Reflections on ANILCA redux XXV

In the waning days of his administration, then President Jimmy Carter passed through Anchorage en route to a meeting in Asia. His shocking and draconian use of the Antiquities Act to implement his vision of how Alaskans should be concentrated in isolated parcels surrounded by inaccessible, withdrawn lands had already been implemented. His execution of ANILCA was yet to be. Mr. Carter took a few minutes to meet with several business leaders during his brief stopover, and in the course of his comments observed that when he told his staff he was going to visit some of his friends in Alaska, he was told, "That won't take long."

Twenty-five years later little has changed. Despite the best efforts of the utopians to celebrate the passage of ANILCA, barely 1,000 people signed up to meet and greet the former president in July. Many of them hadn't been conceived when H.R. 39 was introduced.

As we approach this sad milestone, we can look back over the unending disruptions that Mr. Carter precipitated with the stroke of a pen on Dec. 2, 1980. Little needs to be said about the interminable pontification about exploring for oil in the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. If it is fair to compare the impact of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline to that of a piece of thread drawn across a football field, it is fair to compare the impact of drilling in ANWR to a pinhole in that same field.

Likewise, the agony of inholders trying to access their property from Kantishna in Denali to McCarthy in the Wrangells has provided steady fodder for the local press. Conflicts over management of fish and game have been ruinous and have stirred poignant controversy when picturesque predators become prized pelts.

Progress painstaking

Even with an Alaska-friendly federal administration reaching out to the local community, progress has been painstaking. After two decades of running the National Parks as private fiefdoms, a timid effort has been made to standardize the rules relating to crossing park lands, but that effort has been paltry to date.

Miners working obviously navigable stream bottoms are still at risk of being confronted by upland Fish and Wildlife Service managers with little justification. Public Land Orders, temporarily put in place to facilitate the implementation of ANILCA, continue to burden the public record.

The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act called for 80 million acres of land in Alaska to be set aside for additions to the four systems. By the time ANILCA became law, that 80 million acres had grown to over 100 million acres of land that was closed to resource development and created barriers against roads between rural communities. Alaskans are left with only a dream of a railroad from Teller to Tok or electric power from Healy to Bethel.

Hordes of seasonal visitors

The irony before us is that passage of ANILCA has had immeasurable negative consequences for its proponents as well. The pristine "Crown Jewels" are now inundated with hordes of seasonal visitors who continuously traverse the environment and who leave behind a ticky-tack infrastructure that will blight pristine Alaska long after the last mine is reclaimed and seeded over.

Few seem to realize that resource development is a transient use of the land. Second growth forests make improved habitat. Capped oil wells soon become hard to locate. Revegetated tailings piles blend in nicely with the surrounding countryside.

Alaska is blessed with outstanding resources. Knowledgeable observers appreciate that exploitation of those resources with 21st-century methodology need leave little permanent imprint while contributing to the common wealth. ANILCA reflected a lack of sensitivity to this fundamental, and 25 years of experience has provided no evidence to the contrary. It is small wonder that Jimmy Carter, for all his humanitarian credits, has few fans in the Great Land.