WILDLIFE UNIT PROPOSES ALASKA REFUGE OIL STUDY
The National Wildlife Federation 
rejected an Interior Department draft plan to open wilderness
lands in Northern Alaska to oil and gas exploration.
    The federation, the nation's largest conservation group,
said further study was needed to assess any possible damage
that development might have on the wildlife in the area, the
coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
    Jay Hair, the federation's executive vice president, called
the Interior's research into the effects of development "so
fundamentally flawed that it provides little or no basis on
which to make a public policy decision."
    Hair called the department's proposal a "reflection of a
largely political decision," adding "we have no confidence in
Interior to represent the broad public interest in this area."
    Interior wants to open the 1.5 million acre coastal plain
to oil and gas exploration, but it said only with tough 
safeguards to protect the area's caribou and musk-oxen.
    It said a preliminary survey showed the region could hold
billions of barrels of oil and gas, and that its potential as
an energy resource would never be known without exploration.
    Interior said oil on the coastal plain could match the 10
billion barrels found at Prudhoe Bay, just west of the plain.
    Under existing law, Congress must agree to oil and gas
exploration, and if it does not act, the land will remain a
wildlife refuge protected from commercial development.
    Hair said Interior's report failed to stress the
probability that finding recoverable oil is only 19 pct.
    He said Interior's study also failed to weigh oil, gas,
fish and wildlife information the State of Alaska had gathered
nor had the department consulted the Environmental Protection
Agency on the possible effects of exploration.
    The federation, in letters to Congressmen, proposed that a
nine-member commission be set up to study all aspects of the
issue and report back to Congress in about two years.
    Hair said the federation was not opposed to the possible
exploration of oil, only that Interior's study was inadquate to
make a sound judgement.
    Congressional observers said that at present there was
little sentiment in Congress to open the wildlife area for
commercial exploitation dispite increasing concern that the
United States is becoming overly dependent on foreign oil.
 reuter
