By Bill Sherwonit
In 1929, when Robert Marshall first arrived in Alaska, much of the Central Brooks Range appeared as blank spots on maps of the territory. This sweeping chain of mountains arcing east-west across the full breadth of northern Alaska inspired Marshall's wilderness-preservation vision and led him to become a founding member of The Wilderness Society and author of the influential Alaska Wilderness: Exploring the Central Brooks Range, first published in 1956 as Arctic Wilderness. Today, Marshall's legacy lives on in a nearly continuous band of national preserves, monuments, parks, and refuges across the area including the centerpiece—the 8.4-million-acre Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve. Still, more than 70 years after Marshall's arrival, Gates of the Arctic remains terra incognita to most Americans, though it is among the largest, wildest, and most spectacular of our nation's parklands—a distinctive type of "inhabited wilderness."
From the beginning, Gates of the Arctic was intended to be something different—a park that is expansively wild, free of visitor amenities, challenging in its scale and ruggedness to those who visit. As National Park Service (NPS) planning teams explored the Brooks Range in the 1970s, they came to see it as "America's last big chunk of raw wilderness . . . an ultimate range."
In his 1992 book Alaska's Brooks Range, retired NPS employee John Kauffman recalled that he and other Gates planners "borrowed a karate term to call it a black-belt park. Not for neophytes, it would be at the ascetic end of a spectrum of national parks in Alaska that would range from the comforts of hotels and cruise ships to the most basic of wilderness survival."
Eighty percent of 8.4-million-acre Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve is designated wilderness—a wilderness where animals and indigenous people have co-existed for thousands of years. Ensuring that both the park's wild character and its indigenous peoples' use of park resources remains compatible with wilderness preservation is a major challenge facing the Park Service.
In legislation that established Gates of the Arctic, Congress agreed, making it clear that the park's primary purposes included "opportunities for visitors to experience solitude and . . . wilderness recreational activities."
No other park in the system places such a focus on solitude and wilderness recreation, says Superintendent Dave Mills, just as no other park is to be managed, first and foremost, "to maintain the wild and undeveloped character of the area." As if to set this unit apart from all others in the National Park System, planners proposed the name Gates of the Arctic National Wilderness Park.
| Though "wilderness" was ultimately dropped from its name, more than 80 percent of Gates is designated wilderness. Within its boundaries are six officially designated "wild rivers"; two National Natural Landmarks (Walker Lake and the Arrigetch Peaks); and a fully protected Arctic ecosystem that ranges from lowland boreal forest to high alpine |
The Tinayguk is the largest tributary of the North Fork of the Koyukuk. Photo courtesy of NPS. |
| tundra. Thirty-six species of northern mammals inhabit the landscape, including wolves, grizzlies, Dall sheep, and huge herds of caribou; plus, more than 130 bird species breed here, the great majority of them long-distance migrants. Wave after wave of mountain ridges and jagged peaks—most unnamed—cap the park and seem to stretch forever. The mountains are dissected by thousands of swift-running creeks and broad U-shaped river valleys that magnify the sense of wide-open spaces. |
Yet this is not wilderness in the sense that our modern Western culture usually imagines it: a place where humans are merely visitors. In the words of historian Theodore Catton, Gates of the Arctic (like several other Alaska parklands) is an "inhabited wilderness." Or, as park ranger Steve Ulvi puts it, Gates of the Arctic is a centuries-old homeland to the region's native residents.
Until the past century, the indigenous peoples who've occupied this region for thousands of years were nomads. Now settled into year-round communities, both Eskimos and Athabascans remain heavily dependent on the region's animals and plants, as do a small number of non-native residents.
After recognizing this dependence, Congress mandated that traditional subsistence activities by local residents be permitted in the park. Ten small communities possess "resident zone" status and have subsistence rights to hunt, trap, fish, and harvest plants within the area. But no group of people is as dependent on the park's resources—especially caribou—as the Nunamiut Eskimos of Anaktuvuk Pass, a village of about 300 located along the Arctic Divide and the only community inside park borders.
The tribe's oral traditions say that the Nunamiuts are firmly rooted in these mountains. They maintained a semi-nomadic lifestyle deep into the 20th century, following caribou and other game in groups of 50 to 100 people until settling at Anaktuvuk Pass in 1949. Even today, their culture remains inextricably tied to the caribou that pass through Gates each year.
"Clearly, the Nunamiut have a special relationship with this landscape," says Ulvi. "Their traditional homelands include much of the park and preserve. So not only does Gates ensure that this wilderness remains intact, it also ensures that an indigenous culture remains intact. That combination is unique to this park."
Recognizing that surrounding parklands could prevent unwanted development—including a proposed year-round road right through Anaktuvuk Pass—many Nunamiut supported the creation of Gates. But soon after passage of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) in 1980, establishing four NPS units including Gates, tensions developed with park managers over the Eskimos' new-found dependence on all-terrain-vehicles (ATVs) for subsistence hunting. Worried that ATVs were damaging wilderness lands, park managers restricted their use to narrow corridors; the locals, as a result, felt cut off from their traditional hunting grounds.
"We hated [the park managers]," says Nunamiut elder Rachel Riley. "They were taking over our place, the place where we would always go hunting."
As relations deteriorated, the two groups began discussing a land exchange in 1984. Negotiations were complex and sometimes contentious, but both sides realized the issue of ATV use for hunting had to be resolved. "It was the single biggest challenge we faced in those early years," says Ulvi. "We had to work that out before we could do any serious backcountry planning."
