Alaska Subsistence: A NPS Management History (Chapter 6)

The Alaska Supreme Court, in February 1985, upset the state's three-year-old subsistence management system when it ruled that "subsistence is not strictly limited to rural communities." Members of the court that year (left to right) included justices Jay A. Rabinowitz (chief), Allen Compton, Warren W. Matthews, Daniel Moore, and Edmund Burke. Alaska Court System

On February 22, 1985, an Alaska Supreme Court decision dealt a major blow to the state's newly developed subsistence management system. On that day, the court announced its verdict in the landmark Madison v. Alaska Department of Fish and Game case. The court concluded, in the words of Justice Daniel A. Moore, Jr., that "subsistence use is not strictly limited to rural communities." The Supreme Court's interpretation of the Alaska constitution's "equal access" doctrine meant that any Alaska Board of Fisheries regulations advocating a rural preference ran contrary to the legislature's intent when it enacted the 1978 subsistence law. The Interior Secretary reacted to the Supreme Court's decision by stating that the Alaska Legislature needed to pass a law guaranteeing a rural subsistence preference; if it did not do so, the federal government would be obliged to assume management of Alaska's subsistence program. The legislature, in fact, eventually did pass an amended subsistence law. The practical effect of the Supreme Court's decision, however, was that for the sixteen-month period between February 1985 and June 1986, there was considerable uncertainty about the future of ANILCA's subsistence management program.

The problem had begun back in 1981, when the Alaska Board of Fisheries—based on the ten "characteristics of subsistence fisheries" that it had developed at its December 1980 meeting—ruled that subsistence fishing in Cook Inlet would be limited to the residents of Tyonek, English Bay, [1] and Port Graham. This ruling excluded a number of longtime subsistence fishers from the Homer and Kenai areas, because neither area fit the board's subsistence criteria. Gene Madison and nine other fishers from the Kenai coastline responded to the Fisheries Board decision by applying for subsistence permits. When these were denied they filed suit, arguing that the 1981 regulation exceeded the scope of the state's subsistence law. These ten appellants were later joined by another group of subsistence fishers, headed by Louis Gjosund, from the Homer area. In two different superior court cases, judges backed the Fisheries Board and ruled that the regulation was "consistent with the statutory grant of authority." But the Supreme Court reversed the trial courts' decisions and argued that the regulation was invalid because it was "contrary to the legislature's intent in enacting the 1978 subsistence law." The Supreme Court ruled that the subsistence law was not specific enough to exclude urban Alaskans from subsistence fishing and hunting. The court thus ruled that all Alaskans, in effect, qualified for a subsistence preference. [2]

Bill Sheffield, Alaska's governor from 1982 to 1986, played an active role in hammering out a revised state subsistence law in response to the Madison decision. ASL/PCA 213-5-2

Alaskans immediately recognized the importance of the Madison decision and the imbalance it created between ANILCA and Alaska's subsistence law. Governor William Sheffield, in response, mulled the matter over for awhile with his advisers; then, on March 13, he submitted a bill for the Alaska legislature's consideration that would include a rural definition in the statutes and thus make state and federal laws mutually compatible. His bill (HB 288) was intended to accomplish that objective by making laws of the regulations that the Supreme Court had struck down on February 22. [3]

The Alaska Board of Game, in response to the Madison decision, convened an emergency meeting to consider management alternatives. At that meeting, held in Juneau on April 2 and 4, the board—fearing that the abandonment of the rural preference would result in a wholesale slaughter of the state's major wildlife species—authorized 54 so-called Tier II subsistence hunts in cases where the number of hunters needed to be limited. (The game board, as noted above, had made a statutory provision in December 1981 for hunts that would rationalize the number of users in times of scarcity, but never before had such a hunt actually been implemented.) Those hoping to obtain permits for these hunts were asked to fill out a questionnaire. Questions were directed at determining three criteria: 1) customary and direct dependence on the resource as the mainstay of one's livelihood, 2) local residency, and 3) availability of alternative resources. Applicants received a maximum of 90 points (30 points for each of the three questions), and only the highest-ranked applicants received permits. The game board's new system, which excluded non-Alaska residents entirely, ensured that many—though not all—of the permit holders would be residents of the game management units where the hunts were planned. [4]

No sooner had the Game Board acted than another court decision was issued that further undermined the state's subsistence regulations. On April 12, 1985, the Alaska Court of Appeals, in State of Alaska vs. Eluska, exonerated a Kodiak resident (David Eluska) who had shot a deer out of season because he claimed to be a subsistence hunter. (The Board of Game, at this time, had issued almost no separate subsistence regulations, and the plaintiff argued that he could not be prosecuted if there were no regulations that specifically provided for subsistence uses.) [5] The court's legitimization of a "subsistence defense" threatened the enforceability of a wide range of wildlife regulations, because it suggested that many practices that would otherwise be considered as the illegal taking or possession of wildlife would be justified in the guise of a "subsistence use." The combined effect of the Madison and Eluska decisions could not be overestimated; it appeared that all Alaskan residents, citing these decisions, could now take fish and wildlife—under the guise of subsistence harvesting—without regard to season and bag limit. [6]

The Alaska Legislature, meanwhile, attempted to hammer out a solution to the subsistence dilemma caused by the Madison decision. Many House members, for instance, were opposed to Sheffield's bill, and two competing bills—HB 414 and HB 448—suggested alternative solutions. But on May 2, HB 288 passed the House on a 21-19 vote, and two days later it passed again in a reconsideration vote, 21-18. That bill, still largely unchanged from its original form, called for a rural preference and defined a rural area as "a community or area of the state in which the taking of fish and wildlife for personal or family consumption is a significant characteristic of the economy of the community or area."

The bill was soon moved to the Alaska Senate and was referred to the State Affairs Committee. The Senate, however, was led by President Don Bennett (R-Fairbanks) who wanted to put off consideration of the bill until 1986, noting that Sheffield's bill was "too complicated and politically charged to be solved in two months." The State Affairs Committee chair, moreover, was Mitch Abood (R-Anchorage), who had submitted a subsistence bill (SB 320) that differed significantly from the House-passed bill. Abood, whose views on the subject were similar to those of the Alaska Outdoor Council, refused to move HB 288, and the legislature took no further action on it before it adjourned for the year on May 12. [7]

A month after the legislature adjourned, on June 10, the game board met again and began reworking the subsistence regulations. On June 21, it completed its task and issued a series of emergency rules regarding the newly developed system. [8] It also announced that more than fifty of the newly improvised Tier II hunts would be held during the late summer-early fall hunting season. The key qualification for inclusion in a Tier II hunt, according to the new criteria, was local residency; urban residents would have a preference for hunts held near the state's large urban areas, while rural residents were similarly favored for hunts held in units away from the road system. The urban sport-hunting establishment howled in protest at the game board's decision; the executive director of the Alaska Outdoor Council, for example, complained that board's action "infuriated many hunters throughout the State who were suddenly excluded from participating in popular big game hunts." [9]

In response to the legislative impasse, Governor Sheffield met with Assistant Interior Secretary William Horn on August 19 to sound out the federal government's next move. Horn's answer came a month later, on September 23, when he informed the governor that Alaska's subsistence program was no longer in full compliance with the requirements of Title VIII of ANILCA. Alaska, Sheffield was told, would have until June 1, 1986 to bring its subsistence management program into compliance with ANILCA. If the state was unable to do so, the federal government would be forced to assume administration of subsistence use on Alaska's federal lands. [10]

Given that ultimatum, the legislature attempted to formulate a bill that would combine the federal government's demand for a rural preference with conditions compatible with the state's own interests. Senator Abood, who had played a major role in derailing HB 288 in the 1985 legislature, frankly stated that the problem lay in the "outdated" definitions of rural and urban residency originally promulgated in ANILCA. "How can you say today that everything is rural but Anchorage, Ketchikan and Fairbanks?" Abood asked rhetorically. Kenai and Soldotna, he added, may well have been rural in 1970 or 1975; now, however, more roads and an increased reliance on air transportation were blurring the distinction between rural and urban settings. [11]

When the legislature convened again in January 1986, legislators—recognizing the unpalatable downside—vowed to pass, by June 1, a version of HB 288 that would satisfy federal regulators. On March 5, the federal government weighed in on the legitimacy of that definition; Assistant Interior Secretary Horn flew in from Washington and testified that "In my opinion, the pending bill [SCS CSHB288] would be certified by the Department of the Interior." [12] A week later, the Senate Resources Committee held a hearing on the bill and emerged with two key definitions that would remain unchanged after that day. The committee now defined a rural area as "a community or area of the state in which the non-commercial, customary and traditional use of fish or game for personal or family consumption is a principal characteristic of the economy of the community or area." The bill also provided a new definition of "subsistence uses;" they were "the noncommercial, customary and traditional uses of wild, renewable resources by a resident domiciled in a rural area of the state." Finally, the bill provided a new method (a revision of the 1978 bill) by which subsistence resources would be allocated in the event of a shortage. The Resources Committee approved the bill on April 15. [13]

State Senator Rick Halford, in the spring of 1986, urged his colleagues to adopt a new subsistence law based on economic need rather than a rural preference. ASL/PCA 01-3630

The bill was then referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Patrick Rodey (D-Anchorage). During the committee's deliberation, Sen. Rick Halford (R-Chugiak) inserted an amendment linking subsistence with economic need, and the committee passed the bill (which included Halford's amendment) on April 19. Halford, an advocate of sport hunting interests, inserted this "needs-based" approach because it allowed access to subsistence resources by urban as well as rural residents. (Halford maintained that "many Alaskans are frustrated by the subsistence law" and that passage of a rural-preference bill "will mean more court cases, more dividing of the people of Alaska and continued conflict.") Interior officials made it known, however, that Halford's provision violated federal law and that they would not accept any bill that did not include a rural preference. The bill then moved to the Senate floor, where a key vote was to take place. Would a "needs-based" approach, or a rural preference, survive in the final Senate bill? Senator Stevens's advice to the legislature was simple; adopt a rural preference or face a federal subsistence takeover. [14]

Robert E. Gilmore, in the spring of 1986, was the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's regional director for Alaska. In that capacity, he came within an eyelash of assuming administrative control over Alaska's subsistence harvest. On May 10, however, the Alaska legislature passed a revised subsistence law, and the state retained management authority. ADN

On Friday, May 9—just a few days before the legislature adjourned for the year—two key subsistence-related events took place. Federal officials, preparing to assume subsistence management duties if the state legislature failed to pass an appropriate bill by June 1, announced that they had recently created a five-person Subsistence Resource Management Board, which consisted of "top officials" of the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Forest Service, and Fish and Wildlife Service. Robert Gilmore, Regional Director of the Fish and Wildlife Service and chair of the new board, stated that "it is our intention to make the transition from state to federal management as simple and cost effective as possible," and he also said that "we will do everything in our power to open federal lands to hunting and fishing seasons as Alaskans have come to expect." But lacking other alternatives, he noted, federal officials "must nevertheless proceed in the development and implementation of a federal subsistence management program." [15]

John G. (Jack) Fuller, a House member from Nome from 1979 to 1987, was a strong supporter of the revised subsistence bill that the legislature passed in 1986. ASL/PCA 01-2484

That step, however, proved unnecessary because of action taking place in Juneau. That same day, Governor Sheffield's subsistence bill—by now somewhat modified, as noted above—was finally considered on the Senate floor. In a key vote, the Senate voted 11-9 to reject the Judiciary Committee's version of the bill. It then voted 13-7 to adopt the Resources Committee's version. Several amendment's were then offered on the Senate floor, a key one (by Sen. Jack Coghill) being a personal use amendment that was similar to Halford's needs-based approach. [16] Coghill's amendment was rejected on a 10-10 tie vote; shortly afterward, the Senate passed the Resource Committee's version of the subsistence bill, 12-8. [17] House concurrence with the Senate bill followed a day later, and Sheffield signed the bill into law on May 30. [18] Rep. Jack Fuller (D-Nome), who for years had been closely following subsistence issues, noted that "the bush is very comfortable with the bill. It's taking us back to 1984 where we were before Madison." Shortly afterward, the rural definition was incorporated into the state statutes, and the game board repealed the Tier II regulations, established in December 1981, that had been used on various hunts beginning in April 1985. [19]

The state's action, taken just three weeks before the June 1 deadline, guaranteed that subsistence would continue to be a state-managed activity for the foreseeable future. The legislature, at long last, had crafted a subsistence statute that would hold up in state court as well as keep the state in compliance with ANILCA. The program that resulted from that law promised to give priority to customary and traditional uses of fish and wildlife by residents of rural communities and areas.

In the wake of the legislature's approval of a revised subsistence law, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game continued to manage Alaska's fish and wildlife throughout the state; they did so with the reassuring knowledge that they had the legal clearance to do so for subsistence uses as well as for sport, commercial, and personal-use purposes. The state agency continued to administer the subsistence regulations through the fish and game boards.

The game board responded to the revised subsistence law by making a series of new determinations of rural versus non-rural residency. Their first actions were taken in a Juneau emergency meeting from May 27 to June 4, 1986, less than a month after the subsistence law was passed. Because the previous year's Tier II hunts were now irrelevant, the board—hoping to re-establish a legal basis for future hunts—made its initial rural versus non-rural determinations in areas where Tier II hunts had been held during the summer and fall of 1985. Five months later, in late November 1986, the Joint Board of Fisheries and Game met in hopes of classifying each Alaska community as either rural or non-rural. Using more sophisticated criteria than the game board had used, the joint board largely rubber-stamped the game board's actions and classified many additional communities as well. They were unable to complete the task, however, and it was not until March 1987 that the joint board had completed its initial classification. [20] In 1987 and 1988, the joint boards mulled over the proposed reclassification of several communities that had both rural and non-rural characteristics, [21] and in April 1989 a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals judge handed down a key decision about the Kenai Peninsula, another area with both rural and non-rural characteristics. [22] By the end of the decade, rural Alaska (as designated by the joint board) was somewhat smaller than the joint board had decreed back in April 1982. All of Alaska was rural except for a majority of the Kenai Peninsula; the Valdez, Ketchikan, and Juneau areas; and most of the railbelt between Seward and Fairbanks. [23]

The fish and game boards made other actions in response to the new subsistence law. Because a rural preference had been reinstituted, the Tier II hunts of 1985 were discarded and the three-tiered system in place prior to February 1985 was restored. [24] Because a key to eligibility under the new system was a community's ability to prove "customary and traditional" use of local subsistence resources (using the eight criteria adopted in December 1981), the Alaska game and fish boards—backed by the research efforts of ADF&G Subsistence Division staff—made a number of "customary and traditional" determinations. These were not the first such determinations; prior to 1986, the Board of Game had made a "C&T" ruling on Nelchina caribou, and the Board of Fisheries had made a similar ruling on Copper River salmon. The number of rulings increased, however, after 1986; typically, the game and fish boards made such determinations for populations and stocks that were subject to regulatory actions or conservation concerns. By 1989, the two boards had made C&T determinations on most major wildlife species, black bears being a notable exception. [25]

The Alaska Game Board, as had been true since ANILCA's passage, relied to some extent on the recommendations provided by the six regional advisory councils, the scores of local advisory committees, and agency staff. Congress, through the provisions contained in Section 805 of ANILCA, intended that the six regional advisory councils would be primary vehicles by which subsistence information would be reported to the fish and game boards, and they would also be the primary forums for advocating issues of interest to subsistence users.

