more poisoned or polluted than before; its heart and essence is the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in the remote northeast corner of the state, the earth's last sanctuary of the great Ice Age fauna that includes all three North American bears, gray wolves and wolverines, musk ox, moose, and, in the summer, the Porcupine River herd of caribou, 120,000 strong. Everywhere fly sandhill cranes and seabirds, myriad waterfowl and shorebirds, eagles, hawks, owls, shrikes and larks and longspurs, as well as a sprinkling of far-flung birds that migrate to the Arctic slope to breed and nest from every continent on earth. Yet we Americans, its caretakers, are still debating whether or not to destroy this precious place by turning it over to the oil industry for development."

The rest of the article can be found here. Please submit your response to me before the end of the marking period.