Whenever someone tells me drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or logging or mining some other piece of what few pristine places we have left, can't possibly hurt, I think of all the stories like this one about the demise (and recovery, thankfully) of an English butterfly I've read over the years.
The crux:
"It turns out that, like many butterflies, the large blue tricks local ants into rearing its young caterpillars. But unlike other species, the large blue relies upon a specific red ant, Myrmica sabuletiI, for its nanny services. Because of that unique relationship, the butterfly's population started to crash when that ant species declined.
"The ants ran into trouble when farmers stopped grazing their livestock as they had for generations and a virus ravaged the population of wild rabbits. Grasses grew too long, causing soil temperatures to drop by a few degrees. That was just cold enough to make the area inhospitable to the ants, and that hurt the butterflies."
And industrial-scale operations won't have a negative impact on an ecosystem as tenuous and delicate as the tundra? If you buy that, Bush, Cheney, Sarah and the rest of their totally irresponsible, corporate-backed ilk have one they'd like to tell you--again--about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the need to go to war there.
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