<"I doubt if there are 5 people in the world beyond this board who would believe building roads, drilling for oil, building pipelines and maintaining all the above would be GOOD for them critters."

Hi Bowser,

I conducted an unscientific poll here from a bunch of the guys

16 think it's good for the critters
5 think it's bad for em. (and some of them I am certain disagreed to spite me!)

One of the pro pointed out something I hadn't thought of. Wherever man goes and build roads or plants himself - he litters and leaves his waste behind and often out in the road - something some critters find as a veritable smorgasboard.

He pointed out one of the reason so many animals get killed near highways is because they feed on the litter thrown out of car windows.

Another pointed out that wherever man goes to drill oil the environmentalists follow in their wake and some area nearby that wouldn't have been ever noticed - is now declared a sanctuary which the oil company then is coerced to put up funds to preserve species and cough up dough for some enviro-scientists to conduct yearly impact studies.

One said the big pipeline acts as an animal aphrodasiac and spurs population growth. ;-)

Of course this is a conservative bastion and so these folks can't be expected to know anything anyways...

SDAI-Tech1