Happy 100th Birthday, Jimmy Carter

Turning 100 years old is enough of an achievement for most people. However, when Jimmy Carter passed the century mark on October 1, 2024, it was perhaps his final achievement in a long lifetime full of achievements. Not only was Jimmy Carter our 39th President of the United States, but specific to Alaska, he was also one of the greatest, but largely unacknowledged, conservation figures in history. Former President Carter’s accomplishments in preserving Alaska’s wildlands with the passage of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) in 1980, have certainly elevated him into the conservation pantheon that includes such giants as Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Teddy Roosevelt, Aldo Leopold, and Olaus and Mardy Murie. With the stroke of his pen, Carter created or added to sixteen wildlife refuges, thirteen national parks, two national forests, two national monuments, and twenty-six wild and scenic rivers. These are not just “business as usual” protected lands, but conservation on an unprecedented, ecosystem-sized scale. The land and water legacy left behind by Jimmy Carter through ANILCA is virtually unparalleled in this country or really, anywhere in the world. He gave our planet a marvelous gift for this and future generations that will hopefully keep on giving far into the future.

With his work on behalf of world peace, the elimination of the Guinea worm, and Habitat for Humanity, Jimmy Carter is often characterized as having had a more consequential post-presidency than his four years in the White House, but I disagree. The 104-million acres of Alaska wildlands protected by Mr. Carter’s bold efforts, just like his placement of solar panels on the White House roof 43 years before it was mainstream, are evidence that he saw farther into the future than most American presidents before or since. As accelerating climate change threatens our planet with inexorable sea-level rise, mass extinction, and ecological collapse, Alaska’s public lands and wilderness areas will continue to provide critical benchmarks for science in a rapidly changing environment, space for beleaguered species to migrate, and critical ecological services that all people depend upon. Many of us seem unaware of these services such as carbon sequestration, intact ecosystems, clean water, air and land, wildlife habitat, and the last vestiges of our primordial world that are nearly extinct elsewhere on the planet.

In 1980, after years of congressional debate, President Jimmy Carter signed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, or ANILCA, into law. Often called the most significant land conservation measure in the history of our nation, the statute pro.

Jimmy Carter Library

Jimmy Carter more than doubled the size of the National Park System and it remains the single largest expansion of protected lands in history. The wilderness lands and waters protected by ANILCA are year by year gaining in value in direct relation to their rareness and scarcity. An understanding of Carter’s accomplishments in Alaska have long been appreciated by wilderness preservation champions and hopefully are beginning to seep into the wider public consciousness. As recently as November 2023, former President Carter was honored on by the Alaska Wilderness League with the Mardie Murie Lifetime Achievement Award for his conservation work in the state. Carter’s ANILCA legislation set aside more congressionally designated wilderness than any conservation law before or since. Then-president Carter knew, as Thoreau presciently put it, “In wildness is the preservation of the world.”

Mr. Carter’s ANILCA achievement also protected the vast homelands of Alaska Native people, allowing them space and a land base from which to defend their cultures and way of life. Signing ANILCA in the waning days of his presidency, Carter provided for a new, international model for conservation that invites people to remain on the landscape while simultaneously preserving wild places. Perhaps just as important, Alaska’s ANILCA lands exclude no one, and provide room for all people—a place to roam, to be inspired, to explore and to be free from what Alaska wilderness explorer Bob Marshall called the “clutches of a mechanistic civilization.”

Although many Americans still are not aware of Jimmy Carter’s contribution in Alaska, I am confident future generations will be. He changed the face, fate, and future of Alaska for the better, and I am hopeful that history will thank the man and the president who in life did not receive nearly the conservation accolades due to him for what became his preservation magnum opus. So, until that day arrives, I will say it here. Happy birthday Jimmy Carter and thank you for your vision, your courage, and your humanity and for the conservation legacy you have left for Alaska, the American people, and the world.

Written by Peter Christian

Peter Christian is director of communications for the National Park Service, Alaska Region. He has worked for and lived around Alaska’s national parks since 1994.