Canada said Thursday that a U.S. plan to drill for oil in an Alaskan wildlife refuge was "a big mistake" and vowed to keep pressuring Washington to scrap the idea.
Canada said Thursday that a U.S. plan to drill for oil in an Alaskan wildlife refuge was "a big mistake" and vowed to keep pressuring Washington to scrap the idea.
Ottawa says drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in northeast Alaska would ruin the calving ground of the Porcupine caribou herd, on which native Gwich'in Indians in Alaska and Canada have depended on for thousands of years.
President Bush says drilling in ANWR would help reduce reliance on imports of foreign oil. The Senate, which shelved an earlier drilling proposal two years ago, is due to vote on the plan next week.
"We think it's a big mistake and we will continue to pressure (Washington) so that it should not happen," Canada's environment minister, Stephane Dion, told Reuters.
Ottawa, which says both countries should provide permanent protection for wildlife populations that straddle the border, has banned development in areas frequented by the Porcupine herd on the Canadian side of the border.
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"We must be sure the caribou are protected. It's a very frail ecosystem there. I'll meet my (U.S.) counterpart pretty soon and will continue to look at that very carefully," Dion said.
ANWR -- which covers 19 million acres (7.7 million hectares) and is also home to polar bears and 160 species of migratory birds -- is estimated to contain 10 billion to 16 billion barrels of crude.
The Bush plan would open 1.5 million acres on Alaska's north coast for exploration, although only 2,000 acres could be under development at any given time.
Dion said that when he goes to Washington he will also raise plans by North Dakota to divert waters from Devil's Lake into the Red River, which runs north from the U.S. state into the central Canadian province of Manitoba.
Authorities in Manitoba fear the Devil's Lake water could be polluted and contain alien species. They say the diversion plan has the potential to harm the Red River, which flows into Lake Winnipeg -- one of the world's largest fresh water lakes.
"Devil's Lake ... is something I want to put a lot of pressure on to be sure it will not happen. The project is almost 80 percent completed and it's threatening the ecosystem of the 10th largest fresh water lake on Earth and a key one for Manitoba and the whole of Canada," Dion said.
"So these are the kinds of issues we need to look at carefully and tell the United States that they should be respectful of their own ecosystem and our ecosystem."
Source: Reuters
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