In order to carry out the stipulations of Section 805, the ADF&G in early 1985 hired staff coordinators for each regional advisory council (as noted in Chapter 5), and several of the councils held a meeting soon afterward. (Except for the Interior Council, the various councils had been inactive for the previous two years, and a few had been dormant since their initial meetings in early 1982.) The various coordinators were hopeful that each council would start meeting on a regular basis; two meetings per year was considered the minimum in order to transmit meaningful recommendations to the fish and game boards. (See Appendix 2.) The coordinators were similarly hopeful that the councils would send annual reports on their activities to the Interior Secretary's representative. [26] That lofty goal, however, was dashed by the grim financial realities of the mid-1980s. The "oil bust," caused by a reduction in the cost per barrel of North Slope oil combined with a reduction of oil output, put a severe strain on the state's budget, and the reduction in the state's budget was felt particularly keenly by the ADF&G's Division of Boards. As a report written in late 1985 noted,

This financial crunch was exacerbated by the federal government's refusal to provide the full measure of fiscal participation that had been suggested by ANILCA. As noted in Chapter 5, so-called "ANILCA reimbursements" had begun in Fiscal Year 1982, and for the next several years the federal government had provided the state $1 million annually to the state. (See Table 5-3) State and federal authorities, however, quarreled over the funding level. State officials, citing Section 805(e) language that such reimbursement levels "may not exceed 50 per centum of such costs in any fiscal year" and that total annual payments "shall not exceed the sum of $5,000,000," complained that they were being underpaid. Fish and Game Commissioner Don Collinsworth, for example, complained in a 1987 letter that

A year later, the State of Alaska's concerns were again reflected in language contained within the federal government's annual Section 806 report. "The state of Alaska," the report noted, "believes that serious consideration should be given to significantly increasing the grant program administered by the Fish and Wildlife Service to the Department of Fish and Game to assist in both the fish and game advisory system as well as subsistence research." [29] But federal officials were lukewarm to the state's pleas, for two reasons. First, they found it impossible—despite repeated attempts—to pinpoint where, within ADF&G, the Section 805 funds were being spent. [30] Second, they were concerned about the health of the regional advisory councils. A major purpose of the ANILCA reimbursement was for council support, but federal officials were well aware that the state was less than enthusiastic in this regard. They perceived that the state was using very little of the federal government's Section 805 funds for the operation of the regional councils. This perception, correct or not, did not auger well for increased reimbursements in future years. [31]

The regional councils' anemic funding levels, which persisted for much of the 1980s, resulted in their inability to perform many basic functions. Because of chronic funding shortages, and because of problems related to weather and the itinerant nature of subsistence activity, the three councils that were located away from Alaska's main road and ferry system (specifically the Western, Southwest, and Arctic councils) met either intermittently or not at all for the remainder of the decade. Due to the paucity of meetings, none of the councils was able to complete an annual report. In the other three regions, travel costs were less burdensome; consequently, the regional councils were able to meet more frequently. But even in these regions, councils rarely met more than once per year, and the preparation of annual reports was the exception rather than the rule. [32] Exacerbating these difficulties was the ADF&G's inability to keep staff coordinators (see Appendix 2). Although all six regions had a staff liaison in June 1985, budget difficulties forced a reduction in the number of staff positions to five in June 1986, to four in June 1987, and to just one in June 1988. [33]

As if financial and staff difficulties were not enough, the various regional councils also suffered from a lack of direction; as Morehouse and Holleman have noted, the various councils "were not committed to subsistence uses in purpose or composition. They were also ... lacking in clear, consistent procedures." [34] The Division of Boards, asked to look into the matter, "identified as a major concern the ambiguity surrounding the role of the advisory committees in the State rule-making processes" and noted the "lack of definition and clarity in the State and Federal statutes regarding the role of the committees and councils." Some regional councils, as a result, did not meet because of a perceived "lack of pressing needs." The writing of annual reports, moreover, may have been overlooked either because the councils did not perceive "a sufficient number of issues to warrant the writing of an annual report" or because of a "perception that agencies are not responsive to these reports." [35]

Two specific problems—federal versus state mandates and inconsistent attitudes toward regional council input—contributed to the shared sense of confusion. State officials, citing specific state regulations and Section 805(a)(3) of ANILCA, told the regional councils that one of their primary responsibilities should be making recommendations about proposed fish and wildlife regulations. [36] But according to ANILCA's dictates, the council's only officially-prescribed avenue of expression was its annual report to the Interior Secretary. Federal officials, asked to comment on what an annual report should ideally contain, did not dispute the councils' role in making fish and wildlife recommendations. They did, however, note that these recommendations had no place in the annual report. "The reports," they noted, "might be most effective if they focus on land management issues for which the federal agencies have jurisdiction. Examples of such issues raised in past reports include comments and recommendations on land management plans, ... on cabin policy, fire management, water quality, park subsistence resource commissions, and subsistence data needs on public lands in a particular region." [37] Compounding the councils' frustration was the extent to which federal agencies paid attention to their recommendations. The regional councils typically expended a substantial amount of effort in the preparation of their annual reports, and council members were often chagrined when Interior Department representatives either gave less than forthright responses, waited many months to respond, or (on occasion) failed to respond at all. [38]

Underlying the poor functioning of the regional advisory councils was the lack of a core support constituency. Congress had insisted on the councils due to the AFN and other rural-Alaska concerns, but virtually no one in Alaska fought for their legitimacy. The state's many local advisory committees felt threatened by them; the ADF&G bureaucracy, long dominated by sport and commercial interests, had little interest in supporting them; and even Congress, which had created the councils, was tepid in the financial contributions it made to their operation.

It appears, in retrospect, that Congress had envisioned that the regional councils would be a voice for subsistence users, much as the well-established local fish and game advisory committees were a forum for the views of sport and commercial hunters and fishermen. But the reality of the regional councils, in most instances, fell short of that goal. With rare exceptions, the councils did not provide input to the joint boards regarding proposed changes in the fish and wildlife regulations, and few of the regional councils' recommendations suggested changes to either federal or state subsistence policies. [39]

Rural Native groups, who stood to gain the most benefit from a well-established system of regional councils, were particularly frustrated by the inadequacy of their implementation. They were disappointed that many council members, while "residents of the region" (as ANILCA demanded) were not subsistence users, and they were displeased at the perceived bias in the decisions rendered by the joint boards. As Thomas Morehouse and Marybeth Holleman noted in an overview of the subsistence management system,

State fish and game officials, prodded by complaints from federal officials and rural subsistence users, reacted as best as they could to the inequities in the state's advisory system. For example, they urged both state and federal officials to provide greater funding; they conducted teleconferences when funding prevented face-to-face meetings; and they urged the regional councils, whenever possible, to submit annual reports. Despite those measures, however, the manifest inequalities of the state-managed system would continue for the remainder of the decade.

Throughout this period, the Subsistence Division in the state's Department of Fish and Game continued to be active. As before, it had two primary functions: providing advice to department managers and the boards of fisheries and game, and researching and publishing a series of baseline subsistence studies. (These studies, based primarily on social science—not biological—research methods, were initially qualitative in nature; toward the late 1980s, however, an ever-greater percentage of the division's reports were quantitatively based.) The division had enjoyed a strong growth during its first five years of existence; according to one employee, the Division "was in its heyday" in 1982, with a 27-member professional staff. But the "oil bust" of the mid-1980s, and its consequent effect on state revenues, hit the division hard, and the division was forced to close four of its nine area offices. Underlying the division's struggle was a recognition by staff that ADF&G was primarily responsive to sport and commercial users and that it was led by those interests were primarily related to resource development and conservation. Given those priorities, the Subsistence Division played a more marginal role in departmental affairs as the decade wore on; by 1990, the division's budget was just 4.7 percent of ADF&G's total. [41]

During the fifteen-month period between the Madison decision and its resolution by the Alaska legislature, the NPS's presence as it pertained to subsistence questions consisted of one full-time staff person in the Alaska Regional Office, staff in the various Alaska parks who worked on subsistence issues, and the various Alaska subsistence resource commission (SRC) members. Lou Waller, variously known as the subsistence coordinator or the subsistence liaison, was the only agency staff person who worked on subsistence issues on a full-time basis. Working with Waller in Anchorage was Associate Regional Director Michael V. Finley. In the parks, the agency relied on an informal staff network—primarily superintendents, but also rangers or management assistants—who worked on subsistence issues on an intermittent, ad hoc basis (see Appendix 3). [42] Providing advice to the NPS staff presence were the various members of the subsistence resource commissions, nine members for each of seven SRCs.

As noted in Chapter 5, the NPS held a series of initial SRC meetings in April and May of 1984; all attracted a quorum except the Aniakchak meeting. At these meetings, NPS officials instructed the various SRC members—in accordance with Section 808 of ANILCA—that their primary duty would be to "devise and recommend to the Secretary [of the Interior] and the Governor a program for subsistence hunting within the park or park monument."

ANILCA, however, gave few specifics about the subsistence hunting program and it provided few additional details about the SRC's role, a fact that was frankly addressed in the various introductory meetings. At the May 3 meeting, for example, Commission members were told that the commissions were "totally unique to the Park Service and the country" and that they

Commission members were to have broad latitude on what they recommended to the Interior Secretary. Aniakchak SRC members, for example, were told that their hunting plan recommendations should be made "as a result of their own independent judgement. They should not be influenced by the appointing agency." And commission members for park units in northern Alaska were similarly instructed that they "shall not be influenced by the appointing authority or by any special interest but will be the result of the Commission's independent judgments." Members were cautioned, however, that the road ahead would not be easy; as one SRC heard it, "it will take time to understand all the rules and regulations the Commission has to operate under." [44]

Once the hoopla from the first meeting subsided, however, the different SRCs began to express themselves in strikingly different ways. NPS officials were well aware that subsistence activities were greater at some park units than at others; as Table 6-1 (following page) suggests, the potential for subsistence use at Wrangell-St. Elias and the northwestern park units appeared far greater than at Lake Clark, Aniakchak, and the newly-expanded portions of Denali National Park. [45] The charter of the various SRCs stated that each "meets approximately twice a year or as often as circumstances require." But some SRC members, inevitably, chose to be more participatory than others (see Appendix 5); the Gates of the Arctic and Cape Krusenstern SRCs, for example, held three meetings in 1984, while the Aniakchak SRC met just once. Most SRCs, moreover, experienced a dropoff in interest after their initial meeting, and several follow-up meetings either lacked a quorum or were cancelled prior to their scheduled date.

Table 6-1. Population of Resident Zone Communities for Alaska National Park Units, 1970-2000

Note: Italics indicate resident zone communities for more than one national park unit. The population of these four communities has been counted just once in the statewide total. Population figures are not available for all communities.

Sources: U.S. Census, Number of Inhabitants - Alaska, 1970; Alaska Department of Labor, Alaska Population Overview, 1990; Census and Estimates, July 1991; U.S. Census web page, May 2001.

In order to guarantee their continuing viability, at least one SRC toyed with the idea of lowering its meeting quorum from six to four. [46] Others floated the idea of having alternate members. The NPS, however, disallowed that option. Instead, SRCs adopted a proxy system; members who knew that they would be unable to attend a meeting made it known that another member (usually the SRC chair) would be able to vote in their stead. [47] Another method that made it easier to organize a quorum was a change in the various SRC charters, suggested at the March 1986 Gates of the Arctic SRC meeting. The SRC formulated a resolution stating that "a member's three year term should continue until the member resigns, or is removed by the appointment source, or is either reappointed or replaced by a new appointee." The change, finalized in November 1986, made it possible for members who wished to continue their involvement to remain on an SRC after their designated term was over. [48] Thanks to Gates of the Arctic's resolution, the need to rely on a proxy system proved mercifully brief, and after 1986, most SRCs had little trouble mustering up a quorum. But not all. The Aniakchak SRC, for example, made repeated attempts to meet after March 1985; each attempt, however, resulted in either the lack of a quorum or a cancelled meeting date.

Immediately after the various SRCs' initial meetings, work began on considering recommendations for a subsistence hunting plan. One of the first questions that the SRCs considered was the role of these recommendations in various evolving general management plans (GMPs). The NPS, at the time, was compiling draft GMPs for each of the parks that had been established or expanded by ANILCA. (Section 1301 of the act demanded that "a conservation and management plan" for each park unit be completed "within five years from the date of enactment of this Act.") NPS staff, moreover, told the various SRC members that any recommendations they made would be included in the subsistence sections of the various GMPs. [49]

The SRCs' opportunity to influence the general management planning process, however, was more apparent than real. At Lake Clark National Park and Preserve, for example, the GMP planning process by May 1984 was already so far along that the park's SRC had no substantive opportunity to influence the final GMP, which was published just three months later. [50] As for the other ANILCA park units, the draft GMPs were issued in March 1985. That same month, the first SRCs passed suggested hunting plan resolutions. Because an extensive public comment period followed the issuance of the various draft GMPs, SRC members were hopeful that these and other resolutions would be considered and perhaps implemented as part of that public comment period.

Such hopes, however, proved overly optimistic. There was, as expected, a public comment period between the issuance of the draft GMPs (in March 1985) and the revised draft GMPs (in December 1985), and the public was given another opportunity to provide comments prior to the December 1986 issuance of the final GMPs. [51] Two factors, however, effectively prevented the SRCs' recommendations from being incorporated into the various GMPs. First, the SRCs—primarily because of the attendance problems cited above—were often slow to formulate subsistence recommendations; just one SRC passed recommendations during 1984, and by August 1985 only four others had done so. [52] A more important factor that delayed the hunting plan recommendation process was a belated recognition that a public process was required before any such plans could be implemented. That process demanded input from local residents, the State of Alaska, and the Interior Secretary, and written approval of the Interior Secretary had to be obtained before an SRC recommendation could be incorporated into a park's GMP.

Janie Leask, head of the Alaska Federation of Natives from 1982 to 1989, was a strong advocate of subsistence regional advisory councils. She also urged NPS officials to write subsistence plans either before, or as part of, park general management plans. ADN

Because virtually everyone involved—NPS staff, SRC members, and other interested parties—was unaware at the outset that the approval of hunting plan recommendations would be such a time-consuming process, the agency's inability to immediately incorporate the SRCs' recommendations into the developing GMPs produced some of the first conflicts on the SRCs. The Alaska Federation of Natives' Janie Leask, for example, made the following complaint to the NPS in August 1985:

The Wrangell-St. Elias SRC, in an August 1985 resolution, echoed the AFN's statement; it recommended that the comment period for the park's draft GMP be extended "until the subsistence management plan has been submitted and accepted by the Secretary of Interior." [54] But the NPS, which was under severe pressure to meet the December 1985 deadline outlined in Section 1301 of ANILCA, rejected such an extension. Instead, it beefed up the verbiage in the December 1985 drafts regarding subsistence—the March 1985 draft GMPs for both the Denali and the Wrangell-St. Elias units had failed to address subsistence in a subsistence section—and the agency stated that it intended, at some future date, to complete a subsistence management plan for each park unit. This promise was reiterated in each of the final GMPs that was issued in December 1986. [55]

Another problem that both the SRCs and NPS staff faced during the planning process that preceded the issuance of the final GMPs was what specifically the SRCs should produce. Section 808 of ANILCA stated that the various SRCs were to "devise and recommend ... a subsistence hunting program," but it gave no real direction regarding what that program should contain. Left to their own devices, the various SRCs passed a series of resolutions that were applicable to the users, use patterns and needs at each park unit, but there was no consistency or comparability between the themes that these resolutions addressed.

Recognizing that Congress's instructions were vague at best, the Gates of the Arctic SRC in November 1984 stated that their park's hunting plan components—all of which the SRC "would like to see in the GMP"—should encompass some thirty subject areas. The Gates of the Arctic SRC, perhaps the most active of the seven similarly-constituted bodies, passed a January 1986 resolution stating that the SRC—not the NPS—should write the park's subsistence management plan. [56] NPS officials rebuked that notion and wrote their own seven-page "subsistence use management" section in the final (December 1986) Gates of the Arctic GMP. Regarding the other ANILCA parks, NPS officials kept a hands-off attitude (as they promised they would do) regarding which subjects the SRCs should address in their hunting plan recommendations, and the agency provided little policy direction in this area. As a result, some SRCs' "hunting programs" were limited to just one or two resolutions, while the most active SRC, for Gates of the Arctic, passed twenty-four resolutions.

