Chapter 12:
Decision in Alaska
If you think that Alaska is a long way to go for a
national park, so was Yellowstone in 1872. Now Yellowstone is
irreplaceable. So is Alaska and so are its unspoiled wild-lands and
magnificent wildlife.
Alaska Coalition brochure, 1977
Our decisions on the designation of Alaska lands for
conservation will shape the Nation's future as surely as our decisions
on questions of energy, taxes, or the national budget. . . . In making
that determination, we are confronting probably for the last time an
opportunity which we have missed so many times before as our Nation's
civilization has spread from coast to coast and border to border.
John E. Seiberling, 1977
Alaska is more than an environmental treasure, it is
a resource storehouse.
Don Young, 1977
Born of romanticism and cultural nationalism, the
first great national parks of the United States were clearly the result
of nineteenth-century perceptions of the American landscape. Outside of
the continental United States, only Alaska offered preservationists of
the twentieth century one final opportunity to have national parks in
keeping with the principles of biological management. In
preservationists' own words, Alaska was "our last chance to do it
right," to design national parks around entire watersheds, animal
migration routes, and similar ecological rather than political
boundaries. [1] "This will require the
largest possible blocks of land to be set aside as national-interest
lands," wrote Peggy Wayburn, arguing the case for expansive parks on
behalf of the Sierra Club: "This alone can prevent the loss of perhaps
the greatest remaining wildlife, wilderness, and scenic resources on
earth." [2]
Even the largest national parks in the lower
forty-eight states, among them Yellowstone, Yosemite, and the
Everglades, were but pieces of far larger biological wholes. Alaska, in
contrast, offered the best of both the monumental and the biological in
nature. Scenically, its mountains, glaciers, and volcanic areas were
unsurpassed on the North American continent, In other words,
preservationists need not speak against their own traditions in their
quest for Alaskan parks. More importantly, however, Alaska's vastness
and near complete ownership by the federal government made the
realization of the biological ends in national park management no less
attainable. At least, preservationists had good reason to be optimistic
at the outset of their campaign for parklands in the forty-ninth
state.
In Alaska, as elsewhere in the United States,
organized opposition to the expansion of the national park system came
from a wide variety of resource interests. For industrialists, Alaska's
importance lay beyond its role as the last great refuge for plants and
animals. Instead, the nation's last major repository for timber,
minerals, oil, natural gas, fresh water, and hydroelectric power seemed
to be at stake. "I think we are all acutely aware," noted John H.
LaGrange, representing the Kennecott Copper Corporation, "that our
Nation and, indeed the world, is passing from an era of surplus to an
era of shortage in many mineral and energy commodities." New national
parks in Alaska, it followed, again should be restricted to monumental
topography, areas rich in scenery but poor from the standpoint of
natural resources, "National park and critical habitat withdrawals
should not contain more than 15 million acres," LaGrange argued.
Otherwise national parks would conflict with the nation's pressing need
to find more oil and, in the meantime, to exploit its vast deposits of
coal and other minerals, Alaska had all of those resources in abundance.
Unfortunately, between 40 and 80 percent of the richest copper deposits
alone were located in areas where preservationists wanted to establish
national parks. [3]
For preservationists, the opposition of resource
interests to the establishment of national parksas typified by
LaGrange's remarkswas nothing new. As preservationists soon
discovered, the problem in Alaska was the tendency of the resource issue
to overlap the question of Native American rights. Unlike the
continental United States, where Indians had been forced onto
reservations outside the national parks long before the parks themselves
had been created, Alaska was still largely inhabited by groups of native
peoples. In Alaska, the creation of national parks could not be divorced
from the issue of civil rights. Drawing the boundaries of each new park
demanded simultaneous respect for native traditions, cultures, and means
of subsistencecustoms deeply intertwined with national park lands.
"If we are to err," argued Elvis J. Stahin, president of the National
Audubon Society, "let us not err on the side of destroying a truly
unique culture." [4]
Indeed, it was almost as if the national park idea
had come back full circle to 1832 and George Catlin's plea for "a
nation's Park, containing man and beast, in all the wild and
freshness of their nature's beauty!" On the plains of South Dakota, the
artist had called for precisely the kind of sensitivity that planning
for the Alaskan parks demanded if the right of Native Americans to
reside on their ancestral hunting grounds was also to be protected. Of
course, his perspective was as much a product of the period's
romanticism as it was evidence of embryonic concern in the United States
for the rights of native peoples. For Catlin, preserving the Indians of
the plains added charm to the landscape at the same time it advanced the
morality of American culture. Alaska was the final opportunity not only
to establish national parks with biological boundaries but to create
parks that did notas Catlin himself would have opposeddrive
out or exclude native cultures in the process. [5]
With the establishment of Yellowstone National Park
in 1872, Catlin's revolutionary point of view was rejected in favor of
the strict protection of monumental scenery. By preservation was meant
to protect landscapes, not to preserve the historical relationships
between landscapes and people. Not until the 1960s was the policy
of protecting natural features in the national parks exclusive of
natural processes widely criticized. Biologists at last fully
acknowledged the role of Native Americans in changing park landscapes
through the use of fire. The Alaska lands issue also drew attention to
the fact that native peoples throughout North America had long exerted
great influence on the biological composition of the continent.
