December 2001 - Because of BIA's mishandling of Indian trust funds, the federal court has ordered that all websites under the control of DOI be closed down. This included the USFWS Arctic Refuge website. As of 12/26/01 the website is still down. If you would like to see what was there, you can visit my archive of the FWS Arctic Refuge website at:
http://www.mapcruzin.com/arctic_refuge/.
Update on Arctic Wildlife Refuge website censorship issue
Here is some followup on Ian Thomas and the censored arctic
refuge maps. If you are coming in at the middle of this discussion,
Ian Thomas's email is located at: http://www.mapcruzin.com/ian_email.htm.
It is peculiar that the
website he got the caribou map from, http://www.r7.fws.gov/nwr/arctic/pchmap2.html is now "down" along
with at least a couple of other US Fish and Wildlife (FWS)
websites including:
http://alaska.fws.gov/nwr/arctic/maps1.html
http://marinemammals.alaska.fws.gov/nwr/arctic/snowg.html
They all return the following:
----------
HTTP Error 403
403.9 Access Forbidden: Too many users are connected
This error can be caused if the Web server is busy and cannot
process your request due to heavy traffic. Please try to connect
again later.
Please contact the Web server's administrator if the problem
persists.
---------
Seems odd that there would be too many visitors over a weekend.
It's especially odd since the server that the FWS main page points
to, http://arctic.fws.gov/ does work and looks to be the same and
even includes the map in question at: http://arctic.fws.gov/pchmap2.html
Two PDF documents were not obtainable through the links posted
on sites. The links were broken. The first, issues1.pdf, I did find by
trying different variants of the given link. Interestingly, it is quite
different than the web version found at http://arctic.fws.gov/issues1.html. The web version does speak to
the harm that would come to the refuge from oil exploration and
production but it is not near as strong as the unlinked PDF which
says...
"Oil and gas exploration and development in the Refuge would
permanently and irreversibly:
- Destroy the unique wildland values of a world-class natural area.
- Disrupt ecological and evolutionary processes in one of the most
pristine conservation areas in the North American arctic.
- Diminish the Refuge's scientific values as a benchmark for
understanding these processes.
- Damage the biological and ecological integrity of the entire
Refuge." --- end of quote ---
I'm in the process of uploading and linking this PDF now. Beware,
it is a large 10MB file. When I've completed the task you can find
a link at http://www.mapcruzin.com/stop_web_censorship.htm.
The second file, 1987 Coastal Plain Report and LEIS (1987leis.pdf),
is also incorrectly linked and I have not been able to locate it. If
anyone knows where this document might be found please let me
know.
Several days ago I archived: http://www.r7.fws.gov/nwr/arctic/arctic.html. When it went down I
put my archive online at http://www.mapcruzin.com/arctic_refuge/.
It would be worth comparing this to the version that now exists on
the FWS website at http://arctic.fws.gov/ . It is odd that the
version mentioned by Ian Thomas dissapeared quite quickly.
Note: Ian's original email can be found at:
http://www.mapcruzin.com/ian_email.htm
Best,
Mike