As noted above, Section 808 of ANILCA required that all SRC resolutions be subject to a public comment period before being submitted to the Secretary of the Interior for approval. During the comment period, which typically lasted several months, the resolution was presented to local advisory committees, subsistence regional advisory councils, State of Alaska officials, and to the general public. NPS staff also worked in an advisory capacity with the various SRCs and encouraged them to submit broadly-defined hunting plan recommendations (which needed to be directed to the Interior Secretary) instead of recommendations in a diversity of other subject areas (that were primarily intended for NPS staff). Because of this process, the first SRC recommendations were not forwarded to the Interior Secretary until mid-March 1986. [57] The various SRCs, in coordination with NPS staff, continued to submit hunting plan recommendations for the next eighteen months. By September 1987, five of the seven SRCs had submitted formal recommendations: [58] Aniakchak had sent five recommendations (four in 1986, one in 1987), Denali had sent three recommendations (all in 1986), Gates of the Arctic seven (all in 1987), Lake Clark one (in 1986), and Wrangell-St. Elias four (three in 1986, one in 1987). [59]

Attending a meeting of the Alaska Land Use Council were (left to right): Donald P. Hodel (Interior Department), John A. Sandor (U.S. Forest Service), Vernon Wiggins (Interior Department, standing) and Alaska Governor Jay Hammond. From 1985 through 1989, Hodel served as President Reagan's Interior Secretary. ADN

According to Section 808 of ANILCA, all recommendations emanating from the various SRCs were to be responded to by either the Interior Secretary or his designated appointee; NPS officials could not serve as signatories. That separation between the SRCs and the NPS, however, was more apparent than real, because Alaska-based NPS personnel were in a far better position to evaluate the technical merits of the various SRC recommendations than Interior Department bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. Moreover, it was Alaska Regional Office personnel—specifically Lou Waller, the region's subsistence coordinator—who organized the NPS response to each recommendation. Working in concert with the various park superintendents and the regional director, Waller compiled the various agency responses, then forwarded them to Interior Department officials in Washington. Officials in the office of Interior Secretary Donald P. Hodel spent several months mulling over the recommendations; between March and May 1988, they responded to those recommendations. [60] The responses that were finalized in March 1988 were signed by William P. Horn, who served as the Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks; responses finalized in April or May were signed by Susan Reece, who served in an acting capacity for Assistant Secretary Horn. [61]

In order to provide proper deference to the SRCs' efforts, Section 808 of ANILCA stated that the Interior Secretary was obligated to accept each SRC recommendation

Such a stipulation might suggest that many if not most of the SRCs' recommendations would be accepted by the Interior Secretary without modification. Such, however, was not the case. In fact, the Interior Secretary accepted without question a fairly small proportion of the recommendations he received; he either partially accepted, or accepted in modified form, a number of other recommendations; and he rejected many others, either because of their perceived irrelevance to a "subsistence hunting program" or because they were in direct contradiction to federal laws or regulations. The Interior Department, in most if not all cases, maintained a "strict constructionist" interpretation of subsistence laws and regulations; that is, it was likely to approve of any SRC actions that voluntarily limited subsistence activity (either the number of species, its means of access, or its geographical extent), but it took a dim view of any proposals that condoned a real or perceived expansion of subsistence activity. A specific analysis of the various recommendations, and the Interior Department's responses to them, is included below.

One of the most commonly discussed themes by the various SRCs dealt with eligibility issues. Titles II and VIII of ANILCA, combined with the June 1981 regulations that helped codify Title VIII, made it clear that potential subsistence users of Alaska's national park units needed to satisfy two basic criteria. First, individuals needed to reside in a part of Alaska judged to be rural, according to the Alaska Joint Boards of Fisheries and Game. Second, depending on where they lived, potential subsistence users needed to satisfy one of two other criteria. They must live in one of several designated resident zone communities; these communities were defined as those which contained "significant concentrations of rural residents ... who have customarily and traditionally engaged in subsistence uses within a national park or monument." If they did not live in such a community, they could legally harvest park or monument resources by obtaining a subsistence permit (also known as a 13.44 permit). In order to obtain such a permit, an individual or members of his or her family needed to demonstrate that they "customarily and traditionally engaged in subsistence uses within a national park or monument."

Given the scope of Section 808, the SRCs felt free to tinker with eligibility requirements so long as their recommendations did not run contrary to the above regulations. Given that latitude, the SRCs considered the following five ideas in their eligibility recommendations: 1) adding or deleting specific resident zone communities, 2) creating a large, communal resident zone for a network of communities that shared specific cultural characteristics, 3) drawing boundaries around residential zone communities, 4) establishing community-wide subsistence permits in communities anticipating growth, and 5) applying a cut-off date after which new residents would be ineligible to harvest subsistence resources. These five ideas will be discussed in the order presented.

1. Adding or Deleting Resident Zone Communities. Because public hearings in both 1979 and 1981 had given both the NPS and the public ample opportunity to help decide which communities should be resident zone communities, most SRCs felt little need to modify the established list of eligible communities. Several SRCs, however, moved to expand that list. In March 1985, for example, the Aniakchak SRC voted to add Pilot Point and Ugashik to the list because residents of those communities "have traditionally used the monument for subsistence purposes." And five months later, the Wrangell-St. Elias SRC voted to add Northway to the eligibility list because the village "has always utilized the resources from the park and preserve for subsistence purposes. Their use was customary and traditional and this Commission believes their omission on the resident zone list was an oversight." Members of the Wrangell-St. Elias SRC also discussed eliminating a resident zone community—Slana, during an April 1986 meeting—but the idea was never put forth as an SRC resolution. [62] Interior Department officials, asked to respond to the Aniakchak SRC's resolution, noted that

The Wrangell SRC's recommendation to the Interior Secretary regarding Northway brought forth an almost identical response; because "the Service has had no indication from the residents of Northway that they have any interest in subsistence hunting within the park," a May 1988 letter noted, "the NPS will not further explore designating it as a resident zone." Both letters noted that the NPS, prior to allowing a new resident zone community, would need to determine that a "significant concentration" of permanent residents had a history of customary and traditional subsistence use in the local park unit. [64]

Underlying the stark differences between the SRCs' and the NPS's positions were major differences in perception, plus a lack of broadly-available knowledge about local subsistence activities. The NPS's refusal to grant new resident zone communities was a sound decision, based on a prima facie evidence. But the lack of subsistence permit requests did not necessarily indicate that residents from these three communities did not harvest subsistence resources from a park unit (or wished to do so). Rural Alaskans, both Native and non-Native, have long shunned regulations in any form—they have often been less than enthusiastic, for example, about obtaining fishing and hunting licenses—and considering the relatively new presence of the various NPS units, it is perhaps not surprising that park-area subsistence users were reluctant to apply for so-called 13.44 permits. While the NPS's refusal to approve of the new resident zones may have been logical based on the existing evidence, the agency's action doubtless rankled both SRC members and other area subsistence users because it underscored the government's lack of willingness to fully understand the vagaries of subsistence harvesting.

SRC members, as it turned out, gave a mixed reception to the Interior Secretary's refusal. The Aniakchak SRC chair's response, at a January 1990 meeting, was a promise to discuss the matter further with Ugashik and Pilot Point village council representatives; after that meeting, the matter was effectively dropped because more than two years elapsed until the next SRC meeting. [65] But the Wrangell-St. Elias SRC, which held its December 1989 meeting in Northway, re-submitted a resolution on the Northway resident-zone issue that was almost identical to its 1986 resolution. In the resolution's justification, the SRC noted that the meeting was "apparently the first time any NPS staff had traveled to Northway and been available to discuss Park Service regulations including subsistence eligibility. Many Northway residents probably were unaware of the permitting process and about their being prohibited from hunting in the park without a subsistence permit." At the meeting, "several local residents testified to their use of some areas in the park and preserve," and Commission members "noted the reluctance of some residents, especially elders, to reveal all areas they use for subsistence purposes to outsiders." [66]

2. The Communal Resident Zone Idea. A high-profile issue for two of Alaska's SRCs during the 1980s was a proposal to create a single, large resident zone for a series of communities in northwestern Alaska. The NPS regulations, passed in 1981, had made no explicit provisions for such a zone; instead, both Congress and the Interior Department had made it clear that resident-zone determinations would be made on a community-by-community basis. Recognizing that Cape Krusenstern National Monument had three resident-zone communities, all located fairly close to its borders, NPS staff in May 1984, using an "arbitrary definition, ,,, drew a line from Cape Krusenstern to the furthest village (Kotzebue) and anyone living that far away from the monument all the way around is automatically considered a local rural resident." At the same meeting, however, commission members recommended—based on regional cultural and linguistic similarities—that Cape Krusenstern and Kobuk Valley SRC members "get together with Northwest Areas [NPS staff] and coordinate the subsistence hunting program." [67]

Allakaket, located near the confluence of the Alatna and Koyukuk rivers, is a resident zone community for Gates of the Arctic National Park. George Wuerthner photo

At a February 1985 joint meeting of the Cape Krusenstern and Kobuk Valley SRCs, one SRC member suggested that Noatak and perhaps other villages be added to "the Kobuk Valley list," which "would allow for annual migration and seasonal patterns of wildlife and fishing." Soon afterward, however, that suggestion was expanded upon; it was suggested that "everyone who resides in Game Management Area 23 [which included the three Northwest Areas parks plus a large amount of adjacent territory] be allowed access to the parks based on the common knowledge that in the past[,] residents have subsistence hunted and fished in these areas as a tradition." Later in the same meeting, a suggestion was "also made that the present resident zone be changed to include all of the NANA region." (The boundaries of the Northwest Alaska Native Association region, which was one of the thirteen ANCSA regional corporations, were roughly similar to Game Management Unit 23, although NANA's boundaries were based more on legal descriptions than on rivers and drainage divides.) [68]

A year later, at another joint Cape Krusenstern-Kobuk Valley SRC meeting, the assembled members passed a joint resolution "that the resident zones for the Kobuk Valley National Park and Cape Krusenstern National Monument coincide with the political boundaries of what is known as the NANA region." Among the reasons for their action were that "the people of the NANA region consider themselves a cohesive social and cultural unit with an ancient history of residency," that "the residents of the NANA region have historically been a highly mobile people moving between and maintaining relationship within all the villages of the region," and that "the general sparseness, seasonal availability, and unpredictability of local wild resources requires subsistence users to pursue subsistence resources without regard to jurisdictional boundaries." [69] This resolution was sent to appropriate state and local groups, and in February 1986 it was discussed at public meetings held in "five strategically located communities with[in] the NANA Region." Five months later, NPS official Ray Bane reported that local residents had provided "no substantial negative feedback" to the proposal, and the joint SRCs got ready to forward an amended resolution to the Interior Secretary. [70] Thereafter, however, the commission chairs dragged their feet on the matter; at the July 1987 joint SRC meeting, it was noted that Walter Sampson (the Kobuk Valley SRC chair) had signed the resolution but Frank Stein (the Cape Krusenstern chair) had not. A reluctant Stein continued to waffle on the issue for the rest of the decade; as he noted at a July 1989 meeting, he may have delayed doing so in order to see how the Interior Secretary responded to other SRCs' recommendations. [71] Regardless of the reason, the communal resident zone idea—which by all accounts enjoyed broad regional support—had not been submitted to the Interior Secretary by the end of the decade.

3. Resident Zone Community Boundaries. An issue that many SRCs grappled with during the 1980s was whether boundaries should be applied around resident zone communities. The June 1981 regulations defined resident zone communities as having "significant concentrations" of subsistence users of a nearby park or monument, but they offered no direction regarding who would decide where community boundaries should be located. In the case of incorporated towns, the town's boundaries normally served this purpose, and in some unincorporated communities an "easily identifiable population cluster" provided a clearly-defined ad hoc boundary. But in other areas, poorly-defined population clusters made community identification (and thus a definition of just who lived in the various resident zone communities) a difficult task.

Most SRCs did not deal with this issue during the 1980s, because there was little pressure or need to do so. But in areas experiencing actual or anticipated growth (see Table 6-1), defining a resident zone community's boundaries was one method by which existing residents could protect their access to subsistence resources from newcomers moving into a community's periphery. (Another way to protect this access was to adopt a community-wide permit system or roster. This method is discussed below.) At Cantwell, one community where several large development projects were in the offing, the NPS had drawn a boundary back in 1981-82, before the SRCs had become active. That boundary was set at a three-mile radius from the town's post office. In May 1984, the Denali SRC at its initial meeting concurred with the boundary that the NPS had established. [72] Lake Minchumina, another Denali resident zone community, moved to establish a community boundary several years later. As noted below, local SRC members responded to an anticipated residential influx by suggesting a community-wide permit system. But in January 1986 the local fish and game advisory committee objected to the idea. To resolve the issue, an April 1986 public hearing was held at Lake Minchumina, where local people instead recommended a community was held at Lake Minchumina, where local people instead recommended a community boundary that would reach from one to three miles from the lakeshore. The Commission, acting on those suggestions, recommended a 1°-mile distance "because this includes the homes of all the present local residents, and excludes more distant areas where [recent] land sales have taken place or are proposed." [73] This recommendation was forwarded to Interior Secretary Hodel three months later. The department, in its April 1988 response, noted that the SRC's action was "a solid recommendation that should serve to maintain the integrity of the subsistence lifestyle and culture of the Lake Minchumina community, assuming that the permanent population of the community remains relatively stable." Some observers—most notably Jack Hession, of the Sierra Club's Alaska office—urged the establishment of resident zone boundaries throughout the state, and NPS subsistence staff also encouraged the SRCs in this regard. The SRCs, however, appear to have acted only when either real or potential growth threatened an area's access to nearby subsistence resources. [74]

Boyd Evison, the NPS's regional director for Alaska from 1985 to 1991, made significant decisions related to resident zone boundaries, airplane access, and other subsistence-related matters. NPS (AKSO)

Wrangell-St. Elias was the only other park for which resident zone boundaries were considered. Here, however, a suggested direction came from Interior Department officials, not from the SRC. The NPS, perhaps unwittingly, had made the first move toward defining park-area resident zones in August 1985, when an unknown NPS official had stated that any resident that lived "50 miles from [the] park border qualifies as [a] subsistence user." NPS Regional Director Boyd Evison, in a November 1985 letter, attempted to shed light on the subject; in response to the Service's purported establishment of a "larger, all-encompassing resident zone by drawing a line from Tok [then] generally along the Glenn and Richardson Highways, then south around the southwestern boundary of the park/preserve," Evison forthrightly stated that this notion was "not related to any designated resident zone but has been used as a general 'rule-of-thumb' in determining local rural residency for subsistence permit applications." [75] The park SRC's various recommendations provided no further direction on this subject. Regional officials, however, felt that additional information was needed on the subject. In an October 1987 briefing paper, subsistence coordinator Lou Waller noted that because

To remedy the situation, Waller recommended that "the boundaries for all unincorporated resident zone communities must be defined by each affected park superintendent," although "the park Subsistence Resource Commissions may be involved in this process." [76]

Waller's concerns were passed along to the Interior Department. In its April 1988 response to the SRC recommendations, the department's Acting Assistant Secretary included many of those concerns. After noting two new construction projects in the area and their anticipated demographic impacts, the Secretary's representative noted that "unless resident zone boundaries are conservatively established or communities are eliminated from resident zone status, all of these 'new' people will be eligible to hunt, fish and trap within the park." [77] The Wrangell-St. Elias SRC, however, was unswayed by such arguments. During its December 1989 meeting, the commission "reiterated [its] 1988 determination that the resident zone communities of Wrangell-St. Elias [have] not significantly changed, thus no change is necessary to further restrict eligible residents (such as the Park Service suggestions to define boundaries...)." [78]

4. The Community-Wide Permit Idea. Another issue related to eligibility was whether, and to what extent, communities experiencing actual or anticipated growth should adopt a permit system in order to protect access to subsistence resources for long-term residents. NPS officials, during several of the introductory SRC meetings during the spring of 1984, were quick to offer this alternative; at the first Gates of the Arctic SRC, for example, commission members were told that "When a community significantly changes in character it is to be re-evaluated for eligibility. If it has changed significantly enough, it should be removed from the list of designated resident zone communities and individual permits would be issued." [79]

