Anchorage, Alaska, May 16, 1959. Hon. E. L. BARTLETT, U.S. Senate, Washington, D.C.: We protest the creation of a wilderness area in northeast Alaska as being against the best interests of the State. Public hearing should be held in Fairbanks prior to any action by the U.S. Senate. No assurance has been given that mineral development could proceed under the type of withdrawal proposed and regulation we could expect from Government agency with jurisdiction over refuge. ALASKA MINERS' ASSOCIATION, ANCHORAGE BRANCH, ALASKA DEPARTMENT OF FISH AND GAME, Hon. ERNEST GRUENING, Senator from Alaska, Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C. DEAR ERNEST: I am grateful for the copy of S. 1899 and for the opportunity to comment on it. This bill attempts to arbitrarily place wildlife and wilderness values above all others in a part of Alaska that is greater in size than many of our sister States. It seeks to withhold from the State a very substantial part of our total wildlife resources. It will deprive practically all benefits to human beings that this huge 9-million-acre area could provide, and this includes recreation, hunting, fishing, and sightseeing. It will assure wasteful mismanagement of the wildlife resources on the area, and worse, still, it will seriously hinder the efficient management of a much larger area surrounding the wildlife range. This bill will actually work contrary to its expressed objectives. The above statements are incontrovertibly true, and such will be understandable to anyone bothering to examine the facts. First, while the boundaries of the proposed Arctic Wildlife Range are poorly defined in S. 1899, the area involved is tremendous. Despite its low biological productivity as compared to other parts of Alaska, the fish and game occurring on this immense area amount to a large fraction of the State's total supply. This is especially true of grizzly bears and caribou, though moose and sheep are also present in important numbers. A long sad history of Alaska resource mismanagement by people in Washington clearly shows that resource destruction is the inevitable consequence of remote-control manipulations. The only real threat to the wildlife and wilderness of the Alaskan Arctic stems from activities of a handful of wilderness extremists and Federal officials. The Arctic is probably in little more peril of being trampled in future years than is the moon, which suggests that a loftier objective might be available to these crusaders. Restrictions on the use of mechanized means of transportation, considered essential by wilderness enthusiasts, would effectively deny public usage. This would, of course, mean that if the Secretary of the Interior did allow hunting and fishing, it would be all but impossible for such activities to be practiced. As a consequence, hunting and fishing pressure cannot be distributed widely and in accordance with resource availability, but must be concentrated in areas which are accessible to the public. This will unquestionably leave vast herds of big game to die of starvation, disease, or preditation on the Arctic Wildlife Range, beyond reach of humans who may have vital need for such animals. This is what the backers of this bill refer to as administering in the public interest. To manage the wildlife resources in this huge sector of Alaska's Arctic will require a modern staff of professional biologists such as the Alaska Department of Fish and Game has available. It would be a great disservice to local and national interests to drop this huge responsibility on a skeletonized arm of a Federal Agency with full knowledge that wasteful mismanagement can be the only result. There is much that the Federal Government could do for conservation and restoration of fish and game resources in Alaska that would tend to compensate for the pitiful results of inept Federal treatment in the past. It is almost unbelievable, therefore, that Federal efforts should now be directed in this negative way to withhold a large part of the State's resources. Alaskans stand opposed to this scheme, and you are urged to do whatever is possible to discourage passage of S. 1899. Sincerely, C. L. ANDERSON, Commissioner. P.S.-I am sending a copy of a letter sent to former Delegate Bartlett last year which dealt with land withdrawals and the policy of the Fish and Game Commission. At its recent meeting, the new Alaska Board of Fish and Game adopted this same policy. The other points in the letter are just as applicable now as when the letter was written. MAY 23, 1959. Hon. FRED M. SEATON, DEAR MR. SECRETARY: I am gravely concerned about the proposed withdrawal of 9 million acres of land in northeast Alaska for a wildlife preserve. It has been suggested that the area proposed for withdrawal is so remote and inaccessible that there should be no cause for objection. I cannot agree with this position, for the proposal has other implications deserving of close examination by the State. Figures recently released by the Department of the Interior indicate some 922 million acres of land in Alaska presently enbraced in Federal withdrawals and reservations, a condition long resisted by Alaskans because of its adverse effect on settlement and development and the difficulty of restoring lands once withdrawn. The proposed one-tenth increase in such withdrawn acreage at the outset of our State land selection program and of new State responsibilities in highway construction is doubly disturbing. Each withdrawal of land by the Federal Government reduces the area of the Federal public domain and operates to increase the percentage of highway matching funds required of the State. Recent hearings on the Alaskan omnibus bill have illustrated the untimeliness and the adverse effect of so sweeping a withdrawal just at the time Alaska faces its full responsibility in this area. It is estimated that the proposed withdrawal will have the