Native Americans, it followed, were themselves "part
of nature," a key link in the chain of natural processes so many
biologists hoped to reintroduce to national park environments. At least
in Alaska, preservationists conceded, the chain had not been broken.
"Indeed," argued Anthony Wayne Smith, president of the National Parks
and Conservation Association, "the practice of subsistence hunting, as
understood by the Native cultures, can well be looked upon as part of
a natural ecosystem which has sustained itself in Alaska for
something like 10,000 years and which has proved itself compatible with
the stability and diversity of both wildlife and human population"
[italics added]. The historical opposition of the National Parks and
Conservation Association to hunting, Smith said, elaborating on his
point, dealt "only with sports hunting, and if the distinction is kept
quite clear along the lines of the pending legislation, no violence can
be done to established traditions of national park management." [6]
The naïveté of preservationists like
Smith was their assumption that native cultures, like park environments,
could be maintained at a fixed approximation of their appearance at some
earlier and more ideal period of history. Catlin's romanticism might not
be dead but neither were the forces that made changes in the native
cultures inevitable. Perhaps the best that could be done in Alaska was
to honor the civil rights of the natives and hope that change would not
overwhelm their traditions at the expense of the parks. "No conservation
group of which I am aware," remarked Louis S. Clapper, a representative
of the National Wildlife Federation, "would deny a Native the right to
take whatever fish and wildlife he needs for his own family's welfare."
That said, so-called subsistence hunting was often "a much abused
practice," a "subterfuge" for "the recreational practices" of "employed
and 'modernized' natives," [7] Clapper's
outspoken comments were compromised by the National Wildlife
Federation's own defense of sport hunting among its members. Yet even
the most ardent defenders of subsistence hunting could not dismiss the
impact of modern technology on native cultures, Ideally, Alaskan natives
would resist the temptations and pressures of modern life. It was just
as likely, however, that the national parks would be eroded from within
as well as from without by what was in fact a vain attempt to uphold the
past against the relentless forces of the present.
The resource at stake was wildernessremote,
pristine, and teeming with animals. Before World War II, the natives of
Alaska had hardly made a dent in either its wildness or its wildlife.
But that was before modern firearms and the introduction of airplanes in
effect shrank the boundaries of the Alaskan wilderness. [8] Still, as late as the 1970s,
preservationists saw legitimate reason to compare Alaska to Yellowstone
a hundred years earlier. Much as Yellowstone had been America's frontier
in the nineteenth century, so Alaska was its frontier in the twentieth.
The difference was nonetheless strikingAmericans must make do with
Alaska for centuries to come, at least with respect to wilderness on
earth. "What we save now is all we will ever save," declared another
popular slogan of the period. [9]
Especially in the forty-ninth state, no statement seemed to be a more
appropriateor compellingcall to action.
The wilderness movement, as distinct from campaigns
to establish new national parks per se, won its most important victory
on September 3, 1964, when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the
Wilderness Act into law. For eight years wilderness enthusiasts had
sought its passage, citing the need to protect not only the remote
unspoiled corners of the national parks but the best of the nation's
roadless areas remaining in the national forests and elsewhere on the
public domain. Nine million acres of land within the national forests
were immediately designated as wilderness; meanwhile, the National Park
Service was authorized to study and recommend to Congress which portions
of the national parks should also be protected in a wild and undeveloped
state. [10]
For a variety of reasons, the study and establishment
of wilderness areas in the national parks, especially the largest
preserves, moved slowly. Preservationists themselves were far more
concerned about the fate of wilderness areas controlled by the U.S.
Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. In contrast to the Park
Service, those were the agencies historically renowned for their
determination to open the public domain to multiple use, including
logging, grazing, and mining. Granted, the National Park Service itself
was often accused of overdeveloping the most popular points of interest
within the national parks. Still, the agency had neither the
authoritynor the incentiveto open its backcountry areas to
resource exploitation. [11]
Of greater concern to the Park Service was the threat
wilderness posed to the agency's bureaucratic autonomy. The management
of wilderness areas came under the directives of the Wilderness Act of
1964, not the Park Service's own Organic Act of August 25, 1916.