Two SRCs, in response, showed immediate interest in such an alternative. At Denali, as noted above, NPS officials had responded to potential growth challenges several years earlier by establishing a boundary around Cantwell, a motion with which the newly-formed SRC concurred shortly after it became a working entity. Thus it was no surprise that Denali SRC members, in June 1984, prepared a "proposed recommendation regarding subsistence zones" and specifically urged that "for the communities of Lake Minchumina and Cantwell, the resident zone designation be dropped and subsistence use in the park additions be implemented by use of an individual permit system." Such an action was suggested because the resident zone designation at these two communities "is not working" and because "some subsistence users and members of the Subsistence Commission" were concerned about the impacts of an "influx of new residents" upon subsistence resources. [80] Cantwell residents were worried (as they had been since 1981-82) about the proposed Susitna Dam development, Healy-Willow Intertie project, and Valdez Creek mining development, while Lake Minchumina residents were concerned about a spate of new land sales in the area. A year later, the SRC voted to recommend that both Lake Minchumina and Cantwell be changed to a permit system. [81] As noted above, meetings at Lake Minchumina in January and April 1986 resulted in a withdrawal of the SRC's recommendation for that community (and the imposition of a community boundary in its stead), but the proposal for Cantwell met with widespread local approval. In July 1986 the SRC forwarded it to Interior Secretary Hodel; the proposal noted that "in order to preserve the natural and healthy wildlife populations there, we feel that hunting and trapping should be limited to local residents who have traditionally used the area, and that this can be done most effectively by using the permit system." [82] The NPS, in an initial response, noted that the SRC's "concept is solid," and the Interior Department, in its formal response, was similarly approving; it stated that "the Commission's recommendation is consistent with Congress' intent to protect opportunities for the subsistence lifestyle by local rural residents." The department noted that "Congress intended the Service to avoid initially the use of subsistence permits or other devices that focus on individuals rather than communities. Congress also recognized, however, that significant post-ANILCA alterations in the composition of a community could warrant a shift to a permit system or other individual-based system for determining subsistence eligibility." [83]

Lake Clark was the other SRC that acted upon the community-wide subsistence permit idea. The Port Alsworth area, at the time, was experiencing increased land sales at the Keyes Point development, and the park SRC was worried about similar real estate ventures. In response to these growth pressures, the SRC at its second (November 1984) meeting wrote up a draft hunting plan recommendation, a major part of which dealt how local subsistence users could deal with "the potential for rapidly increasing full time and seasonal populations within resident zones." To guarantee continued access to subsistence resources, the SRC planned to "meet with village leaders and traditional councils to determine those within the [park's] resident zones having established ... a history of [customary and traditional] use. A list of those individuals and families having established such use will be prepared and posted in the Post Office of each village for a period of 30 (thirty) days." The commission passed this recommendation in August 1985 and sent it out for comment; seven months later, the unmodified document was forwarded to the Interior Secretary. [84] Alaska's Fish and Game Commissioner Don Collinsworth, who commented on the SRC's recommendation later in 1986, generally approved of the idea of roster regulations (they seemed "completely consistent with the intent of Congress," in his opinion), and Governor Sheffield, who also commented that year, was noncommittal on the subject. Perhaps based on those opinions, the Interior Department approved of the concept of a community-wide permit system for four Lake Clark-area communities (Iliamna, Newhalen, Nondalton, and Port Alsworth), much as it had for one Denali-area community (Cantwell). [85]

The Interior Department's approval letters to both the Denali and Lake Clark SRCs indicated that the two recommendations would not become federal regulations until rulemaking was completed, and the SRCs were warned that the process "can be somewhat lengthy and involved." [86] To facilitate the process, NPS officials met with Denali SRC members in July 1988 to develop draft regulations. But just three months later, the process was thrown into disarray when Collinsworth, in an apparent about-face, formally objected to the roster idea. (He may have done so because Steve Cowper, who became Alaska's governor in December 1986, did not share the same opinions on the subject as his predecessor.) [87] In August 1989, Cowper elaborated upon the state's objection to the idea of a community-wide subsistence permit system. He gave three reasons for his decision:

The state's position, an apparent reversal of the views it expressed three years earlier, was clearly based on the state's unwillingness to allow federal limitations on subsistence access. Because the state had previously weighed in on the concept, and because Cowper's letter was written more than a year after the Interior Department's approval, Interior officials were not obligated to respond. The letter's practical effect, however, was to cloud an already murky picture. [88]

As the decade ended, the issue of community-wide subsistence permits (by now called "roster regulations") was still in limbo. The NPS, which had been tasked by the Interior Secretary to prepare such a regulation, had made little headway; state officials, from the Fish and Game Department up to the Governor's Office, were openly advocating that the SRCs move cautiously in implementing such a regulation, and as a practical matter, the lack of expected development activity in either the Cantwell or Port Alsworth areas reduced the urgency for implementing a "roster regulation." (The Denali SRC, in fact, now favored Cantwell's retention as a resident zone community rather than its adoption of a roster system, although it "still supported a regulation to create a procedural roster alternative." [89]) During the 1990s, additional decisions and interpretations would continue to refine the parameters of this theme.

5. Subsistence Eligibility Cut-Off Dates. Closely related to the idea of community-wide subsistence permits was that of cut-off dates for subsistence eligibility. Neither ANILCA nor the regulations that followed provided specifics regarding how long people needed to live in residence zone communities in order to access subsistence resources. (The only guidance in this sphere surfaced during Congressional hearings, when Rep. Udall noted that eligible residents needed to have an "established or historical pattern of subsistence use." [90] Lacking a more specific provision, existing regulations allowed such access to all residents, regardless of their length of residency.) Regarding subsistence permits, which were proposed as one way to guarantee subsistence access to "customary and traditional" users, neither ANILCA nor its accompanying regulations gave specific advice on how these users might be defined; in the absence of such advice, the various SRCs addressed this topic in various recommendations that were submitted to the Interior Secretary.

The idea of a cut-off date for subsistence eligibility was first addressed at the initial meetings between SRC members and NPS staff; as noted in the minutes of the first Wrangell-St. Elias SRC meeting, Commission member Bob Anderson stated that "there should be some type of cut off date for the qualification of subsistence hunting. [Mr. Anderson's] opinion was there had to be a stopping point somewhere." The SRC openly wondered what cutoff date should be used; in response, Interior Department solicitor Jack Allen noted in November 1984 that "the cutoff date of 1978 or 1979 in the resident zones ... is feasible, but the Commission should obtain community response.... December 1980 would probably be the cutoff date, with a lawsuit being inevitable." [91] Subsistence Coordinator Lou Waller, however, recommended an earlier date. He noted that each park general management plan—which was finalized in 1984 and 1986—had a page defining "traditional;" that page noted that "traditional means" or "traditional activity" demanded "an established cultural pattern ... prior to 1978 when the unit was established." In addition, he cited the dictionary definition of "tradition" (which was on the same GMP page) and postulated that area residents needed to demonstrate a generation of use in order to be eligible to harvest park wildlife. [92]

During the mid- to late 1980s, the state's SRCs weighed in with a multitude of suggested cut-off dates for subsistence eligibility; some felt that December 1980 (when ANILCA became law) was best, while others suggested dates ranging from 1978 to 1986. Paul Starr photo

The Wrangell-St. Elias SRC, as it turned out, made no recommendations that included reference to a cutoff date, and the next SRC to discuss a cutoff date—Cape Krusenstern—considered "compiling a list of individuals who are eligible for subsistence resources and who had lived in the region as of 1979." [93]. But after February 1985, most SRC actions appeared to favor a December 1980 cutoff date. That August, for example, the Lake Clark SRC produced a draft subsistence hunting program stating that "for the purposes of subsistence hunting, ... the twin tests of domicile within a resident zone or other area within or near a park and customary and traditional use established by persons and families preceding the passage of ANILCA, December 2, 1980, will be applied." [94] In January 1986, the combined Cape Krusenstern and Kobuk Valley SRCs passed a resolution resolving that "subsistence uses of [the two park units] be limited to those persons who had their primary place of residency within the NANA region on December 2, 1980..." [95] In March 1986, the Aniakchak SRC wrote a draft recommendation (which was never finalized) urging that "the subsistence uses of Aniakchak National Monument be limited to those persons who had their primary place of residency within the local region on Dec. 2, 1980, members or their immediate families, and their direct descendants who continue to reside in the local region." [96] And later that same month, the Gates of the Arctic SRC passed a resolution stating that "in general, local residents of the region with an established pattern of subsistence use within the park prior to December 02, 1980, are eligible to continue engaging in subsistence activities in the park." [97]

Denali was the only SRC to formally recommend a non-1980 eligibility date. Back in June 1984, when the body had first addressed the issue, it had taken pains to state that

Once most of the SRCs had expressed their views, the State of Alaska weighed in on the issue. In letters written in early May 1986 to at least two SRC chairs, Governor Bill Sheffield stated that "limiting participation in subsistence hunting and fishing to persons who have lived in the [park units] before 1980 may not be fair to people who have moved to the area in the last six years. A retroactive cut-off date could also present legal problems." Fish and Game Commissioner Don Collinsworth gave much the same conclusion four months later. He noted that

Federal authorities, confronted with the threat of a lawsuit, appear to have ignored the state's pleas, primarily because many NPS officials felt that setting some sort of cutoff date was a logical way to stabilize hunting pressure in the parks. [100] Given the necessity of a cutoff date, the day of ANILCA's passage—however arbitrary—appeared to be more legally defensible than any other. Perhaps as a result, the Interior Department accepted the ANILCA cutoff date as proffered by both the Lake Clark and Gates of the Arctic SRCs. [101] The Interior Department was also agreeable, however, to a non-ANILCA cutoff date under certain circumstances; regarding the Denali SRC recommendation, it readily accepted the notion of a April 17, 1986 cutoff date for determining Cantwell residents' eligibility for subsistence harvests, inasmuch as the SRC mailed its recommendation to the Interior Secretary on that date. [102]

Beyond questions of eligibility, access was a major theme of interest to the new subsistence resource commissions. The Alaska Lands Act, and the regulations that followed in its wake, gave some direction on how specific access-related problems might be resolved, but in other areas the SRCs were able to provide some management and policy direction. A host of questions were raised about both aircraft access and surface access, and a dilemma related to surface access at one park unit led to serious discussion of a land trade. These subject areas—aircraft access, surface access, and the proposed land trade—will be discussed below in the order presented.

Title VIII of ANILCA gave some direction regarding subsistence access. Section 811 stated the following:

ANILCA did not specifically refer to the legality of aircraft access (which, because it was not a form of "surface transportation," was not subject to clause (b)), but the legislative history discussed the subject in some detail. On the House side, Representative Morris Udall stated that

This verbiage answered many questions; left unanswered, however, was the all-important question regarding whether the agency would allow exceptions to its no-airplanes-for-subsistence policy other than the two cited above. In the meantime, the NPS's ad hoc "good neighbor" (i.e., non-enforcement) policy during the years that immediately followed ANILCA created the impression, at least in the minds of some rural residents, that the agency might continue such a policy for the foreseeable future.

Charles Budge, who served as the first superintendent of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, made a key decision on subsistence aircraft access that was later overturned by the agency's regional director. NPS (AKSO)

One of the first major policy disputes in the access arena flared up in the summer of 1985. Members of the Wrangell-St. Elias SRC that summer squared off with NPS and other federal officials over whether subsistence users could legally access the park by airplane for subsistence purposes. In the Wrangell-St. Elias area, hunters had been using aircraft to harvest wildlife, for what they claimed were subsistence purposes, for several years prior to ANILCA's passage. But neither the legislative history that accompanied ANILCA nor the regulations that followed its passage specifically validated their usage patterns. [104] Wrangell-St. Elias's first superintendent Charles Budge, perhaps recognizing the strong anti-park sentiment among a number of area residents, made no overt moves to curtail subsistence-related aircraft access during the early 1980s. And as if to condone such activities, Budge wrote subsistence user Sue Entsminger in February 1984 stating that

Shortly after Budge wrote his note, however, the NPS's attitude toward aircraft access began to shift. Perhaps it was a changing of the reins at Wrangell-St. Elias (where Richard H. Martin assumed the superintendency in February 1985), perhaps it was the existence of a full-time subsistence coordinator (Lou Waller), or perhaps it was a belated recognition—more than four years after ANILCA—that it was time for the NPS to begin enforcing its regulations. Whatever the reason, the product was a July 2, 1985 letter from Regional Director Roger Contor to various park superintendents concerning aircraft access. Written in response to a letter from Sue Entsminger "requesting additional information regarding aircraft access for subsistence hunting in the National Park System areas in Alaska," Contor's letter was clear and unequivocal:

W. T. Ellis, who served as chairman of the Wrangell-St. Elias SRC, was staunchly opposed to Contor's interpretation of the regulations as they pertained to aircraft access, [107] and on August 2 the park's SRC submitted two hunting plan recommendations on the issue. The first, an "emergency recommendation," stated that because Contor's letter represented "a permanent change in access for the Wrangell-St. Elias area," the NPS should therefore be required to proceed with closure regulations, which included a 60-day public comment period and public hearings in the affected area. The SRC, by taking this action, hoped to derail or at least delay the implementation of Contor's letter, inasmuch as hunting season was set to begin on August 10. The second recommendation, which the SRC passed on the same day, was more generic; it recommended "the use of aircraft as the primary means of reasonable access for subsistence hunting and trapping as there is only 100 miles of roads available for access into 13 million acres of hunting area." [108]

Federal officials, however, took exception to both of the SRC's recommendations. In a letter to the SRC chairman, Assistant Secretary William Horn stated that the July 2 memorandum was "considered by the Department of the Interior to be a formal written correction to a previous and incorrect interpretation" of an existing federal regulation prohibiting aircraft use in Alaskan national park units. [109] In a separate letter, Horn rebuffed the other SRC's recommendation as well; although he recognized that "it would be more desirable to use aircraft to hunt [wildlife for subsistence purposes] inside the park, ... this is totally inconsistent with Congressional intent. ... If [aircraft] is used primarily for the purpose of subsistence hunting, then that is clearly not allowed." [110] To set the record straight, each person given a Tier II permit to hunt caribou in Game Management Unit 11 "was mailed a letter briefly explaining the regulation and several news releases have been issued on this and related subjects." NPS officials also held a September 9 public meeting at the park's Glennallen headquarters; significantly, however, no local residents attended the meeting. [111]

Byron Mallott has been a Native leader since 1965 when, as a 22-year-old, he was elected Yakutat's mayor. Due largely to testimony that Mallott made to a Congressional panel, NPS officials allowed the use of airplanes to access the Malaspina Forelands area (in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park) for subsistence purposes. ADN

Members of the park's SRC, obviously miffed at both of the Interior Department's decisions, charged that the NPS hoped to "run the Alaska parks as they do in the lower 48" by "eliminat[ing] use of the Parks and Preserves by people as much as possible;" furthermore, it wanted to "restrict human use and participation to small segments of lands, located adjacent to the road system, where every move by humans is regimented and well regulated." [112] Beyond their rhetorical bravado, however, SRC members pressed Interior officials on one specific point; could they prove the legality of their decisions? Contor's July 1985 memo had been "confirmed verbally" by Interior Department solicitors, but in an October 4 letter, chairman Ellis requested a copy of a solicitor's opinion on the subject. Perhaps in response, Interior Department Solicitor F. Christopher Bockmon reviewed Contor's memo, both of Horn's letters, and other pertinent documents, and in an April 2, 1986 memorandum he concluded that both Contor and Horn were correct. Bockmon noted that the NPS could "clearly ... prohibit a person wishing to engage in subsistence hunting or fishing from landing along side a park or monument boundary or within an inholding within the park or monument and subsistence hunting within the park or monument." [113]

Although actions by the Wrangell-St. Elias SRC provided the basis for Interior Department decision making as it pertained to aircraft access for subsistence purposes, subsistence users throughout the state were intrigued by the controversy. At Aniakchak National Monument, for example, SRC members in March 1985 had passed a resolution asking that aircraft access be allowed for subsistence purposes. To justify their action they noted that "aircraft have been used by local residents in the area adjacent to the monument for approximately 30 years. The people rely upon aircraft as a means of access to subsistence resources throughout the region and recommend that this same use should be allowed within the monument." [114] A year later, the Gates of the Arctic SRC passed a similar resolution "allowing aircraft access inside [the park] in certain areas." The resolution noted that "There are some families who have had prior use of aircraft in the park before the park was established; and these families used the aircraft to get to areas otherwise inaccessible by ground transportation, and the areas where they hunted were used mainly by them." [115] Subsistence users in both of these parks were no doubt chagrined to hear that Department officials had all but eliminated aircraft access for subsistence purposes at Wrangell-St. Elias. At Aniakchak, the SRC's recommendation was passed on to the Interior Department, which (as expected) refused to sanction aircraft access. It noted that only "extraordinary circumstances could warrant the use of aircraft for subsistence purposes. [But] At present, such circumstances do not exist in Aniakchak National Monument." The Gates of the Arctic SRC, perhaps mindful of decisions made at Wrangell-St. Elias on the subject, modified its original (March 1986) recommendation, and in its recommendation to the Interior Department asked that the aircraft-access regulations "not be interpreted by the NPS as restricting in any way travel of local rural residents on scheduled air carriers between villages in or near the park." The Interior Department rejected that recommendation as well because it "would presumably take a person out of his community's traditional use zone and into that of another. This could prove detrimental to the satisfaction of subsistence needs of local residents..." [116] During the mid- to late 1980s, both park superintendents and regional officials received a number of letters from longtime subsistence users protesting the Department's aircraft access policy; to judge by the number and intensity of these letters, aircraft access appeared to be one of their most unpopular policies applied to Alaska's newly-established national park units.

