Tom Udall: “Thank you, Madam President, for the recognition. Madam President, today I wish to talk a little bit about something very…”

“Thank you, Madam President, for the recognition. Madam President, today I wish to talk a little bit about something very obscure that is buried in this budget bill, but it is something that is very, very important to me. First, before I talk about the specific policy issues, I just want to talk about a personal exploration I had. This is with regard to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and this special area up here called the 1002 area. I had the opportunity in the 1980s to take a raft trip down across this Arctic Coastal Plain and down to the sea, and part of the reason was that many of the Alaska Senators at the time used to say: If you are going to make policy in Alaska, you ought to see that part of Alaska. So I took the opportunity to see it. I took a raft trip down a river called the Hula Hula River, which flows out of the Brooks Range, a large mountain range, into the Beaufort Sea. I can say that from my personal experience, this is one of the wildest, most magnificent places on the Earth. I would like to talk a little bit about the creatures and critters we saw there. We saw the beginning of the caribou migration, which occurs over in Canada to this area in Alaska, where they calf on the 1002 area. It is one of the biggest migrations in the world of a mammal species. We saw grizzly bears. One grizzly bear actually came into our camp, and we had to retreat and watch whatever it was going to do until it moved along. We saw musk oxen. We saw polar bears.…”