Prohibitions in wilderness areas against the use of any motorized means
of access or equipment, not to mention roads, clearly restricted the
Park Service's discretion in managing its backcountry zones. Formal
wilderness designations would also forfeit the potential for using at
least some of those areas to accommodate overflows of visitors in the
future. That restriction, too, concerned many concessionaires,
themselves an influential body in determining national park policy. Like
tradition-minded Park Service employees, concessionaires were highly
skeptical of anything that might undermine their own options for further
expansion of visitor services. [12]
Not until October 23, 1970, six years after the
passage of the Wilderness Act, did Congress designate portions of
Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona, and Craters of the Moon
National Monument, Idaho, as wilderness. In October 1972, parts of
Lassen Volcanic National Park and Lava Beds National Monument, both in
California, also received wilderness status. Four more years elapsed
before Congress approved the first truly major additions to the
wilderness system in national parks. On September 22 and October 1,
1976, the House and Senate, respectively, approved legislation creating
wilderness areas in portions of thirteen existing parks and
monumentsBadlands National Monument, Bandelier National Monument,
Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Monument, Chiricahua National
Monument, Great Sand Dunes National Monument, Haleakala National Park,
Isle Royale National Park, Joshua Tree National Monument, Mesa Verde
National Park, Pinnacles National Monument, Point Reyes National
Seashore, Saguaro National Monument, and Shenandoah National Park.
President Gerald R. Ford approved the legislation on October 20, 1976.
[13]
The Omnibus Park Bill of 1978, also known as the
National Park and Recreation Act, further designated 1,854,424 acres of
wilderness in eight additional units of the national park
systemBuffalo National River, Carlsbad Caverns National Park,
Everglades National Park, Guadalupe Mountains National Park, Gulf
Islands National Seashore, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, Organ Pipe
Cactus National Monument, and Theodore Roosevelt National Park. In
addition, the bill declared another 119,581 acres in the eight preserves
as "potential" wilderness, bringing the grand total to nearly two
million acres. Supporters of the legislation in Congress, eager to draw
attention to their achievement, were quick to point out that this figure
exceeded "the total acreage of all lands previously designated as
wilderness in the National Park System." [14]
Most of the largest and most popular national parks,
however, among them Yellowstone, Yosemite, Glacier, and the Grand
Canyon, still lacked approval for their wilderness proposals.
Designating wilderness in those parks remained controversial. Although
the Park Service endorsed the wilderness idea in public, many high level
officials privately expressed their doubts about the wilderness
movement. The larger the roadless areas within the national parks, the
less opportunity remained for the Park Service to expand its traditional
visitor services and overnight accommodations. The Park Service would be
left with no alternative but to restrict the number of visitors in the
already developed portions of its parks. For an agency that measured its
success by how many people it served, such restrictions seemed
politically unwise. And even in those parks where management seemed
strongly in favor of formal wilderness designations, concessionaires
usually were quietly suspicious of, if not overtly hostile to, the
concept. [15]
With each frustration of their attempts to establish
large wilderness areas in the national parks of the continental United
States, preservationists looked upon Alaska as a battleground of even
greater importance. If national parks were in fact to be managed as
sanctuaries, not merely as scenic wonders divorced of biological
considerations, wilderness appeared to be the crucial prerequisite.
Wildlife biologists warned repeatedly that the remote roadless corners
of America were the only remaining refuges of any real consequence for
many species of plants and animals. The management of habitat could
accomplish only so much, The alternative to greater and greater reliance
on the manipulation of plant and animal populations was providing both
with enough territory to survive on their own in the first place.
For a land so rich in natural resources and
wilderness, the history of Alaska as an American possession began on a
distinct note of irony. Ratification of the treaty in 1867 authorizing
purchase of Alaska from the Russians passed the Senate over the
objections of opponents who denounced the territory as nothing but a
worthless region of snow, rocks, and icebergs. Among most Americans that
image of the frozen north held well into the twentieth century.
Occasionally, authors, artists, and travelers broke down that
perception, yet it was not until World War II, following completion of
the Alaska Military Highway through Canada, that Americans finally began
to appreciate the true richness and diversity of what was to become the
forty-ninth state. [16]
Statehood, which came in 1959, still did not end the
bitterness among many Alaskans over their decades of treatment as
second-class citizens by the federal government. For a territory of
roughly 365 million acres, Alaskans believed federal officials had been
far too conservative in allowing the exploitation of its natural
resources. In either case, residents were eager to get on with
development, not only logging, fishing, and trappingpursuits
comprised in the state's traditional economybut also opening oil
and gas fields and mineral deposits. The legislation granting statehood
allowed Alaska to select approximately 104 million acres of federal
lands in the state; similarly, the federal government relinquished title
to tens of millions of acres of submerged lands along the continental
shelf. Only one major obstacle stood between Alaska and the process of
completing its selection of federal landsfew politicians had
stopped to consider the claims of Native Americans to many of those same
properties. Finally, in 1966, as Aleuts, Eskimos, and Indian tribes
prepared to take their grievances to court, Secretary of the Interior
Stewart Udall froze all land selections pending congressional
consideration of the argument that Native Americans as well as the state
of Alaska were entitled to share in the allocation of the public domain.