NPS officials, recognizing the unclear nature of the 1981 aircraft access regulations as they pertained to the national parks and monuments, pressed Interior Department solicitors in early August 1985 for answers to similar questions as they pertained to the national preserves. Did the existing regulations, for example, allow the agency to legally prohibit aircraft access to preserves for the purpose of subsistence hunting within the preserve? And if not, what actions would be necessary to extend to the agency such an authorization? At a September 5 meeting, solicitor Chris Bockmon told NPS officials that the agency currently had no power to issue such a prohibition and that a new regulation would be necessary to create such an authority. Bockmon, however, was asked not to respond in writing to the request for a legal opinion. [117]

Another knotty question with which the NPS grappled during the mid- to late 1980s was how to manage the use of all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) by subsistence users. Outsiders often had unrealistic notions regarding how rural Alaskans traveled to access the wildlife and fish they harvested; romantic notions suggested foot travel, oar-powered boats and dog teams, but the reality was that by the late 1970s such innovations as motorboats, snowmobiles and ATVs were either replacing or supplementing earlier transportation modes. [118] In recognition of these new technologies—and in anticipation of technologies yet to come—ANILCA's legislative history recognized "the importance of snowmachines, motorboats, and other means of surface transportation traditionally employed for subsistence purposes on the public lands." It further noted that the bill's provisions were "not intended to foreclose the use of new, as yet unidentified means of surface transportation, so long as such means are subject to reasonable regulation necessary to prevent waste or damage to fish, wildlife or terrain." [119]

In ANILCA's legislative history, Congress expressly stated that snowmachines would be a valid means of access for subsistence harvesting. Interior Department regulations, passed in 1981, similarly declared that such uses would be permitted in park areas. NPS (AKSO)

The verbiage in the legislative history helped form the basis for the 1981 regulations, which noted (in Title 36 CFR, Section 13.46(a)) that "the use of snowmobiles, motorboats, dog teams and other means of surface transportation employed by local rural residents engaged in subsistence uses is permitted within park areas...." Against the objections of an environmental group, which noted that off-road vehicles were "abhorrent to the notion of subsistence hunting," the Interior Department allowed its use in accordance with Section 811 of ANILCA. And the NPS took a similarly dim view of another environmental group's suggestion to limit ATV use to local rural residents who could prove "traditional use." [120] In this issue, as in others, policy that had not been clearly laid out in the regulations was decided upon by two entities: the NPS and the various SRCs. The NPS's only agencywide guidance on the subject, at the time, was an executive order, first issued in 1972, that was applicable to all public lands. [121] Given that lack of policy, tensions soon surfaced. This was because many entities—state agencies, the Citizens' Advisory Commission on Federal Areas, SRC members, and many other local users—favored the legitimization of ATV use in the parks, both to ensure the continuation of existing travel patterns and because of its practical utility in the largely unroaded Alaskan bush. NPS personnel, on the other hand, had little sympathy for ATV use and often looked for opportunities to curtail such activity.

Based on various master plans and environmental statements that the agency had completed prior to the passage of ANILCA, NPS officials recognized that ATV use was widespread in several new or expanded park units. After a brief "honeymoon period," in which the agency made no moves to sanction or restrict ATV use, the NPS established a long-term ATV policy.

Two actions, both taken during the mid-1980s, shaped that policy: the completion of the various park general management plans (GMPs) and various SRC resolutions on the subject. Taken in retrospect, it appears that the GMPs—and the various public comments that preceded the December 1986 final plans—were a stronger determinant of NPS policy toward ATVs than any actions taken by the various SRCs.

One of the agency's first policy statements on the issue—and, as it turned out, one of its most broad, comprehensive statements on the issue—was made at the first meeting of the combined Lake Clark and Denali SRCs in May 1984. Lake Clark National Park and Preserve, at the time, was well on its way toward completing its general management plan (its GMP apparently served as a pilot study for the ANILCA parks), and the comments made at that meeting were broadly applicable to each of the ANILCA parks. An unnamed NPS official at the meeting noted that

NPS officials, during this period, were quick to note that ATV use varied considerably. In the newly-established portions of Denali National Park, for example, they noted that "existing information indicates that specific ORV use has not regularly been used for subsistence purposes," and at Lake Clark, the NPS stated that "there is very little actual subsistence hunting within the park itself; most of the hunting is done around in the preserve." [123] Other GMPs suggested that ATVs were widely used—the Cape Krusenstern document, for example, noted that "Three-wheeled ATVs carry local residents back and forth in the villages and along the monument's ocean beaches, where only summer foot travel once occurred—"but no documents directly stated that ATVs were used for subsistence purposes. [124]

Paul Haertel served as the first superintendent of Lake Clark National Park and Preserve, from 1980 to 1987. He then moved to the Alaska Regional Office where, as Lou Waller's supervisor, he worked on many subsistence issues. NPS (AKSO)

Prior use, however, was not necessarily translated into policy. Based on language in the regulations (43 CFR 36.11 (g)(1)), several GMPs noted that "snowmobiles, motorboats, dog teams and other means of surface transportation traditionally employed" could be used for subsistence purposes. But they further noted that "any additional information about traditional means"—about ATVs, for example—"will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis." [125] Based on that process, the NPS at several parks decided to prohibit the use of ATVs for subsistence purposes. The Kobuk Valley GMP, for example, stated that

Using similar language, the NPS also concluded that the use of ATVs for subsistence use would not be allowed in Aniakchak National Monument, Gates of the Arctic National Park, or the expanded portions of Denali National Park. As a justification for these actions, the NPS—at the insistence of Regional Director Boyd Evison—quoted a legal-dictionary definition of "tradition" and noted that "to qualify under ANILCA, a 'traditional means' or 'traditional activity' has to have been an established cultural pattern, per [the definition noted above], prior to 1978 when the unit was established." [127]

At the three remaining ANILCA parks, where ORV use was more widespread, the GMPs did not state that ATVs were a traditional means of access. (At least one final GMP, in fact, noted that "three- and four-wheeled vehicles were not determined to be a traditional means of access for subsistence...". [128]) Instead, the documents tacitly condoned existing ATV use because of a lack of language expressly prohibiting the practice. At Cape Krusenstern, for example, the final GMP contained the pro forma statement that "the use of ORVs for subsistence is not allowed because the use has not been shown to be a traditional means of access." It provided a process, however, to "determine whether ATVs are traditional for subsistence" which allowed "for opportunities to review additional data." The recently-completed Cape Krusenstern land exchange, moreover, authorized subsistence on two trail easements between Kivalina and Noatak in conjunction with the Red Dog Mine road corridor. At Lake Clark, the GMP noted that most subsistence use "occurs by means of boat, three wheeler, snowmachine, and foot travel;" it then stated that "existing traditional patterns and means of access and circulation will be maintained." [129] Finally, the Wrangell-St. Elias GMP—based on an earlier finding that ATV use was a traditional activity in the park—noted that "the use of ORVs/ATVs by local rural residents for subsistence purposes may be permitted on designated routes, where the use is customary and traditional under a permit system implemented by the superintendent. ... Currently, ORV use is limited to existing routes...." These tentative approvals, moreover, were further clouded with language recognizing the environmental damage associated with ATV use and a statement—taken directly from Section 13.46(b) of the 1981 regulations—declaring each superintendent's prerogative to close routes that damaged park resources. [130]

Members of the various SRCs generally favored either the expansion or the continuation of ATV use within the parks and monuments. [131] NPS officials, as suggested by the above policy statements, were more responsive to these comments at some park units than at others. At Aniakchak, for example, the SRC passed a resolution urging the Interior Secretary to allow subsistence use of the monument by three-wheeler; the Interior Department, however, reiterated language contained in the GMP and stated that "the use of three-wheelers is not a traditionally used form of surface transportation for access to the monument for subsistence use." [132] But at Wrangell-St. Elias, NPS officials recognized the widespread nature of ATV usage by both subsistence and sport hunters. At a November 1984 SRC meeting, Chief Ranger Bill Paleck noted that "a local rural resident (subsistence user) can take an ATV any place they want." The NPS's recognition of the popularity of ATV use, plus strong support for their continuation by park SRC members, apparently played a major role in ensuring long-term ATV use for local residents. [133]

At Gates of the Arctic, existing ORV use centered around the community of Anaktuvuk Pass. [134] NPS officials, soon after ANILCA, let it be known that ATV use was prohibited within the national park. This rule generated little controversy at first, but during the early 1980s two factors—a dramatic growth in the number of ATVs used by village residents, plus the August 1983 Chandler Lake agreement, which conveyed surface rights to more than 100,000 acres from the ASRC to the NPS—brought disgruntlement to many village residents. One by-product of the 1983 agreement was the creation of a small network of ATV easements in the park's non-wilderness areas. Residents, however, sometimes took ATVs into the wilderness portions of the park in their pursuit of caribou, and they chafed at any restrictions that prevented them from gaining access to wildlife on which they depended. In order to circumvent the agency's restrictions, they took part in a legal challenge of the position that ATVs were not a traditional means of surface transportation. [135]

At a 1984 SRC meeting held in Anaktuvuk Pass, local residents stated that "their most pressing concern was to obtain access to certain parklands that were important use areas." As a result of this testimony—and perhaps because of the impending legal challenge—Superintendent Richard Ring "agreed to hold talks to resolve the differences." [136] By January 1985, the agency was working on a proposed park boundary adjustment with the Nunamiut Corporation "which would include a portion of the upper Nigu River drainage," and that November, the Nunamiut Corporation stated its interest in discussing the matter further. (Officials, for the time being, allowed existing ATV use to continue.) Before such an adjustment could take place, however, the NPS decided to study the broader issue of ATV use in and around Anaktuvuk Pass. That study, which was also supported by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and North Slope Borough, began in early 1986 and continued for the next two years. [137] Meanwhile, specifics of a proposed land exchange—between the NPS, the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, and the Nunamiut Corporation—began to emerge. At the park's March 1986 SRC meeting, the Commission passed a resolution urging "the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation to get together with the National Park Service and Nunamiut Corporation to discuss a land exchange with the Park Service to resolve access into traditional subsistence areas for the residents of Anaktuvuk Pass." [138] By the spring of 1987, park superintendent Roger Siglin reported that "everyone seemed pleased" with progress on the land exchange, and in January 1989 four entities—the ASRC, NPS, Nunamiut Corporation and the City of Anaktuvuk Pass—signed a detailed draft agreement intended to resolve the ATV controversy. [139] All parties recognized that the problem required a legislative solution, because only Congress had the power to add or eliminate wilderness acreage. The NPS, preparing for that eventuality, set to work on a legislative environmental impact statement. The completion of that document took place during the 1990s; that and succeeding activities are discussed in Chapter 8.

As noted in Chapter 4, differences between the House and Senate bills on the subsistence question had resulted in the inclusion of traditional use zones in ANILCA. (The House of Representatives felt that subsistence was a legitimate activity throughout most of the new or expanded park units, while the Senate felt that subsistence activities should have been limited to the preserves, the so-called northwestern park units, and certain portions of Gates of the Arctic.) Final language hammered out in the bill signed by President Carter stated that subsistence uses in five park units—Denali, Gates of the Arctic, Lake Clark, Wrangell-St. Elias—would take place "where such uses are traditional, in accordance with the provisions of Title VIII." Although the various draft bills that preceded ANILCA gave some indication of historically-defined traditional use areas at Gates of the Arctic, [140] neither ANILCA nor the 1981 regulations provided guidance on where—at any of the five park units—these traditional use areas should be located. This issue, therefore, would be decided by either NPS officials or the SRCs.

In November 1984, NPS officials released maps of known traditional use zones in Gates of the Arctic National Park. Two months later, at an SRC meeting, North Slope Borough Mayor George Ahmaogak and a host of others criticized the maps' limitations as policy instruments. ADN

Dick Ring served as the first superintendent of Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve. In response to the barrage of criticism expressed over the traditional use zones issue, the park's SRC was given eighteen months to formulate a decision in the matter. The issue remained a sticking point between the agency and local residents for years afterward. NPS (AKSO)

At various early SRC meetings for each of these five park units, NPS officials (usually Lou Waller, the subsistence coordinator) discussed the traditional use zone idea. The agency explained that one such zone would be drawn for each community; beyond the limits of that zone, subsistence harvesting would be prohibited. Based on his knowledge of ANILCA's legislative history as well as the June 1981 regulations, Waller stated that "it is the local committee, regional council and [subsistence resource] commission"—not the NPS—that should be the driving force behind the delineation of traditional use zone boundaries. [141]

At Gates of the Arctic, a special urgency surrounded the creation of these zones, and no sooner had the first SRC meeting convened than pressure began to be exerted to map out applicable zones for each resident zone community. In a criminal court case decided just a few weeks earlier—one in which Larry Fitzwater had been prosecuted for illegally trapping in a national park—the judge had allowed the defendant to avoid most of his fine because subsistence zones had not yet been identified. [142] As a result of that decision, the NPS concluded that "the traditional use areas must be defined to assure that new uses and radical changes do not occur as a result of the state's implementation [of] game regulations." NPS officials, at that meeting, laid out an accelerated implementation agenda. "Within the next couple of months," they stated, "maps [of traditional use areas] will be published with community by community descriptions. ... The Commission and public will have a chance to suggest changes. ... It would be timely to make recommendations at a July meeting since the Park Service needs something in place by November." Commission members, still new to their positions, may or may not have recognized that the agency, by drawing traditional use zone maps on their own, was ignoring the SRC's advisory role that had been clearly intended by Congress. So the SRC members bided their time, recognizing (or perhaps hoping) that their opinions would be heard during the upcoming public comment period. [143]

After the July meeting, Ray Bane and other park staff—using the "areas listed in Senate Report 96-413 and first hand experience"—began to prepare a series of draft 1:250,000-scale maps of traditional use zones for each of the park's ten resident zone communities. [144] In mid-November, a parkwide map delineating suggested winter and summer use zones was shown to the park's SRC (see Map 6-1, facing page), and in December, park staff circulated additional maps in the various resident zone communities. To gauge the maps' accuracy, residents of those communities were asked to "provide information on traditional areas of subsistence use." Area residents were given a January 1985 deadline—which was later extended to March 1—to submit comments. In order to encourage public involvement, SRC chair James Schwarber contacted several organizations and asked for their input. [145]

