"For the past 80 years, "biological hot spots" in the NPR-A [Northeast National Petroleum Reserve, Alaska] have been off limits to oil drilling and other development, granted special protection by the federal government. But now the Bush administration, with its no-holds-barred push for oil production, is fast-tracking new oil fields throughout Alaska's North Slope, the cumulative environmental consequences be damned. If the administration has its way, its allies in the oil industry could soon displace the caribou and other wildlife around Nuiqsut -- and with it, alter a way of life that has survived among the Eskimos for more than 8,000 years."