Finally, in November 1996, negotiations culminated in a massive—and in some quarters, controversial—land exchange that involved hundreds of thousands of acres. Some existing parkland surrounding Anaktuvuk Pass was delisted as wilderness, while other lands were newly designated wilderness.
| The Nunamiut people conveyed nearly 40,000 acres to the government, but they also gained ATV access to 126,632 acres of non-wilderness parkland. Among the positive spinoffs: Anaktuvuk residents could continue traditional |
The John Wild River flows south from Anaktuvuk Pass through Alaska's Brooks Range
and terminates at the Koyukuk River just below Bettles Field/Evansville. Photo courtesy NPS. |
| hunting patterns within the park. In return, they agreed to restrict development on their lands inside the park and allow recreational access. Park managers, meanwhile, promoted goodwill and established a working relationship with their neighbors. |
"That land exchange worked out real good," says Riley, "because now we can hunt where we've always hunted. What they did was wonderful. People felt much better about [the Park Service]."
Tensions with the Nunamiut of Anaktuvuk Pass were representative of larger problems in those early years. Jack Reakoff, a longtime resident of Wiseman, near Gates' eastern edge, says park staff then were "too heavy-handed" with longtime residents. "They were very standoffish and mistrustful of locals," he recalls. "They came in with teams of people armed with guns, and that didn't go over very well with people who've lived here all their lives."
Over time, with changes in leadership, relationships improved dramatically. Instead of taking an adversarial approach, park managers began to seek local residents' advice and sought to form partnerships. Over the last ten years, says Reakoff, "the wounds have largely healed. People are pretty pleased with how things are now."
One key area of cooperative management has been subsistence. Reakoff, Rachel Riley, and many other residents have worked long hours on a Subsistence Resource Commission, to address regulations and issues within Gates of the Arctic. Together with park staff, they've recently produced a Subsistence Management Plan that, according to Mills, park superintendent since 1995, is intended to be a "living, breathing document" that's regularly updated.
With the biggest challenges—the land exchange, subsistence, and trust-building—of the park's first 20 years now largely resolved, the staff can focus on backcountry planning. Part of a larger, long-term effort to better manage backcountry visitors in national parks throughout the state, Gates of the Arctic's backcountry/wilderness plan is one of the first to be undertaken in Alaska. It will amend the park's 1986 general management plan, which Ulvi describes as outdated. NPCA's Alaska office will be involved in guiding the planning process to be sure that the special qualities of the backcountry are maintained.
As might be expected, Gates' staff already has a handle on recreational-use patterns. For the most part, visitation has remained low: on average, fewer than 2,000 people visit the park from mid-June through mid-September, prime time for wilderness trips. Nevertheless, park managers have identified several visitor "hot spots," including the Noatak and North Fork of the Koyukuk rivers.
Although Gates is inland and mountainous, for recreational purposes it is first and foremost a river park. Only a quarter of Gates' recreational visitors travel exclusively overland; the rest combine river trips with day hikes. "Rivers are natural highways through these mountains," Ulvi explains. "You can cover more ground and see more wildlife, and it's easier than backpacking across the tundra."
As a consequence, much of the park's backcountry plan will likely address use in river corridors. Of particular concern are the "portals" where groups begin their trips. Because access is primarily by plane, and landing spots (mostly lakes) are limited in number, most visitors enter Gates at the same locales. Not only can the landscape take a beating at such sites, but visitors may lose that sense of solitude they seek in remote wilderness.
Camping on Pingo Lake. Photo courtesy NPS. |
To date, the only restriction has been the size of commercial groups: backpacking groups are limited to seven people and river parties, to ten (nonguided groups are asked to follow those limits voluntarily). In the new plan, park managers will consider a zoning system, with restrictions on the number |
| of groups allowed in high-use areas and different ways to spread use out. |
Superintendent Mills wants the backcountry/wilderness plan to do two things: identify a variety of management tools specific to Gates and specify threshold levels of visitor use that will trigger those tools. "Our chief concern is protecting the park's wilderness," he says, "but we also want to preserve the quality of the wilderness experience and avoid potential conflicts with subsistence uses [which to date have been minimal]. We know we have some areas that we need to manage more effectively."
Although some may resist visitor limits, Mills says most commercial operators have been supportive of a backcountry plan. Among those pushing for it is Carol Kasza, co-owner of Arctic Treks, a small, family-run business. With husband Jim Campbell, she has guided people in the Brooks Range for more than 20 years.
In the mid-1980s, Kasza participated in the development of Gates' general management plan. Back then, she recalls, "I advocated for no limits at all. But it wasn't long before I did a 180-degree turnaround, partly because of increased pressures I've seen in the [neighboring] Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
"Even a place like Gates can become overcrowded in popular spots. Some sort of regulations are needed, but they have to fit the place. I support a thoughtful plan that considers both the wilderness and the people who use it."
Ideally, such a plan would already be in place. But as Ulvi says, "We still have time to do it right—if we do it now, while we're ahead of the game. This is our challenge: to take our nation's flagship wilderness park and create a plan that preserves its wilderness character, and opportunities for wilderness recreation, in the long term-before there are any crises, or compromises to be made. That's what is so exciting; we're doing something that's never been done before."
Bill Sherwonit is a nature writer who lives in Anchorage, Alaska.
