A refuge preserved.

Byline: The Register-Guard

It's both fitting and ironic that the U.S. Senate on Wednesday blocked the Bush administration's latest attempt to allow oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge at the same time the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the national wildlife refuge system that it is charged with managing and protecting.

Senate Democrats, with help from several key Republicans, including Oregon Sen. Gordon Smith, succeeded in stripping from a massive federal appropriations bill a provision that would have cleared the way for oil companies to begin drilling in the 19 million-acre Alaskan refuge.

Opportunistic Republican lawmakers attempted to capitalize on the prospects of imminent war with Iraq and possible short-term uncertainty over future Persian Gulf oil supplies. The true measure of their audacity was revealed after the defeat by their immediate pledge to return soon with yet another refuge drilling measure.

They should think again.

While the Bush administration and its minions in Congress argue that the refuge may hold as much as 16 billion barrels of oil, a majority in the Senate has sided - once again - with those who argue that drilling would disrupt one of America's last truly wild places, a pristine habitat for caribou and other wildlife. And it would do so without significantly increasing U.S. oil supplies and without producing even one drop of oil to refineries for at least six to eight years at the earliest.

Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, and other drilling supporters argued that technological developments and governmental restrictions would protect the refuge's wildlife. They noted that the "footprint" created by the oil wells would consume less than 2,000 acres, but failed to point out that those acres would be scattered over 1.5 million acres of sensitive coastal tundra, disrupting the migratory patterns of birds, the calving grounds of the region's Porcupine caribou and the winter refuge of polar bears.

If the refuge's modest oil reserves must eventually be tapped, they should be left for future generations of Americans who could face oil shortages of a magnitude that we can hardly imagine. How much more will the refuge's oil be worth, both in terms of dollars and national security, if it's needed 30 or 50 years from now?

It would be better, of course, if the refuge is allowed to remain intact, pristine and undisturbed for our children and grandchildren - and for their offspring, as well. That's the sort of long-term protection that Theodore Roosevelt had in mind when he created the first refuge, Pelican Island, in Florida, exactly 100 years ago this month.