immediate effect of costing the State some $600,000 annually in increased highway expense under the Federal formula. Insofar as a Federal game preserve is concerned, one of such magnitude made at this time would in appreciable measure defeat transfer to the State of jurisdiction over its wildlife. Withdrawal of the land for Federal management of wildlife there situate would, to that extent, vitiate transfer to the State of control of its wildlife. Because I believe the proposed withdrawal not wholly essential for the purpose intended, and because it would retard other essential State programs, I am obliged to oppose the withdrawal proposed by S. 1899, and shall appreciate its further consideration by the Department of the Interior. Sincerely yours, WILLIAM A. EGAN, Governor of Alaska. EL CAJON, CALIF. HONORABLE SIR: I congratulate you on your bill (S. 1899) to establish an Arctic wildlife range. You and Representative Bonner show great foresight in protecting this land's native animals. LARRY JOHNSON. Senator WARREN G. MAGNUSON, BALTIMORE, MD., June 25, 1959. Chairman, Senate Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, DEAR SIR: In the present age of rapidly expanding civilization foresight is needed to provide for the preservation of areas, manifesting different ecological associations, sufficiently large to permit the study of virgin flora and fauna. We are now in a position to leave an irreplaceable and most important scientific, recreational, and esthetic legacy to the future generations. I urge the Senate Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce to give a favorable and speedy report on the bill, S. 1899, providing for the creation of the Arctic wildlife range. Alaska contains presently more virgin land than any other State, but without proper protection this land will soon be developed, and the wild herds of caribou and wolves, as well as the other forms of tundra life that cannot adjust to human intrusion, will be threatened with extinction. Sincerely yours, HANS KRIMM. [From the Alaska Sportsman, July 1959] MAIN TRAILS AND BYPATHS The Secretary of Interior has asked Congress to approve a bill drafted by his office to declare 9 million acres of northeast Alaska an Arctic wildlife range. The Department of Interior's Fish and Wildlife Service has likewise been instructed to request withdrawal of this area from entry. Secretary Fred A. Seaton declares that such action by Congress would be "the only feasible opportunity for maintaining a primitive frontier large enough for the preservation of the caribou, the grizzly, the Dall sheep, the wolverine, the polar bear, and other animals which require unrestricted range." It is declared the bill in question would permit the Secretary to authorize mineral activity within the area, but at the same time would preclude appropriation of title to the surface of the land. Hunting, fishing, and trapping would also be authorized under the bill in accordance with the laws and regulations of the State of Alaska. We have been asked for our opinion from a number of sources, both pro and con, each equally vehement in conviction that his side is right. Now, we certainly will not imply in the least that it is not wise policy to preserve such a wilderness area. We will not even argue with the vast size of this proposed withdrawal. We do not know that the history of our American westward march through the wilderness includes many black marks of our carelessness with our once bountiful resources and too often complete disregard of our responsibilities to generations unborn for whom we are in a sense trustees of the collective natural resource. Nor will we argue that the Department of Interior and the Fish and Wildlife Service are not the proper agencies to administer such an area. These men are in the most part our most knowledgeable citizens in the field of wildlife, and in most part sincerely dedicated men in whom we can place the greatest trust. But we do feel that this implied "last" withdrawal of land on the last frontier by a Federal agency should be very carefully examined as to its propriety from the standpoint of whether or not, in acquiescing to such a withdrawal we may be finally sacrificing a still greater resource of the American citizen-our basic freedom to rule and not be ruled. We emphasize that in principle, withdrawal of land for protection of natural resources is sound practice. Our concern is quite honestly for American freedom itself. Alaska-"last frontier"-may well represent not only the last of America's wilderness lands, but quite possibly the area in which the American people may have their last opportunity to decide the final direction which the American democratic system will take along its path of inevitable development from clumsy colonial settlement to a hoped-for eventual golden age among united nations in a peaceful world. In the creation of the United States, the basic rights of man were guaranteedwith a minimum of Government control. Further, the rights of States (collective groups of American men) were likewise guaranteed a measure of freedom from Government interference. Of these principles America began to grow and the guarantee of these freedoms became of itself a beacon whose light brought warmth and hope to peoples the world over. During recent decades, all of us have become increasingly aware of a subtle change in our way of life. As our free land became greater, and the problems of administering the Government and the preservation of those freedoms more complex, the basic freedoms of each citizen became more closely interrelated with the "greater good" of all. It became necessary to depend less and less upon our own personal abilities to aid in the job of responsible government. As our numbers grew and our problems increased, it became necessary to depend more and more upon a fundamental faith in the proposition that the inherent "goodness" of