The first opportunity for park staff (and the park SRC) to hear the public's reaction to the proposed traditional use plan took place when the park SRC met at Fort Wainwright in late January 1985. At that meeting extensive written testimony was presented by representatives of RuralCAP, the Alaska Legal Services Corporation, the Citizens' Advisory Commission on Federal Areas, and North Slope Borough. Representatives of other organizations presented oral testimony. Most if not all of this testimony opposed the NPS's proposal. The RuralCAP representative, for example, stated that the agency's plan

The Citizens' Advisory Commission statement, drawing a similar conclusion, stated that "it is the 'traditional' pattern of subsistence people to follow the game, rather than the game to follow the people into traditional areas." It questioned "whether or not there is any area in the [park] that has not, at some time in the past, been used for subsistence activities," and it criticized the agency for countermanding ANILCA's dictum to "cause the least adverse impact possible on rural residents who depend upon subsistence uses of the resources of such lands." Finally, it urged caution by quoting Rep. Morris Udall; "fundamental fairness seems to require ... that if there is any doubt as to whether subsistence hunting should be permitted within a particular area, that the decision be made on the basis that subsistence hunting should be permitted rather than restricted." [147]

Mayor George Ahmaogak of North Slope Borough used the NPS's own words to fight the proposed traditional use zones. Ahmaogak, in particular, took exception

The ALSC statement, making a legal point, noted that "the formal designation and mapping of such [traditional use] areas within the park is not required by the law, may in fact be prohibited by the law, and in any event is undesirable and inappropriate at the present time." The next ten pages of the statement provided data to support that statement. [149]

Based on these and similar statements, the park's SRC—at the NPS's request—unanimously passed Resolution 85-01 on the subject. The Commission resolved that

Soon after the meeting, this resolution—with an appropriate cover letter explaining and justifying the SRC's action—was mailed to Interior Secretary William P. Clark and other appropriate officials. [151] A month later, NPS Regional Director Roger Contor responded to the Clark letter and noted, in an introductory paragraph, that the agency "appreciates the complex issues associated with implementation of Title VIII" and that "the resolution of many associated side issues, such as definition of traditional use areas, is something for which there is little or no precedent." In an apparent change in agency policy, Contor then noted that the agency "is clearly in full agreement with the substance of Resolution 85-01." As an explanation for that apparent change in course, the letter stated that "Superintendent Ring [at the January 1985 meeting] requested that the Commission make its recommendations within a reasonable period of time. We feel 18 months is a reasonable time allowance for this complex issue." [152] The NPS's action defused the traditional—zone controversy for the time being. That May, the park issued a new public notice asking for "information on the traditional areas of subsistence use" for the various resident zone communities. The new deadline for comments was April 15, 1986. This date, almost a year away, still allowed ample time for the SRC to mull over the matter prior to its self—imposed July 1986 deadline. Inasmuch as the issue had antagonized almost everyone in Anaktuvuk Pass by this time, it also gave the agency time to let tensions over the issue cool down. [153]

Little was heard about this issue at Gates of the Arctic until January 1986, when SRC members passed a resolution demanding that any "agencies or individuals engage[d] in mapping and identifying traditional use areas or access routes ... be required to actively involve user communities within Gates of the Arctic National Park." Another resolution, passed at the same meeting, asked that the SRC be allowed—but not required—to draw traditional use boundaries. [154]

Neither of those resolutions, however, adequately responded to the SRC's self-imposed deadline for resolving the traditional use zone issue. So at its March 1986 meeting, the SRC cobbled together a recommendation on the subject. In recognition of the dynamic nature of the caribou and other subsistence resources, the communal nature of the subsistence users, and the lack of research pinpointing historical subsistence patterns, the SRC resolved—as part of the park's subsistence hunting plan—that:

By the culmination of the March 1986 meeting, the SRC had gone on record as having passed twenty-four resolutions, three of which pertained to the traditional use zones issue. Commission members recognized that many of these resolutions were clearly inappropriate for inclusion in a subsistence hunting program. At its June meeting, therefore, the SRC edited and reworked its earlier resolutions in its preparation of its final subsistence hunting plan for submission to the Interior Secretary. At that meeting, SRC member (and professional subsistence researcher) Rick Caulfield held a traditional use workshop. At its conclusion, he reported "that the specific traditional use areas on maps is not a very good idea," that "subsistence uses needs to be flexible according to supply and demand of that particular area," and that "communities need to regulate [where subsistence hunting takes place], not agencies." [156] Based on the results of that workshop and the SRC's earlier recommendation, the commission prepared a page-long recommendation on the subject. It stated, in part, that

On July 23, the NPS issued a public notice asking for comments on the SRC's traditional use zones statement (along with other aspects of the park subsistence hunting program). At least some NPS officials—Northwest Alaska Areas Superintendent C. Mack Shaver, for example—remained strict constructionists on the issue. Speaking for himself and his staff in a July 1986 memorandum to the region's subsistence coordinator, Shaver noted that

James Pepper, Gates of the Arctic's management assistant, shared many of Shaver's opinions on the subject. He noted that "the law is clear in Sections 203 and 201 and the accompanying legislative history that Congress expected that portions of the park would be closed to all hunting." He furthermore complained that the Commission, during the intervening period between initial vote on the subject (in January 1985) and its final (June 1986) resolution to the Interior Secretary, had

Officials in the agency's Alaska Regional Office, however—still smarting from the backlash against the traditional use zone idea at the January 1985 SRC meeting—were more conciliatory to the commission's June 1986 resolution. Regional Director Boyd Evison, hoping to avoid the negative publicity that the issue had caused thus far, worked with Waller and other subsistence officials and helped outline two alternatives that the Interior Secretary might consider. In one alternative it was suggested that despite ANILCA's dictum to draw traditional use zone boundaries, "Congress also made it clear that subsistence users were to be allowed to shift their use areas when and if the wildlife populations moved to new or different areas." But that alternative also warned SRCs that they "should be asked to identify traditional use zones by community," and "failure by the SRC to do this will necessarily result in the NPS having to use the best information available to define the traditional use areas." The second alternative, less confrontational than the first, noted that "the identification of traditional use zones may not be necessary from a management perspective if it is true that subsistence users will not expend any more time, money, and energy than is necessary to harvest wildlife resources," and that given certain caveats, "there is no need to determine traditional use zones by defining boundaries on a map." [160]

This photo shows Dick Martin, Wrangell-St. Elias's superintendent from 1985 through 1990, pulling the tramcar across the Kennicott River. Dick Martin photo

In March 1987, the park's SRC responded to the various public comments and finalized its draft subsistence management program; on May 6, the Commission forwarded its various recommendations to Interior Secretary Hodel. A year later, the Department responded with a rejection of the SRC's traditional use zone recommendation because it "seems to imply that the entire park is an area of traditional use" and because "Congress was clear in its intent to have ... some areas of the park remain, for the most part, unhunted." Following the first alternative outlined above, the Department felt "that the Commission, in conjunction with local communities and the National Park Service, should analyze the patterns of subsistence use ... and develop a definition of traditional subsistence areas by community." [161] The Interior Department's relatively hard-edged response, combined with a strongly-voiced opposition to such an approach at the state and local level, thus left the NPS in a quandary. From that point forward, the traditional use zones idea at Gates of the Arctic would remain in a legal limbo; the issue would stay unresolved because of the clash of values between the Interior Department's May 1988 directive and the park SRC's disagreement with that directive.

As noted above, the traditional use zones idea was considered at each of the five park units in which the "where such uses are traditional" clause was applicable, but only at Gates of the Arctic did the issue generate much controversy. NPS officials at two of the other four parks in this category took an opposing philosophical stance from those at Gates of the Arctic. At Denali, for example, superintendent Robert Cunningham stated at a 1987 SRC meeting that the traditional zone issue was not a problem at that park, and the SRC took no action on the issue. [162] And at Wrangell-St. Elias, Superintendent Richard Martin stated that the imposition of traditional use zones "would be an administrative nightmare" because the numerous, poorly-defined communities that ringed the park "would result in a myriad of overlapping traditional use areas. Enforcement much less determination of these areas would be virtually impossible." [163] At several of the early SRC meetings, the region's subsistence coordinator made a pro forma announcement that commission members should consider delineating such zones, and four years later, the Interior Department's response to various SRC hunting plan recommendations occasionally included a similar admonition. [164] But Gates of the Arctic was the only park unit where NPS had pressed SRC members to delineate traditional use zones, and without that pressure, SRC members felt no inclination to do so on their own.

Title VIII of ANILCA, and the regulations that followed in their wake, were unclear regarding which organizations would have a major say in wildlife management decisions in the various newly-established national park units. Secretary Watt's May 1982 decision that the State of Alaska had satisfied the mandates of ANILCA's Section 804 made it clear that the State would play a lead role in wildlife management, but NPS officials reserved the right to influence subsistence harvest decisions within national park unit boundaries. And as several 1984 letters by NPS officials made clear (regarding bear and caribou regulations in Gates of the Arctic National Park), the agency had every intention of recommending changes in the wildlife regulations when necessary. (See Chapter 5.)

Minnie Gray, an Inupiat from Ambler, is seen butchering a caribou in this mid-1970s photo. During the 1980s, SRCs demanded the right to make game-related proposals, but Interior Department officials disagreed with them, ruling that their role was "not practicable." NPS (ATF, Box 8), photo 1161-7, Robert Belous photo

The SRCs, which became active in the spring of 1984, were given varying instructions as to their role in wildlife management within the national parks and monuments. NPS officials told the Gates of the Arctic SRC, for example, that "Some state regulations could be addressed. It would not be redundant of the Fish and Game Advisory Committee and Regional Council's obligations of reviewing regulations." Furthermore, it was "perfectly legitimate to comment on specific proposals to the Game Board." The Lake Clark and Denali SRCs were also told that they could recommend changes to the hunting regulations; they were forewarned, however, that all recommendations had to be submitted to the Interior Secretary (as noted in Section 808), who could then recommend changes in the state fish and wildlife regulations. The Cape Krusenstern SRC, at its first meeting, looked forward to addressing wildlife management issues because "subsistence issues were not being adequately addressed in the Advisory Committee system." NPS officials, in response, suggested that commission members "go through the regulation booklet and mark things that bother [them] the most. They could then discuss them at the next meeting and start working on those issues" so "that the regulations be written closer to the way people actually live. In this manner people will not be violating the law every time they go subsistence hunting." Commission members were told that working on wildlife regulations was a valid (and direct) SRC function because "when the recommendations go to the Secretary, they will also be sent to the Governor." [165]

During the next several years, the various SRCs made occasional generalized wildlife management recommendations. In August 1985, for example, the Wrangell-St. Elias SRC—despite specific language from Senate Report 96-413 stating that "[i]t is contrary to the National Park Service concept to manipulate habitat or populations"—passed a resolution stating that "resource management (predator control) is needed in order to provide for the customary and traditional use of the subsistence resources as mandated in ANILCA." And that November, the combined Cape Krusenstern and Kobuk Valley SRCs expressed concern over the "limited reporting of Dall Sheep kill" in the western Brooks Range. [166] But they stopped short of recommending specific changes in seasons and bag limits, evidently feeling that their influence was better directed to either the regional advisory councils or the local fish and game advisory committees. (In January 1986, in fact, the Cape Krusenstern-Kobuk Valley SRCs "decided not to act on the changes in the sheep hunting regulations by the Board of Game," but have Pete [Schaeffer] bring this to the local ADF&G Advisory Board at their next meeting.") NPS officials, during the same period, made a number of specific hunting proposals, and by the fall of 1986, Regional Director Boyd Evison was submitting a single, yearly, statewide series of agency recommendations for the state game board to consider. [167]

The Gates of the Arctic SRC, hoping to retain its role in specific wildlife management decisions, sent a hunting plan recommendation to the Interior Secretary stating that it "will continue to work with local fish and game advisory committees, regional councils, and with the boards of fisheries and game to ensure that resource values are protected," and it further recommended that the agency should use the SRC as a "sounding board" for "all NPS recommendations and proposals to the state boards of fisheries and game." But the Interior Department, citing scheduling concerns, threw cold water on the SRC's proposal. It noted that

Many of the subsistence issues that took place within Alaska's NPS units were decided, or at least discussed, by members of the various park or monument subsistence resource commissions. But several issues surfaced at so-called standalone preserves (i.e., preserves that were not associated with a park or monument of the same name), and issues also occasionally arose within the "old" (i.e, pre-ANILCA) parks. [169] The most contentious such issue during this period related to the legality of subsistence hunting and fishing in Glacier Bay National Park.

On the surface, the issue appeared to have been clearly resolved. As has been noted in Chapters 3 and 4, the NPS, along with the Hoonah Tlingit and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, had wrestled with the issue for more than three decades, beginning in the late 1930s. But in early 1974, the issue was seemingly decided when Glacier Bay National Monument's chief ranger, Charles Janda, contacted Hoonah Mayor Frank See and informed him that the Code of Federal Regulations' prohibition against the killing of wildlife in National Park Service units applied to Glacier Bay as well. Neither the mayor nor other Hoonah residents appear to have protested that action, and for the remainder of the decade only scattered protests reached the ears of Park Service officials. [170] During the years that immediately preceded the passage of the Alaska Lands Act, it appeared that Hoonah residents were far more concerned over other overarching issues—fighting clear-cut logging on Tongass National Forest lands that surrounded their village, making land selections pursuant to ANCSA, organizing the Huna Totem Corporation, and dealing with the closure of the Inian Islands fishing grounds to the town's seine fleet—than Glacier Bay subsistence matters. The final Alaska Lands Act, moreover, did not include any language that altered the existing prohibition against subsistence uses in the newly-designated Glacier Bay National Park; in fact, sections 203 and 816(a) of the act specifically appeared to reinforce the status quo. The agency's General Management Plan for the park and preserve, released in 1984, was clear on the topic: citing Congressional Record language, it noted that "lands and waters within the national park area ... are closed to subsistence uses." [171]

During the mid-1980s, however, actions by both an international agency and the ADF&G had the (perhaps unintended) effect of raising subsistence issues once again. In 1986, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) designated Glacier Bay and nearby Admiralty Island as a "biosphere reserve" as part of its International Man and the Biosphere program. This designation heightened agency awareness of the special nature of park resources, and perhaps as a result, NPS officials mulled over the idea of reducing or eliminating commercial fishing in the park. That same year, however, the state's fish and game department was immersed in a study of Hoonah residents' subsistence uses. That study, for which interviews were conducted in the spring of 1986, pointed out that at least some of the Hoonahs' subsistence harvesting took place in Park waters, and as a logical follow-up to that study, the local fish and game advisory board proposed that the State of Alaska Board of Fisheries issue subsistence permits for Glacier Bay. [172] NPS officials protested the action, claiming both ANILCA's prohibition against subsistence uses and a lack of state jurisdiction in the waters of Glacier Bay. Perhaps as a result of that protest, the Board of Fisheries turned down the local advisory board's proposal. [173]

Hoonah residents raised the issue again in the fall of 1988 during public hearings about the park and preserve's wilderness plan. The following spring, the state fisheries board took up the residents' cause and determined that they were entitled to catch salmon in Glacier Bay National Park according to their "customary and traditional use." Soon afterward, ADF&G Commissioner Don Collinsworth began issuing them subsistence permits for Glacier Bay and Excursion Inlet. NPS officials were clearly alarmed by the state's action and, in late May 1989, they implored the ADF&G commissioner to stop issuing subsistence permits. Collinsworth, however, proved stubborn, and issued 80 subsistence permits; NPS officials, in response, posted boating regulations at various points in Hoonah. A month later, Tlingit leaders announced their intention to sail a flotilla into Glacier Bay and fish in several of the bay's salmon streams. Just a day before the confrontation, however, the ADF&G opened up a new seining area in Hawk Inlet (east of Hoonah and outside of the park), and Hoonah residents responded to the state's action by sailing away from Glacier Bay in favor of the newly-opened area. The confrontation was averted. But that fall, many Tlingits showed a renewed militancy toward the issue, and as the decade came to a close, the long-term status of Glacier Bay subsistence harvesting seemed murky and tenuous. [174] As Chapter 8 relates in greater detail, the issue remained active until well into the 1990s.

