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Environmentalists have hailed recent announcements by the US Interior Department that purport to protect wildlife, but both of these announcements carry with them asterisks that should give greens pause. On Friday, the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management announced that some 340 square miles of ecologically sensitive land in the northeast section of Alaska's National Petroleum Reserve will be off limits to drilling.

Group is sponsored by the Union of Concerned Scientists

One man in the classroom earned more than $100,000 framing tract homes during the building heyday. Another installed pools and piloted a backhoe. Behind him sat a young father who made a good living swinging a hammer in southern Utah. But that was before construction jobs vanished like a fast-moving dust storm in this blustery high desert. Hard times have brought them to a classroom in Kern County, about 120 miles northeast of Los Angeles, to learn a different trade. Tonight's lesson: how to avoid death and dismemberment. This is Wind Technology Boot Camp at Cerro Coso Community College, where eight weeks of study and $1,000 in tuition might lead to a job repairing mammoth wind turbines sprouting up across the nation.

The article "Renewable energy potential" (Work&Money, Editor's Choice, June 7) provided interesting and useful information. Now it is time to begin to use more renewable energy in North Carolina. One of our electric utility companies should develop a pilot project in one of the high-wind areas off the North Carolina coast. This energy could be used to provide some power to Elizabeth City, Manteo or any other city located on the northern part of our coast. Our electric utility companies have many intelligent engineers who could use new technology to build wind turbines that can withstand strong storms. If other states in the Northeast can build wind farms off their coasts, then North Carolina can surely do the same.