our democratic system would forever guard the basic freedoms of the individual, no matter how far removed from us our actual governing officers might be in a physical sense. The In the years of a few decades back, a free American citizen did as his westward moving father did before him. He chose his land, broke his sod, and built a home. Today, to an alarming degree, the lands remaining to settlement are not "allowed" to settlement, but "labeled" and "planned" for settlement. Government says this land or that land is fit or not fit for agriculture. Other land is marked on the Government maps for "industrial use" or perhaps for "civic campsite." The land is "free" only to the extent that Government decides it to be. Certainly these rules and regulations and these programs of "planned settlement" were made for the greater good of all by well meaning and responsible people. But how far have we come from the America which grew to be great in guarantee of individual freedoms? How much loss of faith is implied in the denial of an individual's right to choose his own soil and his own manner of home and enterprise? In the case of the current bill in Congress to withdraw 9 million acres of land for an Arctic wildlife range in the State of Alaska-how proper is it that Federal Government can convert to its design the lands within any State? By what standard of freedom guarantee does a Federal Government pretend to operate when in 1 year it gives guarantee of States rights to a frontier land, as it has done in Alaska, allows it 25 years in which to choose some 100 million acres of land to its own use, and in the next year subtracts from the total of lands available for that choosing an amount of acreage equal to a tenth of the total? The men who built America's wilderness frontiers into the great country it is today were attracted to the new lands because of the increased measure of basic freedoms available in those lands. As those freedoms became more and more curtailed or regulated, he advanced in turn to first one frontier and then another. In Alaska, the frontier American has come to the end of his trail. He no longer can leave the regulated area and end the attrition of his freedoms by moving to a new frontier. Now he must await the test of his freedoms with the faith that in this inherent goodness of freedom for the individual there can be no real fear of appreciable loss of those freedoms, for the system in which he lives and the Government of that system guarantees those freedoms. Or does it? Senator BARTLETT. The hearing will now stand in recess. I thank all the witnesses for having come here and having testified during so much of the day. We certainly would have liked to have given more notice on this hearing, had it been possible. Thank you very much. (Whereupon, at 5:55 p.m., the hearing was recessed, subject to the call of the Chair.) (The following letters and telegrams were received for the record:) THE IZAAK WALTON LEAGUE OF AMERICA, INC., Washington, D.C., July 2, 1959. Hon. WARREN G. MAGNUSON, DEAR SENATOR MAGNUSON: At the hearings on S. 1899, to establish an Arctic wildlife range in Alaska, Senator Bartlett asked me to supplement my brief statement with a bibliography of materials available to the Izaak Walton League in studying the proposal. We are happy to attach such a partial list. We have not included items which had been included by others during the course of the hearings, e.g. Dr. Howard Zahniser. The published material studied has been supplemented by discussions with a considerable number of competent individuals who have studied the area itself in person, including Dr. Olaus Murie, Dr. Starkey Leopold, Lowell Sumner, Lois Crisler, George Collins and others, and have had the opportunity to see their movies and slides of the area. We appreciate very much the demonstrated interest of the committee members in this important legislation. Sincerely, J. W. PENFOLD, Conservation Director. PARTIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF PUBLICATIONS, REPORTS, AND MANUSCRIPTS CONTAINING INFORMATION ON THE AREA CONTAINED IN THE PROPOSED ARCTIC GAME RANGE (S. 1899) PUBLICATIONS Anderson, J. P. 1941-50. Flora of Alaska and Adjacent Part of Canada. Bailey, A. N. 1948. Birds of Arctic Alaska. Colorado Museum of Natural History. Popular Series No. 8. 317 pp. Bee, J. W., and E. R. Hall. 1956. Mammals of Northern Alaska. University of Kansas Museum of Natural History Miscellaneous Publication 8: 1–309. Buckley, J. L. 1957. Wildlife in Arctic and Subarctic Alaska, Oregon State College Biology Colloquium, 18: 89–99. Buckley, J. L., and W. L. Libby. Research and reports on aerial interpretation of terrestrial bioenvironments and faunal populations. Arctic Aeromedical Laboratory, Technical Report 57-32. 105 pp. Collins, G. L., and Lowell Sumner. 1953. Northeast Arctic-The Last Great Frontier. Sierra Club Bulletin, December. Gabrielson, I. N., and F. C. Lincoln. 1959. Birds of Alaska. Stackpole Co., Harrisburg. 922 pp. 129 pp. Haulter, E. 1941-50. Flora of Alaska and Yukon. Hakan Ohlssons Canning River Region of Northern Alaska. Additional references have been cited in the list provided to the committee by Howard Zahniser representing the Wilderness Society. MANUSCRIPTS Kessel, Brina. Birds of the Sheenjik River Valley, Alaska. In preparation. Small animals. Report on trapping (in the Sheenjik River Valley. Alaska). 4 pp. manuscript report. NATIONAL AUDUBON SOCIETY, Re S. 1899. CHAIRMAN, Senate Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, The Capitol, Washington, D.C. DEAR SIR: The National Audubon Society is very much in favor of the establisment of the Arctic Wildlife Range in Alaska introduced by Senator Magnuson. We, therefore, very much hope that your committee, in its wisdom, may approve of this bill, sending it to the Senate for action with your full support. Sincerely yours, JOHN H. BAKER, President. |