Conservationists losing fight to save Alaska wildlife refuge from drilling

Washington: Carl Portman remembers watching, heartbroken, from Anchorage in 2005 as a US Senate effort to allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge lost by two votes.

Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski has supported drilling
 in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge throughout her
political career. Her vote may be decisive. 

Now, 12 years later, another effort to open up the reserve to oil and gas drilling is working its way through Congress. And this time, the political winds have shifted.

Portman, now a top official of a pro-drilling group, has seen oil revenue improve the schools, roads and hospitals in Alaska, his home state. He said he was cautiously optimistic about the drilling measure, which is included in a sweeping bill to overhaul the tax code. Environmental activists and their allies in Congress, on the other hand, are on the cusp of forever losing the decades-long political battle over the refuge.

Read Lisa Friedman’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Conservationists losing fight to save Alaska wildlife refuge from drilling.”