[17]
The ensuing stalemate was not resolved until October
of 1971 and passage of the Native Claims Settlement Act. The legislation
awarded forty million acres of land and one billion dollars in
additional compensation to the Alaskan groups. During the five years
Congress considered this apparent departure from federal Indian policy,
preservationists themselves were no less aware of the unique opportunity
the bill presented to voice their own concerns about the future of
public lands in the forty-ninth state. Although most preservationists
sympathized with the demands of the natives for a secure land base,
native selections, in addition to the selections already guaranteed to
Alaska, conceivably might undercut the protection of the best wilderness
areas even before they had been identified and established. Alaska, to
reemphasize, represented the final opportunity to establish national
parks, wilderness areas, and wildlife refuges of irrefutable ecological
significance and integrity. Without simultaneously addressing the need
to preserve the Alaskan wilderness, preservationists argued, all hope of
coordinating the development of the state with its protection would be
lost. [18]
With the environmental movement, like the civil
rights movement, at the peak of its influence, Congress was in little
mood to ignore the concerns of preservationists any more than the
grievances of Native Americans. Accordingly, Section 17 (d)(2) of the
Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act further recognized the desirability
of designating up to eighty million acres of the public domain in Alaska
as national parks, national forests, wildlife refuges, and wild and
scenic rivers. The act gave the secretary of the interior nine months to
withdraw lands deemed suitable for consideration as additions to each of
the four categories; similarly, the secretary was given until December
19, 1973, to make his final recommendations to Congress concerning which
of the lands initially withdrawn from entry should in fact be protected
in perpetuity by the federal government. [19]
Yet another opportunity for preservation was provided
by Section 17 (d)(1) of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. Under
its provisions, the secretary of the interior was allowed ninety days
after the enactment of the legislation to select additional "public
interest" lands for withdrawal from entry. Apparently the provision did
not affect state and native selections around native villages but took
precedence over all other state and native selections elsewhere on the
public domain. In the confusion over interpretation of the (d)(1)
provision, however, the state of Alaska, in January 1972, proclaimed the
selection of its entire remaining allotment of seventy-seven million
acres under the Statehood Act of 1958. [20]
Such complexity and confusion only foreshadowed the
coming battle over Alaskan lands, a struggle that would last for nearly
a decade. By September of 1972, Secretary of the Interior Rogers C. B.
Morton had withdrawn seventy-nine million acres of the public domain
under subsection (d)(2) of the Native Claims Settlement Act, in addition
to forty-seven million acres under subsection (d)(1). The state of
Alaska immediately protested that the withdrawals conflicted with many
of its own selections and, as a result, filed suit in federal court to
have Secretary Morton's duplicate choices that were in dispute revoked.
In an out-of-court settlement, Alaska won concessions affecting some
fourteen million acres of the (d)(1) and (d)(2) withdrawals; for its own
part of the compromise, the state agreed to relinquish its claims to
thirty-five million of the seventy-seven million acres it had selected
in January. [21]
In the end, Secretary Morton's own final
recommendations for lands to be protected in Alaskan parks, wilderness
areas, and wildlife refuges pleased no one. The state of Alaska again
filed suit; meanwhile, preservationists also protested against his
proposal to include over eighteen million acres of the (d)(2) lands in
national forests rather than in wilderness areas. The objective of the
act, preservationists argued, was the protection of those lands rather
than the development of their resources, even on a sustained-yield
basis. Adding urgency to preservationists' concerns was the deadline
established by Congress for the resolution of the entire debate by
December 18, 1978. That gave preservationists but seven years to make
their case, and already two of those years had slipped by without an
acceptable compromise between development and preservation of the state
even in sight. [22]
Despite their frustration, preservation groups still
used the interval preceding congressional consideration of the Alaska
lands issue very wisely. The lull offered them an opportunity for
further study and redefinition of their park proposals, for educating
their memberships, and, most importantly, for unifying on behalf of a
concerted political effort on Capitol Hill. The so-called Alaska
Coalition, representing the National Audubon Society, Wilderness
Society, Sierra Club, National Parks and Conservation Association, and
Defenders of Wildlife, officially organized in 1971 during the debate
about native claims in the state. Cooperation among the groups was still
relatively informal until January 1977, when Congress itself took up the
Alaska lands controversy. Under the circumstances, the five member
organizations of the Alaska Coalition agreed to pool both staff and
financial resources as they prepared to contest what they collectively
considered "the most important conservation issue of the century." [23]
The battle was finally joined on January 4, 1977,
when Representative Morris Udall of Arizona introduced his bill, H.R.
39, to the Ninety-fifth Congress. By early April, H.R. 39 was
accompanied by a host of similar bills; numerous cosponsors had also
attached their names to Udall's original legislation. To sift through
the complex array of proposals and to assess public opinion, the House
Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, with Udall as chairman,
approved the creation of a special Subcommittee on General Oversight and
Alaska Lands. On April 21 and 22, Representative John F. Seiberling of
Ohio, chairman of the subcommittee and a cosponsor of H.R. 39, convened
the first public hearings on the Alaska lands issue in Washington, D.C.
