NEWS
May 9, 2001
THE DECISION to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge will have an enormous impact on the residents of Alaska -- and on that fragile wilderness environment. Oil from Alaska's North Slope has transformed the lives of people living in that remote, vast state, as The Sun's Marego Athans reported in the series "Wilds vs. Wealth" that concludes today. Oil profits fund schools, health clinics, satellite TV and air transportation links in long-neglected, isolated villages. Oil provides a yearly $2,000 check for residents, pays 80 percent of the state budget, and lets Alaskans forgo state income and sales taxes.
NEWS
By TOM PELTON and TOM PELTON,SUN REPORTER | February 28, 2006
Local officials have told the developer of a proposed resort and conference center near the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge to modify his plans, a move that is expected to delay the project for several months. The Cambridge City Council had been scheduled to vote on the final plan for the 3,200-home subdivision last night. But the vote has been put off while the developer, Duane E.E. Zentgraf, prepares a redesign that moves about 180 homes so they are at least 1,000 feet from the Little Blackwater River, said Anne Roane, city planner.
NEWS
November 24, 2000
IT'S AN EASY choice for the departing president: Preserve America's last great wilderness in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or let it be laid to waste for a six-month supply of oil. Under repeated siege from oil companies clamoring to drill in this unique coastal plain -- as they may already do in the other 95 percent of Alaska's North Slope -- the northeast corner of this refuge deserves immediate, permanent protection as a national monument....
NEWS
By TOM PELTON and TOM PELTON,SUN REPORTER | January 27, 2006
Cambridge -- The Chesapeake Bay Foundation joined local residents yesterday in calling on the governor to intervene and stop a 3,200-home subdivision planned on the doorstep of the Chesapeake region's largest wildlife refuge. William C. Baker, president of the environmental group, said it is "ironic and cynical" for the Blackwater Resort project to hijack the name of the nearby Blackwater Wildlife Refuge that would be harmed by the suburban sprawl. "There comes a time when you have to draw a line in the sand, and say, `No not here,'" Baker said, standing in front of the 1,080 acres of farms and wetland that would be consumed.
NEWS
By Tom Pelton and Tom Pelton,sun reporter | October 4, 2006
As a state commission considers voting today on whether to allow a 2,700-home golf resort near Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, it must weigh whether state law prohibits such intense development in an area surrounded by protected wetlands and farms. But even as debate over the $1 billion Blackwater Resort continues, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. - whose administration had called approval of the project a mostly local decision - is studying requests to preserve some of the land with state money, an aide said yesterday.
NEWS
By John A. Morris and John A. Morris,Staff writer | September 15, 1991
Fierce four-inch talons grip a perch at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center.As visitors pass the iron-girded cage, Moose the bald eagle turns away disinterestedly.Twenty-five years ago, a young boy captured her near Moosehorn National Wildlife Refuge in Maine. Today, she is all that remains of the Patuxent center's efforts to save the bald eagle.The center's research solved the mystery of DDT, a pesticide that decimated eagle populations two decades ago, and has led to the resurgence of a species once threatened with extinction.