From Grist Magazine [log in to unmask]  10/22/01

NORTON:  HERE'S A WHOOPS
An on-going battle over proposed oil drilling in the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge took an ugly turn late last week when news surfaced
that Interior Secretary Gale Norton had distorted government data
about the impact of drilling on caribou populations.  In a July
letter to the Senate committee that had requested the data, Norton
left out some statistics suggesting that caribou could be adversely
affected, while including information that could be used to support
drilling in the Arctic refuge.  Furthermore, Norton inaccurately
stated that caribou calving has been concentrated outside of the
proposed drilling area for 11 of the last 18 years, when the opposite
is true.  Speaking Friday at a conference for environmental
journalists held in Portland, Ore., Norton apologized for that error
but did not address the other instances of skewed data.

straight to the source:  Washington Post, Michael Grunwald, 19 Oct 2001
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18216-2001Oct18.html>

straight to the source:  Los Angeles Times, Deborah Schoch and
Kenneth Weiss, 20 Oct 2001
<http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-102001norton.story>

do good:  Take action to save the Arctic Refuge
<http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/dogood/mining.asp?source=daily#arctic>