[24]
Five months and sixteen volumes of testimony later,
the Subcommittee on General Oversight and Alaska Lands concluded its
work. In addition to holding hearings in Washington, D.C., the committee
took testimony in Chicago, Atlanta, Denver, and Seattle. Afterward the
committee moved to Alaska, where it heard the residents of sixteen
separate towns and cities, including Sitka, Juneau, Ketchikan,
Anchorage, and Fairbanks. [25] Never before
in national park history had any issue sparked so much public interest
and discussion. Even the more noted controversies of the recent past,
such as the campaign to preserve the redwood groves of the California
coast, had not come close to arousing such a nationwide insistence that
the general public, as well as renowned figures in the preservation
movement and their principal adversaries, should be heard by a major
congressional panel.
By itself, however, the sheer number of people who
participated in the controversy still had little effect on the arguments
used to sway the opposing sides. To be sure, although many people took
the opportunity to speak their minds before Congress, their positions
were both traditional and predictable. The hearings, in other words,
contained no real surprises. Simply, those with a personal stake in the
economy of Alaska pushed for smaller parks and greater development of
the state's natural resources. Likewise, those who looked to Alaska as
the last American wilderness wanted desperately to protect its
mountains, forests, rivers, and wildlife in parks that were not only
spacious but clearly of ecological as well as scenic significance.
It followed that support for the Alaskan parks was
greatest outside the state. Indeed, much as people living on the Alaskan
frontier universally opposed the parks, so citizens in the lower
forty-eight states overwhelmingly endorsed H.R. 39. [26] Not surprisingly, supporters and opponents
of the legislation lined up similarly in the halls of Congress. Senators
Ted Stevens and Mike Gravel of Alaska, in addition to the state's lone
member of the House, Don Young, strongly opposed H.R. 39 in its original
form. After all, their constituents believed they had the most to lose
if the bill were enacted, In contrast, Representatives Udall and
Seiberling, among the seventy-two other sponsors of H.R. 39, spoke out
for preservation with the obvious assurance that their own political
futures would in no way be determined by voters in the state of
Alaska.
As if to rationalize their immunity from the Alaskan
electorate, the sponsors of H.R. 39 noted repeatedly that their bill was
of national rather than local importance. "Obviously, this is a national
issue, not just a regional or sectional one," said Representative
Seiberling, setting this important theme of the hearings and
congressional debates. "The lands involved are public lands, the
property of all the American people." Granted, the residents of Alaska
deserved protection of their interests. "But they must also be
harmonized with the interests of the other 220 million Americans," he
maintained. "As Members of the Congress of the United States, we must
act in the interests of all the people." [27]
By definition, Congressman Udall agreed, that meant
preservation as well as economic development of the state. "If you go to
Europe," he remarked, using comparison to emphasize his point, "you
don't participate in making new national parks. In the Lower 48 States,
we are rounding out the system." Only Alaska still offered Americans "a
chance to display some vision" and "some foresight" in national park
planning. Since the establishment of Yellowstone in 1872, he observed,
approximately twenty-five million acres of land had been set aside as
national parks. For the first time in history, Americans had the
opportunity in Alaska to double or perhaps even triple that figure. "So
I am looking forward to participating in this endeavor," Udall
concluded. "I don't know of any major piece of legislation that will
have more far-reaching consequences in the country in the future than
this one will." [28]
Predictably, opponents of H.R. 39 took precisely the
opposite stance, that of stressing Alaska's significance for the United
States as a storehouse of natural resources. "D-2 lands are obviously
critical to the State of Alaska," remarked Representative Don Young,
admitting the biases of the Alaska delegation, "but, more importantly,
they are critical to the Nation as a whole." Congress must consider what
the United States stood to lose if preservation of the state got "out of
hand." Alaskan oil alone would soon "comprise 20 percent of our domestic
oil supply," Young noted, "another natural treasure" of the state was
its "critical metals." The national parks and wilderness areas as
proposed were simply too large to allow adequate exploitation of these
resources. "The key issue is how much needs to be set aside to provide
appropriate protection without going overboard," he said, reemphasizing
his basic theme. "I trust that the subcommittee will act to set aside
those unique areas which everyone agrees need preserving but place other
lands in less restrictive management systems where diversified uses will
be permitted." [29]
Taking up where Young's testimony left off, Senator
Mike Gravel of Alaska proposed the protection of no more than
twenty-five million acres of land in national parks, wilderness areas,
wildlife refuges, and wild and scenic rivers. "Let me just say," he
remarked, justifying his figure, "there is a body of land in Alaska
where there is no question, no dispute, that should be preserved in the
four conservation Systems." The figure of twenty-five million acres, as
opposed to the more than 100 million acres requested by
preservationists, was the more "balanced,"moderate," and "reasonable
position." Gravel did not need to admit the obvious; the twenty-five
million acres he had in mind clearly contained nothing of economic value
to the state. Only with that assurance did he freely concede that
preservation "is the highest and best use of the land." [30]
Where natural resources might in fact exist in
abundance, Gravel further proposed delaying any decisions affecting
those lands pending the formation of a joint federal-state commission,
"a legislative body, or, as the press has characterized it, in Alaska, a
beefed-up zoning commission for the entire State," The object of the
commission "would be the development of policy" with respect to all
state and federal lands outside the parks. Deposits of oil, gas, and
coal, for example, had "not even been scratched." A federal-state
commission to protect access to those resources would insure flexibility
