Is there wildlife in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge?

It’s called the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. There’s gotta be wildlife, right?

Wrong, says former U.S. Rep. Dave Weldon, the Republican newcomer in the U.S. Senate race in Florida. Weldon is vying with several candidates, including U.S. Rep. Connie Mack, to win the Republican nomination and run against incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson in November.

One way Weldon really breaks from Nelson, he said, is he wants to drill for oil in the refuge to lessen dependence on foreign sources. In an interview on Central Florida News 13’s Political Connections show, Weldon emphatically said there is no wildlife in the refuge.

“We should be drilling up there,” he said. “I don’t know why Democrats have been opposing that for years. I have been up there. There’s a ton of oil up there, and there’s no wildlife. We drill in something like 15 wildlife refuges in the lower 48. I just don’t understand why Democrats like Bill Nelson don’t want to drill up there.”

Really? No wildlife? We put that the Truth-O-Meter and it came back Pants on Fire.