Outdoors

Arctic waters nurture wildlife

Thirsty, I turned off the hot
sidewalk with a plethora of win-
dow dressings, all importuning me
to buy their wares at SO per cent
off, and slid onto a stool in a local
restaurant.

“Coffee, please. I take only the
white stuff.”

Not that a little sweetening
might have been in order. I was
still mulling over a program I’d
seen the night before. A program
produced in California clarifying
that State*s crying need for more
water, together with an integrated
proposal to solve the pressing
problem. :

Strangely, as though listening in
on my preoccupation with the
conundrum, the bloke on the next
stool broke in.

~ Happen to see the program last
night on the acute water shortage
in California and Arizona?”

I glanced aside at a pair of
husky, hairy fore-arms, bipodwise
supporting a mug to a leather-red
mouth surrounded with a couple
of weeks of black stubble inter-
spersed with silver.

A dark grease-stained cap was
pushed back on a smooth florid
forehead.

“Yeah. Helluva a note, isn’t it?”’

“For them, sure. But what a
whale of an opportunity for us!”

“An opportunity?”

“You bet. We've got the stuff
they want, so all we have to do is
make a deal. But we’ve gotta play
teal poker this time. Who would
have thought that water’d be

money in the bank? Big money?”

se Sees

TUNDRA SWANS IN ARCTIC WATERS

“So you’d sell ’er, eh?”

~ Of course! It isn’t doing us any
good. Tie all those rivers together
and flush them down the Rocky
Mountain Trench. Like the fellah
said.”
“That would play hell with our

ecology. In a thousand ways!
You’re not serious?”

“Damn tight! Lookut, an awful
lot of that water is going down the
drain; into the Arctic Ocean, don’t
you see? What good is that? Run
‘er south where it will produce
something.”

“It's producing something now.
Those waters are very rich in
nutrients. Something like all that
mud that used to be washed down
the Nile before they built the
Aswan Dam. That mud enriched
the land down towards the head-
waters and nourished a whole
thriving civilization. Now, she’s a
dying land.”

“But there isn’t much of a

Lt you're

civilization in the Arctic. All that
stuff is wasted, don’t you see?”

“No, I don’t see. Those
nutrients become essential links in
the food chains of untold numbers
of animals.”

“For instance?”

“Well what do you suppose
supports the beluga whales, Arctic
foxes, walruses, Peary caribou,
Arctic char, Arctic hares, seals,
muskoxen, polar bears, tundra
wolves, ptarmigan and the millions
of migrants and seabirds that breed
there? Shut off the major source of
nutrients and what have you got?”

“Come off it. You’re talking
about birds and animals and fish!
What about people?”

“The fellow on the air did talk
about diverting most of those riv-
ers running into the oceans from
B.C, the Yukon and even Alaska
as well, remember?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, what would happen to
our salmon industry? With no
livers in which they could
spawn?”

“Listen, Buster,” the bloke said.
“If it’s a choice between stinking
fish, lousy polar bears and people,
I'll take people every time!”

“Tf they were all like you. I’d
leave *em for sure,” I fired back.

My ‘pick-me-up’ cup of coffee
turned bitter as gall as I tned to
swallow the last drop:

*xUPHOLSTERY
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