in future management decisions. "It would be a terrible tragedy in our
human existence," he concluded, again revealing his bias for
development, "to foreclose the possibility of making an intelligent
adjudication when the time came to do it." [31]
Gravel's proposal was endorsed by his Senate
colleague, Ted Stevens, as well as Governor Jay Hammond and
Representative Don Young. In several meetings with Alaskan residents the
previous fall, the four had basically agreed on accepting twenty-five
million acres of land for parks, refuges, and wilderness areas. The key
objection among preservationists was the unmistakable limitation of
those lands to monumental topography at the expense of rounding out the
parks to include areas of greater biological significance. In that
respect, national park history once more played into the hands of
Senator Stevens and the Alaska delegation. "I view the process that we
are in now of trying to determine which of our lands have national
significance in the true sense that the Grand Canyon and Yosemite and
Yellowstone and the other areas that have been made national parks had,"
he stated, sensing his opportunity to quote precedent. As he implied,
the preservation of similar natural wonders, areas both rugged and
devoid of natural resources, certainly would arouse little opposition
among residents of the forty-ninth state. Instead, they were concerned
preservationists would in fact seek a decision by Congress "which may
well impede future generations of Alaskans from having the ability to
utilize the land bank that Congress wisely gave us as an economic floor
for the future of our State." [32]
Its legislative complexity aside, the Alaska lands
issue was basically another manifestation of the traditional struggle
between preservation and use. Only the object of the debate, not its
political intrigue, had changed. Just as resource interests worked to
thwart a comprehensive protection bill, so preservationists campaigned
diligently to effect a parks and wilderness package of both biological
substance and legislative permanence. Advocates of greater development
and fewer parks invariably relied on the Alaska delegation to espouse
their views in Congress. Similarly, preservation groups, rallying under
the banner of the Alaska Coalition, looked to Representatives Udall and
Seiberling, among other concerned members of Congress, for their own
leadership on Capitol Hill.
Much to their advantage, by 1977 and the introduction
of H.R. 39, preservationists knew more about Alaska than their
predecessors a century before had ever known about Yosemite or
Yellowstone. By the late 1960s, writers for the major conservation
magazines were traveling throughout the state, informing the memberships
of their respective organizations of the areas considered worthy of
protection. The discovery of oil at Prudhoe Bay in 1968, coupled with
the completion of the controversial Trans-Alaska Pipeline in 1977, lent
further credence to preservationists' claims that Alaska, much as the
lower forty-eight states, was in danger of being subdivided into
economic spheres of influence. Initially, preservationists feared the
search for oil and the construction of the pipeline would destroy the
Alaska tundra and decimate the great herds of migrating caribou.
Proposals to dam the largest rivers in Alaska, then shunt their water
southward through Canada into the thirsty American West, also struck
preservationists as the epitome of utilitarian arrogance and callousness
toward the natural world. [33]
For preservationists, Alaska was a chance for
beginning anew rather than for repeating errors common to the lower
forty-eight states. "In Alaska we have the opportunity to learn from our
past mistakes," remarked Edgar Wayburn, chairman of the Sierra Club's
Alaska Task Force. "We have given away the Redwoods of California, the
Big Thicket in Texas, and the Big Cypress Swamp in Florida, just to name
a few, and we have had to buy them back at exorbitant prices," he
pointed out. Large parks in Alaska would still be "free as far as the
exchange of cash is concerned." [34] David
Brower, president of Friends of the Earth, likewise emphasized the
unique opportunity offered by federal ownership of so much of the state.
"Alaska, as a late maturing child in the society's scheme of things," he
said, "is still richly endowed, as youth always is, and we should think
carefully before we let qualities that only Alaska still possesses be
made as ordinary, or even as repugnant, as too many other places have
been driven to become." As examples, he confessed he was "mindful" of
California, "my native State, not to mention Texas." The unrestrained
development of Alaska would do nothing more than turn an extraordinary
environment into another commonplace one, thereby undermining
preservationists' own fervent hope of sustaining "Alaska's appeal,
productivity, and creativity for centuries." [35]
Such idealism was to prove important for buoying
preservationists' spirits in the months and years ahead. The entirety of
1977 passed without any action on H.R. 39, with the exception of the
public hearings conducted by the House Subcommittee on General Oversight
and Alaska Lands. As preservationists feared, the delay only worked to
the advantage of their opponents, especially Representative Don Young,
who succeeded in adding no fewer than eighty-five amendments to the
original bill once the subcommittee convened early in 1978 to draft the
final version. Not until April 7, 1978, was the Interior Committee
prepared to report to Congress as a whole; by then only eight months
remained until December 18, 1978, the deadline established for the
resolution of the Alaska lands issue under the Native Claims Settlement
Act. If the controversy had not been resolved by that date, technically
all of the lands withdrawn from entry pending congressional review would
once again revert to the unreserved public domain and be subject to both
state and native selections. [36]
Under the circumstances, preservationists were indeed
fortunate to have the support of the new administration. Granted,
President Jimmy Carter and his secretary of the interior, Cecil Andrus,
proposed a ceiling of only 92 million acres of parks and wilderness as
opposed to the 115 million acres of land sought by the Alaska Coalition
and specified in the original version of H.R. 39. Still, with Senators
Mike Gravel and Ted Stevens threatening delay of the legislation in the
Senate, and in light of their call for the protection of a mere 25
million acres of territory, the endorsement of the White House was
crucial. On May 17, 1978, the House of Representatives began debate on
H.R. 39 and two days later approved the bill by a vote of 277 to 31.
