Protecting the Copper River Delta

Local citizens, fishermen and conservationists rallied to support the designation of Alaska's Copper River Delta as a wilderness area

By Environmental News Network staff

It is known as the land of a million heartbeats, and that is an understatement.

Home to wolves, wolverines, lynx, sea lions, otter, mink and some of the world's greatest salmon runs, Alaska's Copper River Delta is the largest wetlands complex on the Pacific Coast of North America.

Half of the world's wetlands vanished in the 20th century as land was converted to agricultural and urban use, according to a recent report by the World Resources Institute. But in this part of the world, the rich tapestry of mudflats, coastal mountains, streams and rivers remains virtually untouched.

Stretching across 700,000 acres at the confluence of the Copper River and the Gulf of Alaska, the delta also provides an annual resting and refueling stop for 16 million migratory birds, including the endangered western sandpipers and dusky Canada geese. As an ecosystem of unparalleled productivity, it is considered to be the most important shorebird staging area in the Western Hemisphere.

"During the first week of May huge smokes of birds ungulate through the air," said Scott Anaya of the National Wildlife Federation. "They come overhead and your hair blows back."

When Anaya witnessed the initial phase of a proposed 55-mile road construction project in 1998, it compelled him to spend a career trying to protect it.

Since then, he has been the chief coordinator for the Copper River Delta Coalition, an alliance of eight regional and national conservation groups that have been working to secure wilderness designation for the pristine area.

While the plan by the Chugach Alaska logging corporation is legal, conservation groups say the proposed road would indelibly scar the landscape and pave the way for logging and coal mining. Twenty-nine miles of the proposed road would cut through public land in the Chugach National Forest and it would sever at least 400 streams that feed the pristine eastern portion of the Copper River Delta.

According to Anaya, the area's timber is not nearly as valuable as other national forests such as the Tongass that are logged by Native corporations.

"Due to the fact that the trees do not grow as fast or as tall as trees in the Tongass, (the logging corporation) would have to cut about 12,000 acres or more to sell about 9,000 acres of trees," he said.

Even if the corporation were to abandon its plan conservation groups worry that the area, which is endowed with significant oil, coal and tourism opportunities, will succumb to overuse and development.

"A wilderness designation is the best way to keep wildlands as they are, and the best way to guarantee wild places in Chugach to fish, hunt, hike and live," said Anaya.

Last spring, the U.S. Forest Service followed that advice and recommended wilderness status for the eastern half of the Copper River Delta in the first draft of its "preferred alternative" for the long-term management of the Chugach National Forest, which has not been revised since 1984. The service then changed its mind and came out with a recommendation for a much smaller wilderness area in the northeastern section of the Delta.

The agency has been flooded with more than 30,000 public comments that support a broader wilderness designation.

"Sixty-five percent of the proposed wilderness is rock and ice," Anaya noted, "and it does not include vital areas."

Copyright 2000, Environmental News Network, All Rights Reserved

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National Wildlife Federation: Copper River Delta
15 Most Endangered Lands
Copper River Delta Coalition

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