Musk oxen put up a defensive ring around their young in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
See the Alaska Wildlife Refuge Targeted for Drilling by Tax Plan
A controversial provision in a major bill may have significant impact on wildlife. Here's how.
The U.S. Senate passed a sweeping, $1.4 trillion tax bill Friday, sending it to a reconcillation process with the House, which passed a similar bill earlier this fall. In all the sometimes heated discussion of tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy and the potential impact on lower income brackets, one issue included in the bill has particularly stirred angst among conservationists: a proposal to allow drilling for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).
And although boosters of drilling there have long tried to cast the vast region in northeastern Alaska as a virtual frozen desert, the wilderness actually teems with life, scientists say, as the photos above suggest. More than 200 species make the refuge home,