During the mid- to late 1980s, most subsistence issues dealt with by NPS officials and SRC members were related to issues of eligibility, access, traditional use zones, and wildlife management. But issues related to trapping and the national preserves loomed as well, and vexing definitions emanating from ANILCA and the 1981 regulations were also addressed. This section discusses these and related matters.

At the various introductory SRC meetings, NPS officials clarified trapping's role in the various national park units. Members were told that trapping was allowed only for subsistence purposes; the activity was "not intended to be solely or predominantly commercial." Trappers, similar to hunters, who lived in resident zone communities would not need a permit. Permits would, however, be required for those who lived outside of resident zone communities or for those who maintained a cabin within a park unit. NPS officials said that they would do their utmost to "preserve a lifestyle," and to that end, the regulations guaranteed that the children of subsistence user would also be able to obtain permits, regardless of whether the children had themselves engaged in subsistence activities. [175]

The only trapping policy issue to emerge during this period was a recommendation submitted by the Wrangell-St. Elias SRC. The issue was trapping with a firearm on the national preserves. This practice had been prohibited in Alaskan national park units (in parks and monuments as well as preserves) since June 1983 as a result of two sets of regulations: the June 1981 final regulations that defined a trap as "a snare, trap, mesh, or other implement designed to entrap animals others than fish," and June 1983 NPS-wide regulations that defined "trapping" as "taking or attempting to take wildlife with a trap." [176] The NPS made no attempt to enforce this regulation for the next several years, and both the draft and the revised draft versions of the park general management plans (issued in March and December 1985, respectively) made no reference to these regulations. At the Board of Game meeting held from January 7-15 1986, state game officials admitted that they were unaware of the NPS's trapping restrictions; indeed, they stated that as many as twenty wolves may have been taken in NPS preserves by the land and shoot method, by those with a trapping license, during the recently-concluded season. To set the record straight, therefore, Lou Waller of the NPS gave the Game Board the federal definition of "trap" as stated in 36 CFR Section 13.1. On January 21, NPS Regional Director Boyd Evison met with ADF&G Commissioner Don Collinsworth on the matter, and on February 14, the NPS sent the state a letter formally conveying the NPS prohibition of firearm use for trapping. [177] NPS officials, as a result, were now free to enforce its prohibition of same-day-airborne hunting (with hunters who held either a hunting or a trapping license) in the various national preserves. As a logical follow-up to that issue, NPS officials inserted the following statement in the final (November 1986) GMPs; "Trapping in national park system units can be conducted only using implements designed to entrap animals." [178]

Bill Ellis, a master guide and pilot, chaired the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park Subsistence Resource Commission from its inception, in 1984, to 1994. He often tangled with NPS officials over subsistence policy matters. Thelma Schrank photo

The Wrangell-St. Elias SRC chair, at the time, was W. T. (Bill) Ellis, a commercial guide and pilot who typically hunted in the preserve. He was an outspoken advocate of predator control in general, and aerial wolf hunting in particular. Perhaps because of Mr. Ellis's influence, therefore, the SRC, in April 1987, responded to the newly-included GMP verbiage by recommending that "trapping be allowed with the use of a firearm on Preserve lands within Wrangell-St. Elias National Preserve." The recommendation noted that Alaska state law allowed trapping with a firearm and that "in many places in Alaska this is the customary and traditional means of trapping." The recommendation's intent, therefore, was to align federal with state law. The recommendation was submitted to the Interior Secretary in August 1987, but the Interior Department failed to respond to it. [179]

Although the federal government failed to address this issue, it was nevertheless resolved in the SRC's favor (and, more specifically, in Mr. Ellis's favor) when the state agreed to modify its regulations pertaining to same-day-airborne harvesting. The State Game Board revised its same-day-airborne provisions for wolves by 1) eliminating the previous allowance for trapping but 2) establishing such an allowance for hunting. For the first time, therefore, fly-in sport hunters were free to harvest wolves with a hunting license in NPS areas in Alaska. Legally speaking, it was the first time since 1983 that hunters visiting the national preserves had been able to harvest wolves and other furbearers with a firearm; but since most hunters had been unaware of the NPS's regulations prior to early 1986, the de facto prohibition against all wolf hunting in the preserves had been in force for less than two years.

NPS officials, fully aware that any form of habitat manipulation was forbidden in Alaska's park units, adopted an emergency one-year regulation (beginning in November 1988) prohibiting same-day-airborne hunting of wolves in NPS areas. At the same time, the agency began drafting a proposed rule for permanent adoption; that rule was published in the June 9, 1989 Federal Register. The public was given 70 days (until mid-August) to comment on the rule, and during that period the agency conducted hearings in 15 Alaska communities and collected more than 1,400 comments, 94 percent of which favored the rule's implementation. Based on that response, NPS officials began preparing a final rule on the subject. [180]

Regarding Alaska's ten national preserves—three "standalone" preserves and seven others contiguous to national parks or monuments—a variety of issues ensued. As noted in Chapter 4, the preserve concept, which was a newly-emergent NPS unit classification during the years that immediately preceded ANILCA's passage, was promulgated in order to allow sport hunting. Shortly after ANILCA became law, Interior Department officials—in a major concession to the State of Alaska—agreed to relax eligibility requirements to subsistence users in the various preserves. As noted in the June 1981 regulations,

In October 1982, the NPS and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game signed a master Memorandum of Understanding. Virtually all of its provisions applied to the preserves as well as to the parks and monuments, but one in particular would become a point of contention in later years. In that provision, the NPS and ADF&G mutually agreed

Two years later, in the spring of 1984, NPS officials told SRC members at the various introductory meetings that the commissions would deal exclusively with park or monument issues; preserve-related issues would be of interest only insofar as they influenced parks or monuments. (This was because Section 808(a) of ANILCA established an SRC "for each park or park monument.") [183] Given that dictum, most SRCs overlooked subsistence issues on nearby preserves. But the combined Cape Krusenstern and Kobuk Valley SRCs, which often met in conjunction with one another, occasionally discussed subsistence matters throughout Game Management Unit 23 (and thus included Noatak National Preserve), and the Wrangell-St. Elias SRC felt a keen interest in matters pertaining to Wrangell-St. Elias National Preserve. In November 1984, for example, the SRC had a "discussion among the members present [about] commercial operators within the preserve. Although members at that meeting were counseled that "this commission would not address issues in the Preserve," the transcriber noted that "this commission believed they were supposed to deal with issues in the Preserve also." [184]

As noted above, a major access issue erupted in July 1985 when Regional Director Roger Contor ruled that subsistence users could not use an aircraft to access either preserve lands or adjacent non-NPS lands with the express intention of accessing park or monument subsistence resources. As part of that ruling, Contor was quick to point out that "current regulations do not prohibit the use of aircraft for subsistence purposes in any of the preserves." He further interpreted the June 1981 regulations to require "a person to be a local rural resident in order to qualify for subsistence uses in the preserve." Soon afterward, however, the NPS retracted the latter statement inasmuch as there were no resident zones—and thus no agency-defined "local rural residents"—associated with the preserves. [185] Some NPS officials hoped to "add preserves to the definition of local rural residency," but their efforts were unsuccessful. [186]

The 1982 Master MOU, as noted above, gave the ADF&G the right to enforce state fish and game regulations "unless State regulations are found to be incompatible with documented Park or Preserve goals, objectives, or management plans." During the 1980s, the sole instance in which this provision was utilized dealt with wolf control. ANILCA, the regulations written in its wake, and the Master MOU all made it clear that the NPS would not allow wildlife manipulation within the various park units, so when the Alaska Board of Game moved to allow the aerial "trapping" of wolves on preserve lands, NPS officials protested the Board's action. [187]

Another problem faced by both the NPS and SRC members was the murky definition of certain critical terms used in Title VIII of ANILCA. As noted in Chapter 5, the June 1981 regulations contained four such terms: "healthy," "natural and healthy," "customarily and traditionally," and "customary trade." Regulators at that time were well aware of their lack of specificity in these matters. Regarding the first two terms, they readily admitted that "the Service has not defined these new terms in the context of this interim rulemaking. ... However, the Service has quoted at length from Congress' explanation of these concepts ... in order to guide park officials in their implementation of them." Regulators also chose to avoid defining "customarily and traditionally ... since their definition requires extensive prior comment and research as well as the advice of the local committees, regional councils, and park and monument commissions." [188]

One of these matters was addressed in December 1981, when the joint fish and game boards provided an eight-pronged definition of "customary and traditional." (As noted in Chapter 5, this term had originally been defined in March 1981, in a Cook Inlet fisheries case, using ten criteria.) When the state, the following spring, formally assumed management of subsistence resources on federal lands, that definition was applied to NPS and other federal lands in Alaska. The definition remained unchanged until the Madison court decision forced the state to adopt a new subsistence law; as part of the negotiations resulting in that law, the state legislature adopted a letter of intent. That letter specifically mentioned eight criteria for identifying customary and traditional uses of fish and wildlife resources; these criteria were similar (though not identical) to those adopted in December 1981. [189] "Customary and traditional" was not defined as part of the June 1981 agency regulations (despite one group's urgings), and several years later the NPS's subsistence coordinator drafted a letter urging one of the SRCs to "provide local input into the definition of these terms...". [190] No action, however, was taken on the matter.

Attempts to define "healthy" and "natural and healthy" proved more controversial. The June 1981 regulations, while avoiding a precise definition, provided a contextual definition with a liberal sprinkling of both terms, and the 1979 Senate report discussed "healthy populations of fish and wildlife" at some length. But park managers, told they must manage "natural and healthy" fish and wildlife populations in the parks and monuments and "healthy" populations in the preserves, were uncomfortable with the terms' lack of specificity. At one of the introductory SRC meetings, members were told that the practical effect of the "natural and healthy" definition was that if "there is no longer a natural [wildlife] population, [the superintendent] must impose a restriction [on harvesting], injunction, or legislative action." At another early meeting, a park superintendent noted that in order to maintain natural and healthy populations of animals subject to trapping, "the level of use is not to exceed what it was at the time of ANILCA." [191]

The preparation of the various park GMPs during the mid-1980s generated further questions and comments, and in addition, considerable discussion on the subject arose at meetings of the Gates of the Arctic SRC. In preparation for the SRC's January 1985 meeting, an environmental organization submitted comments urging that "the ADF&G and the NPS work together to establish a definition of what constitutes 'natural and healthy' wildlife populations," and a commentor from another organization postulated that inasmuch as "subsistence uses by local residents have been, and are now, a natural part of the ecosystem," any deviance from that norm (including "the concept of the park itself") should be considered "unnatural." [192] But any further discussion of the concept was postponed because of the furor that arose over traditional use zones. Not for another year did the SRC discuss the idea. An ADF&G representative at a January 1986 meeting noted that there was "no necessary contradiction between sustained yield [which was the state's fish and wildlife management philosophy] and natural and healthy populations." During the GMP process, public concern about the vague definition was widespread that "'natural and healthy' wildlife populations should be defined and management implications identified." [193] But the various final GMPs did not address those concerns. Mack Shaver, who served as the NPS's Northwest Areas superintendent, felt that present-day subsistence harvests were often "at least partly a consumptive and potentially damaging use of ecosystem resources" and that this "threat relates directly to naturalness and health." He therefore pressed the agency to define the two terms, inasmuch as it was "unlikely that the Board of Game will use those terms as criteria until we arrive at manageable definitions." [194]

Gates of the Arctic was the only park or monument SRC to address this issue when it recommended that "the term 'natural and healthy' population should be applied to the Park as a whole, and not just to limited geographic areas." Regional subsistence personnel, who attended an SRC meeting shortly after receiving the recommendation, asked commission members

But neither the Gates of the Arctic SRC nor any of the other SRCs provided additional written input on the "natural and healthy" issue. The Interior Department, moreover, responded to Gates of the Arctic SRC's efforts by ignoring its "natural and healthy" recommendation. In a blanket statement, it noted that

One term that was defined fairly specifically was that of customary trade. The term had first appeared in 1978 as part of the "subsistence uses" definition in the state's subsistence law. Shortly after President Carter's national monument proclamation in December 1978, the public was given the first of several opportunities to comment on the "customary trade" concept as well as on several other examples of "subsistence uses." A working definition thus emerged in the June 1979 proposed rule, which was refined in the January 1981 proposed rule and the June 1981 final rule. [197] The final rule noted that the definition

Shortly afterward, in December 1981, the joint fish and game boards passed their own regulations and defined customary trade somewhat more loosely. Customary trade was defined as "the limited noncommercial exchange, for minimal amounts of cash, of fish or game resources." The state's definition, among its other implications, sanctioned a more broad-based trade in plant materials than its NPS equivalent. [198]

The various GMPs, issued during the mid-1980s, clarified the role of customary trade in national park units. The Gates of the Arctic GMP, for example, noted that both barter and customary trade were "recognized as being a part of the subsistence lifestyle and economy. Customary trade largely centers around the sale of furs, although other items are also part of trade networks." The authors of the 1979 Senate Report, it noted, did "not intend that 'customary trade' be construed to permit the establishment of significant commercial enterprises under the guise of 'subsistence uses.'"

One gray area in the customary trade realm—the sale of caribou antlers—was brought to the agency's attention by the Cape Krusenstern SRC in late 1989. Through the mid-1980s, antlers were not an issue because most antlers from subsistence-caught caribou were left in the field by hunters; only a small number were used in craft items. But in the late 1980s, buyers from Korea arrived in northwestern Alaska to purchase wild caribou antlers. Selling these items was legal, at the time, according to state law. But federal regulations in this area were perceived to be sufficiently unclear that the question was referred to the Interior Department's solicitor. Much later, officials concluded that antlers could be collected from caribou that had been harvested for subsistence purposes; the customary trade regulations, however, prevented the intentional collection of antlers or the harvesting of animals for the sole purpose of antler collection. [199]

During the late 1970s, Alaska's two senators had insisted upon the inclusion of the various SRCs as part of developing Alaska Lands Act legislation. (As Chapter 4 indicates, the Senate had included the idea of various park-specific commissions in its October 1978 report; by contrast, the bills that passed the House in both May 1978 and May 1979 had called for a series of local advisory committees that would have been independent of NPS boundaries.) The specific purpose Congress granted to the various commissions was fairly narrow—to initially "devise and recommend to the Secretary and the Governor a program for subsistence hunting within the park or park monument," and thereafter to "make recommendations to the Secretary and Governor for any changes in the program or its implementation which the commission deems necessary." [200]

Beyond the commissions' specific purpose, both the NPS and area subsistence users recognized that a primary goal of the SRCs was to provide local input to agency personnel. But no sooner had the SRCs begun to operate than dramatically differing institutional personalities began to be manifested. Three park units—Denali and Lake Clark national parks and Aniakchak National Monument—had relatively few subsistence users, and existing users appear to have been relatively comfortable with the way the NPS administered its subsistence regulations. With two other commissions—Gates of the Arctic and Wrangell-St. Elias—the contrasting philosophies between SRC members and the NPS brought friction. And in northwestern Alaska, the predominance of a single Native cultural group (the Inupiat Eskimo) and a single, powerful Native regional corporation (NANA) caused the two SRCs in that area—Cape Krusenstern and Kobuk Valley—to assume distinct identities and working relationships from the other five commissions.

That friction should have arisen between the NPS and area subsistence users was both inevitable and predictable. The NPS, as part of "the nation's principal conservation agency," was known around the world because, for more than 60 years, it had fought "to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein." [201] With only scattered exceptions (as noted in Chapter 2), NPS lands prohibited resource harvesting activities, and the agency's positive public image was built, in large part, on its success in protecting park resources from hunters, collectors, and other resource users. The Alaska Lands Act, however, expressly permitted a wide range of subsistence uses within most of the newly-established and newly-expanded park units. NPS officials fully recognized that subsistence uses were a valid aspect of these park units. The Service's institutional philosophy, however, militated against an easy acceptance of these contrasting land uses. Moreover, those in charge of administering the agency's subsistence program—some of whom were unfamiliar with Alaska and its unique rural lifestyles—often chose to narrowly interpret the newly-established subsistence regulations.