Preservationists were jubilant, not only because the House proposed to
protect more than 120 million acres as national parks, wildlife refuges,
and wild and scenic rivers, but because passage of the bill had been won
by such a stunning, lopsided margin. [37]
The celebration, however, proved to be premature. In
the Senate, Mike Gravel successfully thwarted serious consideration of
the Alaska lands bill throughout the summer and into the fall. Although
his delaying tactics grew unpopular, even with Senator Stevens, they
nonetheless had the desired effect of preventing final action on H.R. 39
in 1978. [38]
The December 18 deadline, in other words, would not
be met. Once again preservationists were extremely fortunate to have the
support of the Carter administration. Even as the Ninety-fifth Congress
disbanded, President Carter and Secretary of the Interior Andrus had
considered their options. As early as October 11, Andrus had informed
the public in a signed editorial: "If Congress is unable to act,
President Carter and I will." [39] On
November 16 Andrus made good his promise by withdrawing 110 million
acres of public lands in Alaska from entry under the authority of the
Fish and Wildlife Act of 1956 and the Federal Land Management Act of
1976. Each allowed the secretary of the interior broad discretion in the
protection of wildlife and wilderness areas on the public domain.
Finally, on December 1, further invoking the articles of the Antiquities
Act of 1906, President Carter gave added protection to 56 million of the
110 million acres withdrawn by Andrus as national monuments. Andrus's
withdrawals were to stand for only three years; Carter's designation of
the national monuments would be permanent if Congress itself refused to
decide the Alaska lands issue. [40]
Carter's objective was in fact to force Congress to
make the final decision. In that respect, his action was like President
Franklin D. Roosevelt's veto in 1943 of the bill to abolish Jackson Hole
National Monument in Wyoming. Like Roosevelt, Carter believed the
protection of Alaska transcended local prejudices and special interests;
at least, the decision was too important to allow a few legislators
manipulating the political process to forestall the ultimate test of the
nation's true will. Nevertheless, 1979 was another year of postponement;
indeed, the political season began as another period of frustration and
despair for preservation interests, with new amendments threatening the
integrity of the original legislation passed by the House of
Representatives in 1978. In the second House vote, taken on May 16,
1979, preservationists withstood the new opposition by a tally of 268 to
157, only to lose ground once again in the Senate. Its final version of
the bill not only considerably weakened the management safeguards
approved by the House but granted protection to twenty-six million fewer
acres of Alaska lands in the process. [41]
Ironically, the fate of Alaska was sealed in 1980 not
only by compromise but by the intimidation of preservation interests. On
August 19, the Senate finally passed a considerably less protective
Alaska lands bill. Dismayed but defiant, preservationists would have
worked to postpone the legislation yet another year, but for the
election on November 4 of Ronald Reagan as the next president of the
United States. Unlike Carter's, Reagan's attitude toward environmental
legislation was openly hostile. Fearing that he might kill the Alaska
lands legislation entirely, preservationists both within and outside the
Congress saw no choice but to make their peace with the Senate version
of H.R. 39. "Political realities dictate that we act promptly on the
Senate-passed bill," Representative Morris Udall said, issuing a
personal warning. "We must accept the fact that Reagan is here for four
years." [42] On November 12, the House
agreed to recognize the wisdom of the Senate, and on December 2, 1980,
President Jimmy Carter signed the compromise legislation into law.
Granted, the bill was a disappointment for preservationists, although it
did, in Udall's words, "accomplish 85-90 percent of the things the House
wanted." [43] The penalty of further delay
under the Reagan administration might well have been the sacrifice of
legislation of any kind.
