Alaska lands bill still debated after 20 years

Kenai Fjords National Park was one of many parks established in 1980 by the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act

November 29, 2000
Web posted at: 9:07 AM EST (1407 GMT)

In this story: A far-reaching conservation measure Not a popular bill Some Alaskans still angry RELATED STORIES, SITES

SEWARD, Alaska (Reuters) - On a clear day in this gem of a town, Resurrection Bay sparkles, blue-white glaciers gleam on surrounding mountains and business people count their blessings, especially those in the proximity of Kenai Fjords National Park.

The park, one of those established 20 years ago by the sweeping Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, has helped turn a sleepy fishing port 120 miles south of Anchorage into a major tourist destination. Those in the tourist business have little doubt about Kenai Fjords' value.

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"I love the park. It's become our bread and butter," said Susan Swiderski, manager of a gift shop called Once in a Blue Moose, who once guided tours there. "It's fabulous. It's created an industry."

The 570,000-acre park means more than money for Seward, she said. "I think it's very important to our sensibility to have access to beauty."

At Kenai Fjords, finger-like channels and quiet coves edge a northern rain forest. The waters are thick with otters, whales and other sea life, along with chunks of glacial ice. Above the shores loom steep mountains in the Chugach Range, blanketed by the Harding Ice Field, a remnant of the last Ice Age.

The Alaska lands act, or ANILCA, is considered one of the greatest conservation measures in U.S. history, putting more land into protected status than any other single act.

It designated more than 100 million acres as parks, refuges and other protected areas. After a monumental, multiyear debate, it passed Congress in 1980 and President Jimmy Carter, rejected by U.S. voters the previous month, signed it on Dec. 2 in one of his last acts before the Reagan era began.

It expanded three well-known national parks -- Denali, Glacier Bay and Katmai -- and created 10 others, including Kenai Fjords. It also established wilderness areas such as the Admiralty Island national monument in the Tongass National Forest, set up new wildlife refuges and expanded old ones and designated 26 waterways as wild and scenic rivers.

Seward has done well by ANILCA and Kenai Fjords, Mayor Edgar Blatchford said. "I think it has made Seward a destination spot. People go to Seward because they want to see the glorious Kenai Fjords National Park. There is a recognition that Kenai Fjords is a great part of our social and economic wellbeing."

In the late 1970s, attitudes were far different. Passage of the bill, placing huge amounts of land into protected status and out of reach for developers, touched off a revolt. Some even called for the state to secede from the United States.

Seward, like the rest of Alaska, was caught up in that revolt. "Many if not most Alaskans do not believe their state has the sovereignty, or shares the rights, of the other states," the Seward Phoenix Log newspaper editorialized in 1980.

President Jimmy Carter considered the Alaska lands act a major legacy of his administration

For Carter, who spurred the lands act along with his declaration in 1978 that 56 million acres of federal land in Alaska would be protected as national monuments, the legislation was one of his administration's top legacies.

He ranks the achievement with the Camp David peace accords between Egypt and Israel, he told audiences in Anchorage in August, when the Alaska Conservation Foundation and University of Alaska Anchorage held events to commemorate ANILCA.

"Of all of the things that I've done, nothing exceeds my pride in having been permitted to play a small part in the passage of this legislation," he told the group, which gave him a standing ovation.

But while the debate was raging, Carter was one of the men most hated by Alaskans. At the Alaska State Fair, one booth sold chances to throw balls either at his picture or one of Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeni. "The fair people made a lot more money on my picture than the ayatollah's," Carter said in August.

But he argues that Alaska has prospered economically since ANICLA, in contrast to critics' predictions of economic lockup. The tourism industry, for example, has boomed. Visits to Alaska's national parks have quadrupled since ANILCA's passage, to 2 million a year, according to the National Park Service.

Still, some Alaskans remain angry about the act. U.S. Rep. Don Young, the Republican who has held Alaska's single at-large seat in Congress since 1973, called the legislation "criminal."

Steve Borrell, Alaska Miners Association executive director, is also among the critics. "I don't know of anybody who thinks that Alaska's a better place because of ANILCA," he said.

For example, it dashed any hope of establishing a string of huge mines along the mineral-rich southern slope of the Brooks Range, he said. Instead, the far-north mountain range, running west from the Arctic coast to the Canadian border, is parceled out into national parks, preserves and a wildlife refuge.

ANILCA's effects were even worse than feared, Borrell said, "because people were convinced that the act would be a compromise that prevented further lockups of the state, and that has not been the case."

The 1980 act enlarged the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, now at the center of a debate over oil drilling

A major unresolved issue is the fate of the 19-million-acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. ANILCA doubled the size of the refuge, previously known as the Arctic National Wildlife Range, but left Congress the option of allowing oil drilling in the 1.5-million-acre coastal plain.

Politicians of both parties in oil-dependent Alaska, Inupiat Eskimos of the North Slope and the oil industry all believe a potential oil bonanza -- perhaps another Prudhoe Bay, the field that spurred Alaska's oil boom -- lies under the coastal plain. They are clamoring for the area to be opened to drilling.

Environmentalists and the Gwich'in Athabaskan Indians who live on the southern edge of the refuge want the coastal plain to stay closed to development. They say oil rigs would damage the huge Porcupine caribou herd, which uses the coast to give birth to its young, and other wildlife.

They want President Clinton to follow Carter's lead by using his last days in office to strike a blow for the environment. They, and Carter, have asked Clinton to declare the refuge's coastal plain a national monument.

"This is, I think, something that will go down in history, if President Clinton wants to have a legacy like people remember President Carter," Gwich'in Steering Committee chairman Jonathan Solomon said. "He can protect wildlife and humans at the same time."

Copyright 2000 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Kenai Fjords National Park
Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980
Once in a blue moose
Tongass National Forest
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

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