The Final Frontier: Alaska

By Kim Heacox

The Final Frontier: Alaska | A Changing Climate | Ecology Emerges | The California Desert
The Centennial Challenge | A Diverse and Dynamic Workforce

The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980 has been called "the Louisiana Purchase of the American Conservation Movement." Nothing like it had ever happened before. Nor would it happen again. It wasn't a purchase. It was a remarkable struggle that ended in many creative political compromises, and established more than 100 million acres of new parks, preserves, monuments, and wildlife refuges in Alaska, a vast subcontinent of possibilities. Resentments ran deep, as many Alaskans feared the new parks, filled with restrictions and regulations on access, would hamstring their independence and local economies; and prevent them from achieving their long dreamed-of lifestyles and livelihoods. Just the opposite happened. The oil, fishing, and mining industries in Alaska have been up and down. The military has decreased. Coal has proved sketchy; natural gas elusive. All while tourism has flourished, and the parks themselves have become synonymous with a healthy economy and steady job creation. More than sixty percent of the Park System's acreage is in Alaska, and Alaska itself has been labeled "the national park of the world."

"We've built a lot of infrastructure in the last 30 years," says John Quinley, assistant regional director of communications for the Park Service's Alaska office. "including work on visitor centers in every park, maintenance buildings, road work, and trail work. The idea that parks could become magnets and add to local economies has come true."

Park Service employees have become strong contributing members of society. They volunteer at local small town fire departments, city councils, rotary clubs, schools and medical clinics. Federal dollars flow through Alaska's national parks and pump more than $100 million annually into local economies.

And there's science. Since the 1989 Exxon Valdez Oil Spill sent a black tide of killer crude onto the wild coasts of Kenai Fjords and Katmai National Parks, the agency has awakened to the value of baseline data on the parks. An oil-spill task force was quickly created in March 1989, and the agency set out to discover what was out there. Science has since flourished in the parks. Inventory and monitoring has bloomed. Archaeological surveys have been done in many places. All in all, the national parks have become focal points of science and higher learning across Alaska. In Denali National Park, the new Murie Science and Learning Center has hosted many exciting new programs for statewide education.

But perhaps most significant is that a new generation of Alaskans have grown up with the national parks, those green places on the map—Denali, Katmai, Glacier Bay, Wrangell-St,Elias, Kenai Fjords, Lake Clark, Kobuk Valley, Gates of the Arctic—that have always been there, places that stand as symbols not of resentment, but of beauty, freedom, restraint and respect; an America to be proud of and thankful for.

The Final Frontier: Alaska | A Changing Climate | Ecology Emerges | The California Desert
The Centennial Challenge | A Diverse and Dynamic Workforce

Published:  September 19, 2009