Considering what they might have lost,
preservationists understandably celebrated what they had won in Alaska
as a milestone of American conservation. "Never has so much been done on
conservation for future generations with one stroke of the pen," wrote
Charles Clusen, chairman of the Alaska Coalition. The acreages protected
were indeed impressive, a total of more than 100 million acres or 28
percent of the state, including 43.6 million acres of new national
parks, 53.8 million acres of new wildlife refuges, and 1.2 million acres
for the national wild and scenic rivers system. Of those lands, 56.7
million acres were to receive further protection as wilderness, subject
only to accessibility by foot, horseback, raft, or canoe. "Not since the
days of Theodore Roosevelt's large public land withdrawals," Clusen
concluded, "have we seen such boldness, dynamism, and leadership for the
protection of our land heritage. The Alaska "victory' also shows that
the American people believe in a conservation ethic and support
environmental protection more than at any previous time in history." [44]
Only after more careful reflection were most
preservationists willing to concede that their battle for Alaska may in
fact have just begun on December 2, 1980. In park after park, critical
wildlife habitat had either been fragmented to accommodate resource
extraction or excluded entirely. As a concession to copper mining
interests, for example, approximately one million acres in Gates of the
Arctic National Park were denied wilderness protection. Similarly, state
selections threatened grizzly bear habitat, salmon streams, and caribou
breeding grounds bordering Mount McKinley National Park. The Alaska
Lands Act renamed the park Denali and expanded it by a whopping 3.7
million acres. The point again was that size by itself was no guarantee
that wildlife, especially migrating populations such as caribou, could
be sustained without further extending protection to their lowland
breeding grounds. [45]
Other preservationists sensed a troublesome precedent
in the use of the term "preserve" to describe large expanses of
wilderness that historically would have been labeled "national parks" or
"national monuments." The management principles of national parks and
monuments were clearly defined by precedent, but what was a "national
preserve?" One unsettling answer could be gleaned from the legislative
histories of the Big Thicket National Preserve in Texas and the Big
Cypress National Freshwater Preserve in Florida. In each instance,
Congress had granted wide discretion to the secretary of the interior to
allow mining, oil drilling, grazing, hunting, trapping, and other
extractive uses both within and adjacent to the parks. [46] On the roughly twenty million acres of
land designated as "preserves" in Alaska, much the same discretion
prevailed. The management of a preserve, in other words, could easily be
determined by administrative fiat rather than established by public
consensus.
Ideally, preserves would act as buffers for more
sensitive park areas. In fact, however, often the preserves themselves
were in greater need of protection. The mountainous, inaccessible
landscapes forming the core of the new parks and monuments rarely had
the same potential for economic development. In keeping with the size
and ruggedness of Alaska, its parks could be far larger than those in
the lower forty-eight states. In the final analysis, however, national
park history had repeated itself. The only unchallenged mandate in
Alaska was the endorsement of monumentalism. Beyond its mountainous
terrain, especially along the seacoasts of Alaska and in the forests of
its southeastern panhandle, entrenched commercial interests, both native
and non-native, successfully resisted most long-range efforts to effect
preservation over economic use.
In defense of their right to make such a choice,
Alaskans argued that pioneer Americans in the past had also enjoyed the
freedom to exploit the land as each saw fit. Now that the rest of the
country had been developed, residents of the lower forty eight states
had no right to dictate to Alaskans that they and they alone must
sacrifice economic opportunity for wilderness preservation. Besides,
Alaskans loved the frontier way of life and themselves wished to
preserve the land base supporting it. [47]
In rebuttal, preservationists asked again whether or
not Alaskans could in fact resist unwanted or undesirable forms of
change indefinitely. "Big, outside corporations are looking all over the
world for resources," noted Representative John F. Seiberling, for
example. He warned Alaskans to support H.R. 39: "And with the kind of
machinery and airplanes and the kind of money that people have in the
outside, they are going to come in here and each one is going to take a
cut of the salami and when he gets through, there will not be much left
for the people of Alaska unless we set aside certain areas." [48] Persistent opposition to H.R. 39 on the
question of personal freedom led to the allowance of subsistence hunting
and the establishment of national preserves to accommodate it.
Gradually, however, even preservationists who supported the practice
came to recognize the potential for its abuse, especially since the
snowmobile, airplane, and high-powered rifle had replaced the dogsled,
spear, and hunting knife as tools of the chase. [49]
Alaska, it seemed, eventually would change much as
the rest of America had changed. Writing on behalf of the Alaska
Coalition, an anonymous preservationist was among those who conceded the
point, "For a land which is expected to give so much material wealth to
the nation, we only ask in return that the nation seek to protect
certain lands and wildlife so that this priceless natural heritage will
survive for future generations." [50]
Margaret Murie, the noted author and longtime Alaskan adventurer, was
even more eloquent, "My prayer is that Alaska will not lose the
heart-nourishing friendliness of her youth, . . . that her great wild
places will remain great, and wild, and free, where wolf and caribou,
wolverine and grizzly bear, and all the Arctic blossoms may live in the
delicate balance which supported them long before impetuous man appeared
in the north. This is the great gift Alaska can give to the harrassed
world." [51] On a scale unique in American
history, the passage of the Alaska Lands Act of 1980 realized this
fondest of preservationists' dreams. But could the dream be sustained?
[52] Indeed, even in the vastness of
Alaska, one fundamental accomplishment still eluded the
movementeffecting its dreams in perpetuity, in physical reality as
well as in transitory laws.
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