Teshekpuk Overview

NASA's Earth Observatory gives this God's-eye view of Teshekpuk Lake on Alaska's North Slope. Foiled in their plan to drill the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the Bush administration gave Teshekpuk to Big Oil as a consolation prize. The lake-dotted tundra is prime habitat for geese and other waterfowl, not to mention caribou, and is considered so important, biologically speaking, that even Reagan's infamously anti-environment Interior Secretary James Watt felt it deserved federal protection. Not so the Bush administration. The Sierra Club has joined other environmental groups in suing to halt drilling.