NEWS & PUBLICATIONS

Alaska's National Parks
Conflict, Controversy, and Congress

Twenty years after passage of a landmark wilderness protection law, the integrity of Alaska's national parks still is jeopardized

A Dangerous Crossroads

   After four years of intense debate in Congress and the efforts of thousands of citizens across the country, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) was signed into law by President Jimmy Carter on December 2, 1980, one of his last legislative acts as president. 

   The law set aside more than 104 million acres of federal public lands in Alaska, protecting an area larger than California, doubling the size of the National Park and National Wildlife Refuge systems, and designating 25 streams as National Wild and Scenic Rivers. In his book Outdoor Journal, Carter called ANILCA

   ". . . one of my most gratifying achievements in public life. . . . This final victory was especially pleasing because it was also a triumph over a mighty phalanx of greedy special interests who had made a last-minute effort to kill the bill."

   Although ANILCA is as much about balanced resource management as about land protection—it tripled the nation’s Wilderness System but also opened 95 percent of the land areas where exploratory drilling for oil and mineral resources might be productive—the Alaska congressional delegation has attempted for years to weaken the law’s environmental protections. Alaska politicians and developers have even stymied National Park Service attempts to carry out the act’s intent. As a result, implementation of some of ANILCA’s most important provisions has been deferred. Today, the confusion and conflict engendered by congressional assaults has become a crisis for the parks.

   Decisions made over the next few years will determine the quality of the parks and the experiences of visitors well into the 21st century. The "crown jewels" of Alaska stand at a crossroads. 

   One path leads to a stewardship that preserves these great parks as large, pristine ecosystems where wildlife roams free and rural residents continue traditional ways of life. The other path, favored by Alaska’s congressional delegation and their developer allies, leads to parks criss-crossed by roads, pockmarked by random commercial developments, and scarred by unregulated use of motorized vehicles.

   Although in the lower 48 states residents are never more than 10 miles from a road, in Alaska a traveler can walk from the Arctic Coast to Bristol Bay—more than 700 miles—without encountering a road or village. The state is home to more caribou than people. It holds the continent’s highest mountain, largest sub-polar icefield and glaciers, and grandest remaining stands of temperate rainforest as well as the nation’s longest undammed rivers and largest herds of free-roaming wildlife.

   ANILCA sought to protect this wild heritage, adding 47 million acres to the National Park System and increasing Alaska’s total national park acreage to nearly 55 million acres, two-thirds of the entire system. More than half—32 million acres—was designated wilderness (all other U.S. parklands combined include about 6 million acres of wilderness). Congress achieved these ambitious figures by creating ten new national park units (designated as parks, preserves, or monuments) and expanding three existing parks.

   Congress recognized that the parks and refuges under ANILCA would encompass a number of small communities as well as lands owned by individuals, the state, and Alaska Native corporations. To protect the property rights of people in these communities, ANILCA ensures that citizens have "adequate and feasible" access to the thousands of acres owned by the state of Alaska, Native corporations, and individuals within Alaska’s parklands. It also guarantees the use of snowmachines, motorboats, airplanes, and nonmotorized surface transportation "for traditional activities [where permitted] and for travel to and from villages and homesites." Even where allowed, however, the use of motorized vehicles is subject to "reasonable regulation" to protect the "natural and other values" of the conservation lands.

   Another key compromise was the creation of large preserves in association with the parks. All 9.4 million acres of preserve lands are open to trapping, sport hunting, and sport fishing as well as subsistence hunting and fishing. Outside Alaska, sport hunting in national park units occurs in only a few national seashores, national recreation areas, and national preserves. 

   The only national park outside Alaska that permits sport hunting is Grand Teton, where sportsmen temporarily deputized as park rangers are permitted to cull elk. Within Alaska, sport and/or subsistence hunting is allowed in 12 of the 15 national park units. 

   In fact, ANILCA directs park managers "to protect the resources related to subsistence needs" and "to provide opportunity for rural residents engaged in a subsistence way of life to continue to do so." However, subsistence activity must take place in a manner compatible with protection of other "wilderness resource values" and consistent with the principles of "scientific management" and the maintenance of "natural and healthy" wildlife populations.

   Much has changed in Alaska since President Carter signed ANILCA into law. Alaska’s population has increased more than 50 percent, with most of that growth in urban areas. More residents are looking to parks for their outdoor adventures and, in some cases, demanding improved access and more "people friendly" parks. 

   Tourism has moved ahead of timber and commercial fishing to become Alaska’s second-largest industry, behind only oil and gas. Annual visitation nearly tripled between 1980 and 1997, from 500,000 people to 1.35 million, and tourists now spend more than $1 billion in the state yearly. The National Park Service tallied 2 million recreational visits to Alaska’s 15 units in 1998, nearly double the number 10 years earlier. The majority are drawn by wildlife, scenic beauty, Native culture, and opportunities for wilderness adventure—just the things that Alaska’s parks are intended to protect.

   More and more local businesses are tapping into the profitable opportunities that the parks provide, as indicated by increased business permits issued at some units. For example, between 1995 and 1999, business permits at Lake Clark National Park more than tripled, rising from 22 to 77. In 1999, the Park Service staff that manages three remote units in Southwest Alaska (Katmai, Lake Clark, and Aniakchak) issued 250 business permits, second highest in the entire National Park System, behind only Yosemite.

   The growth in tourism and Alaska’s population is inextricably linked to another shift: ever-improving technology and changes in its use. Cruise ships are bigger than ever. A boom has occurred in the use of personal watercraft. A new generation of more powerful snowmachines goes faster and farther into more remote terrain than anyone could have imagined two decades ago. 

   In one Native village near Katmai National Park, where residents did not own a single all-terrain- vehicle (ATV) in 1974, ATVs now outnumber people.

   Flightseeing—sightseeing from aircraft—has become so popular at Denali that in some areas backpackers are besieged almost from dawn to dusk by the drone of low-flying small aircraft.

   Alaska’s congressional delegation has worked to increase development and recreational access at the expense of ecological integrity in the national parks. 

   Since 1995, the Alaska delegation, representing 600,000 people, has had extraordinary power over all national park legislation and funding. Never before in American history have members of Congress from one state controlled three of the four committees most critical to our national parks. 

   Even more sobering, according to statistics from the League of Conservation Voters, the environmental voting record of Alaska’s congressional delegation ranks well below the combined average for both Democrats and Republicans in Congress. Among other actions, the trio has attempted to: 

• block efforts to regulate cruise ships and commercial fishing in Glacier Bay;
• force construction of a major new road or railroad through Denali;
• create thousands of miles of highway rights-of-way through Wrangell-St. Elias, Denali, and other parks;
• crowd more people into critical bear habitat in Katmai; and
• authorize virtually unrestricted use of helicopters and other motorized vehicles in park wilderness.