Many subsistence users, by contrast, hoped for a broader interpretation of those same regulations. Before ANILCA was passed, many Natives who lived in and around the newly-established parks were from families who had carried on subsistence activities for hundreds of years, and most non-Native subsistence users had moved to rural Alaska, in part, to enjoy a lifestyle that was largely free from bureaucratic regulations. Natives, as a rule, supported ANILCA because it supported a continuation of their harvesting patterns, but non-Native hunters and fishers (again, as a rule) resented ANILCA because it imposed new regulatory roadblocks onto what had heretofore been, relatively speaking, a laissez faire system. Regardless of their feelings toward the Act itself, however, many rural residents—both Native and non-Native—were unhappy with specific ANILCA-based regulations, and it was at the SRC meetings where these people—many of whom were unfamiliar with those regulations—vented their collective spleen at NPS officials.

At SRC meetings, NPS officials got to know local subsistence users and learn about their lifeways, and it was at those same meetings where SRC members heard from NPS officials about how the agency—tied as it was to ANILCA and its regulations—explained how it intended to oversee subsistence issues. At meetings of some of the less contentious SRCs, the interplay between agency officials and subsistence users was amicable and low-key. But at others, starkly contrasting philosophies resulted in anger and antagonism. The Wrangell-St. Elias SRC, for example, passed several resolutions calling for the legitimization of practices (dealing with aircraft access and wolf control, for example) that were clearly contrary to agency regulations. (They were told beforehand that there was little chance of the Interior Secretary accepting them; and when the resolutions were in fact refused, they were submitted again in largely the same format as before.) The Gates of the Arctic SRC, another hotbed of independent-minded souls, passed a large number of resolutions that, in the federal government's opinion, were irrelevant to the "subsistence hunting program" called for in ANILCA. Moreover, all of the SRC's remaining resolutions (in other words, those that were deemed relevant) were, like those at Wrangell-St. Elias, rejected by the Interior Department. These refusals, which were issued in the spring of 1988, caused some commission members to be angry with, and distrustful of, agency officials.

Compounding the anger and distrust was a real or perceived lack of money for SRC operations. The various SRC charters, first signed in May 1982, called for an annual expenditure of $10,000 for each SRC, most of those funds to be expended for travel and per diem costs to an expected two meetings per year. SRC members soon found, however, that the given cost was fairly elastic; actual annual costs, during the first two fiscal years, ranged from approximately $1,600 to more than $48,000. (See Appendix 5.) Members were disappointed to learn that the various SRC budgets—with rare exceptions—did not allow authorized travel to other SRC meetings, to local Regional Advisory Council meetings, to state Game Board meetings, or for expert witnesses pertaining to pertinent SRC issues. [202] And in mid-1986, cutbacks to the NPS budget caused by the December 1985 passage of the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings deficit reduction act were so severe that SRC activity practically ceased for more than six months. (One Commission chair, James Schwarber from Gates of the Arctic, quit in disgust during this period, citing a "deteriorating level of support" and a "continuing lack of a comprehensive support policy.") SRC members grumbled, with some justification, that funds appeared to be available for actions perceived to be in the agency's best interests—for meetings to help determine subsistence use zones, for example—but scant funds were available for actions that furthered the interests of subsistence users. [203]

A frustration expressed by many SRC members was their inability to effectively interact with the other SRCs on matters of mutual interest. The NPS's primary way of keeping members current was to distribute meeting minutes to all of the state's SRCs. This system, however, proved ineffective because minutes had to be approved prior to distribution, and often a year or more lapsed before meeting minutes could be approved. The many meetings in which a quorum could not be mustered merely exacerbated this problem. [204] To enhance communications, commission members also expressed an interest in meeting with one another, and in August 1985, members of the Wrangell-St. Elias SRC asked in exasperation, "will the Commission chairmen ever be able to meet with one another?" Perhaps in response to their outcry, the various SRC chairs met for two days in Anchorage in mid-November 1985. But that meeting proved highly contentious—two State of Alaska officials, at one point, became so incensed at the comments of one NPS official that they stormed out in frustration—and the next SRC chairs' meeting did not take place for another three years. [205] The NPS, hoping to maintain a dialogue, followed up its 1988 meeting (held on November 29-30 in Fairbanks) with a similar confab a year later (December 7, 1989, in Anchorage).

Based on their track record, the SRCs' success during the 1980s, at least to some extent, was based on various individuals' philosophical attitudes toward federal authority. Gates of the Arctic chair James Schwarber, in his resignation letter, stated that "the NPS continues to assign subsistence such a low priority among its responsibilities, that it appears to have no priority at all," and Wrangell-St. Elias SRC chair Bill Ellis, rankled over the NPS's opinion in the aircraft-access issue, told another SRC chair that "I have the feeling that we [i.e., the SRCs] are something that just has to be put up with and if we can be suppressed in any manner (commission appointments, money, etc.) it will be done. ... It is my impression that the Park Service feels the subsistence resource commissions are something to be listened to patiently and then ignored completely." But Denali SRC chair Florence Collins disagreed with Ellis; she told him that "the Park Service has been very cooperative with the Commission" and averred that "without the parks I think subsistence people would be a lot worse off than with them." [206] The opinions of other SRC members no doubt ran the gamut between those extremes of opinion, and most understood the inevitable tension between NPS policies and subsistence users' interests. All parties recognized that some policy differences had been ironed out during the first few years of the SRCs' existence. But as the decade of the 1980s wound down, many unresolved conflicts remained.

¹ English Bay is now called Nanwalek; the village council changed the name in February 1992.

² "Madison vs. Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game," in Pacific Reporter, 2nd Series, vol. 696 (St. Paul, West Publishing, 1985), 168-72; Anchorage Times, February 23, 1985, A1, A12; Southeastern Log, October 1985, B3; L. J. Campbell, "Subsistence: Alaska's Dilemma," Alaska Geographic 17:4 (1990), 83.

³ Alaska House Bill History, 1985-86, for HB 288; Anchorage Times, February 28, 1985, B-1; Juneau Empire, March 29, 1985, 3. Sheffield submitted an identical bill (SB 231) for the Senate's consideration, which never got beyond the committee stage.

⁴ Juneau Empire, April 8, 1985, 3; Terry Haynes (ADF&G) interview, April 7, 1999; Anchorage Daily News, December 23, 1989, A-12; Haynes to author, email, May 24, 2002.

⁵ Anchorage Times, April 13, 1985, A-1, A-12; Pacific Reporter, 2nd Series, vol. 698 (1985), p. 174.

⁶ F&WS, 806 Report, 1985, 1-2. On August 29, 1986, the Alaska Supreme Court reversed the Appeals Court's decision in the Eluska case, as noted in the Pacific Reporter, 2nd Series, vol. 724 (1986), pp. 514-19. But by that time, the Alaska legislature, as mentioned below, had passed a revised subsistence law.

⁷ Alaska House Bill History, 1985-86 for HB 288 and S 320; Juneau Empire, April 8, 1985, 3. Abood felt that "there's no reason why a guy from Spenard can't qualify as a subsistence user." Juneau Empire, June 17, 1985, 3; June 20, 1985, 2.

⁸ See the following Juneau Empire articles: June 10, 1985, 1; June 17, 1985, 3; June 24, 1985, 1, 2, 16.

⁹ Southeastern Log, October 1985, B-4; November 1985, B-14. Most of the 54 Tier II hunts in 1985 were located near Alaska's large population centers; only ten were held in areas away from the road and marine-highway network. Almost half of the Tier II hunts were for moose, while the remainder were for Dall sheep, mountain goat, caribou, and bison. USF&WS, 806 Report, 1985, 3-4. A map of where the Tier II hunts were held is found in Lou Waller to Alaska Region Superintendents, January 31, 1986, 14, in "State Subsistence Management Activity, 1981-1986" folder, AKSO-RS.

¹⁰ Gale A. Norton (Office of the DOI Solicitor) to Harold M. Brown (Alaska Attorney General), April 4, 1986, in "1986 Federal Assumption Project" folder, AKSO-RS. As an explanation of the June 1 deadline, Horn noted that "we are persuaded that the spirit and intent of section 805(d) warrants a grace period in order to provide the State with a reasonable opportunity to make the necessary adjustments to its program. We have chosen as a deadline June 1, 1986, because it is roughly one year from the time the State legislature failed to rectify the State subsistence statute." William P. Horn to Honorable William Sheffield, September 23, 1985, in 806 Report, 1985, 19.

¹³ Session Laws of Alaska, 1986, Chapter 52, Secs. 6, 9, 10, 11; Alaska Statutes 16.05.940(23) and 16.05.940(32); Harold M. Brown to Elizabeth A. Stewart, September 12, 1986, in 806 Report, 1986, 41-42.

¹⁴ Anchorage Times, April 23, 1986, A-1, A-14; May 9, 1986, A-7; Juneau Empire, May 1, 1986, 2; Alaska Senate Journal 14 (1986), 2446-47.

¹⁵ Anchorage Daily News, May 2, 1986, B-1; Robert Gilmore, "Press Conference, Anchorage, Alaska," May 9, 1986, in "Press Releases thru FY 93" file, AKSO-RS.

¹⁶ Coghill's amendment stated that "... the taking of fish by residents for personal or family consumption by hook and line, or by dipnet where currently established, shall have a reasonable preference over other consumptive uses of the resource." Alaska Senate Journal, 1986, 2718.

¹⁷ Alaska House Bill History, 1985-86 for HB 288; Alaska Senate Journal, 1986, 2716-20.

¹⁸ Anchorage Times, May 10, 1986, A-1; Juneau Empire, May 12, 1986, 1, 16; Alaska House Bill History, 1985-86 for HB 288. The final bill was called SCS CSHB 288(Res) am(S): that is, the Senate Committee Substitute of the Committee Substitute for House Bill 288, Resources Committee, as amended by the Senate.

¹⁹ Juneau Empire, May 12, 1986, 1; Chapter 52, Session Laws of Alaska, 1986; Terry Haynes to author, email, May 24, 2002. The rural definition was added to Alaska Statutes 16.05.940. In September 1986, Governor Sheffield forwarded the text of the newly-passed subsistence law to Assistant Interior Secretary William Horn. Two months later, Horn certified the new law's legitimacy. He stated that "the new legislation cures the problems arising from the Madison decision. ... I am therefore pleased to inform you that we have determined that the State's subsistence program is once again in full compliance with sections 803, 804 and 805 of ANILCA." William P. Horn to Bill Sheffield, November 7, 1986, in "ADF&G thru FY 92" file, AKSO-RS.

²⁰ F&WS, 806 Report, 1986, pp. 1-2; Robert E. Gilmore to Donald R. Horrell, July 17, 1986, in "State Subsistence Management Activity, 1981-1986" folder, AKSO-RS. Gilmore noted that during the spring 1986 meeting, the game board "limited the number of rural/non-rural determinations to those communities or areas affected by hunting proposals (such as Nelchina caribou) under immediate consideration."

²¹ F&WS, 806 Report for 1986 (p. 2) and 1988 (p. 3). In its May-June 1986 meeting, the game board designated Glennallen as non-rural, but the Tok Cutoff-Nabesna Road Advisory Committee protested the action, and on August 6 the board reversed its earlier decision. In March 1987, the joint board ruled that the 84-mile Parks Highway corridor between Cantwell and Nenana was non-rural; but a year later, prodded by local advisory committees, it reversed its decision in this case as well. The joint board also considered changing the status of Seldovia and Valdez, both of which had been ruled as non-rural in June 1986. In March 1988, the board decided to change Seldovia from non-rural to rural, but it refused to make a similar ruling regarding Valdez. Bill Ellis to Bill Sheffield, July 25, 1986, in "ADF&G Regional Council thru FY 86" folder, AKSO-RS; DENA SRC minutes, June 5, 1987, in AKSO-RS files; NPS News Release, August 7, 1986, in "WRST thru FY 87" file, AKSO-RS.

²² F&WS, 806 Report, 1989, pp. 3, 5-6. In its May-June 1986 meeting, the game board ruled that the "entire Kenai Peninsula road-connected area" was non-rural. In July, various Kenai-area Natives responded by filing a suit, Kenaitze Indian Tribe vs. Alaska, in which they challenged the State's definition of "rural area" as being inconsistent with the meaning of "rural" as stated in Section 803 of ANILCA. In July 1987 the District Court ruled in the State's favor, but in April 1989 a Court of Appeals judge gave the plaintiffs priority use over the Kenai Peninsula's "hooligan" [eulachon] and salmon resources. The state board, however, did not respond to the judge's ruling and thus continued to classify the road-connected portion of the Kenai Peninsula as non-rural.

²³ Morehouse and Holleman, When Values Conflict, p. 15. A map delineating rural versus non-rural areas was included in an ADF&G Division of Subsistence publication, "How Alaska's Subsistence Law Affected Hunting Regulations," March 1990, p. 4.

²⁴ As noted earlier, the three-tiered system operated as follows: When game was plentiful, no restrictions were necessary. In cases of mild shortages, Tier I hunts were authorized; here opportunities by rural subsistence were unaffected, while opportunities by all other users were curtailed or eliminated. And in cases of severe game shortages, Tier II hunts would rationalize game resources among qualified subsistence users according to the three criteria listed in the revised subsistence law. Those criteria were "customary and direct dependence on the fish stock or game population as the mainstay of livelihood," "local residency," and "availability of alternative resources." Morehouse and Holleman, When Values Conflict, 15; Session Laws and Resolves of Alaska, 1986, Chapter 52, Section 6.

²⁵ James A. Fall to author, email, July 21, 2000. The federal government's Final EIS (FSB, Subsistence Management for Federal Public Lands in Alaska, Final EIS, Vol. I (Anchorage, F&WS, February 1992, p. II-17) notes that "In 1989, the State made customary and traditional use determinations for most large wildlife resources for most of the state."

²⁶ As noted above, the director of the F&WS's Region 7 (Alaska) office, in Anchorage, had served as the Interior Secretary's representative on federal subsistence issues since August 1982.

²⁷ U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, ANILCA Section 806 Monitoring Report, 1985, 8.

²⁸ Don W. Collinsworth to David Olsen, August 20, 1987, in response to 1985-1986 Section 806 Monitoring Report.

³¹ ADF&G Subsistence Specialist Terry Haynes, in a March 12, 2001 email to the author, defended the state's role. He stated that "If the federal government reduced or limited the ANILCA reimbursement levels to the state because of our track record in operating the regional councils, to my knowledge this was never brought to our attention. Perhaps federal officials who advised the congressional budget committees made such arguments, but I don't recall ever hearing such an explanation. I do know that [ADF&G] never hid the manner in which the funding was used; indeed, the fact that much of the funding was applied to subsistence data collection was a response to the need for such information to facilitate implementation of Title VIII and support the public advisory participation in subsistence management."

³² Between 1983 and 1988, the following regional councils submitted annual reports: Arctic, none; Interior, 1983 and 1984; Southcentral, none; Southeastern, 1983, 1985, 1986, 1988; Southwestern, none; Western, none.

³³ F&WS, Section 806 Subsistence Monitoring Report for 1985 (pp. 7-10), 1986 (pp. 7-10), and 1988, (pp. 6-8); and various entries in the "ADF&G Regional Councils thru FY86" and "ADF&G Regional Councils, FY 87-90" folders, AKSO-RS.

³⁵ F&WS, Section 806 Subsistence Monitoring Report for 1985 (p. 8) and 1986 (pp. 7-9).

³⁶ See, for example, Ron Jolin to Dan Calhoun, April 22, 1985, in "ADF&G Regional Councils thru FY 86" folder, and Karen Brandt to Regional Council Members, December 30, 1986,in "ADF&G Regional Councils, FY 87-90" folder, both AKSO-RS.

³⁷ Walt Stieglitz, "Federal Agency Guidelines for Receiving and Responding to Regional Advisory Council Annual Reports;" in draft, August 26, 1988 (in "ADF&G Regional Councils, FY 87-90" folder) and in final, November 30, 1988 (in 1989 806 Report, Section E).

³⁸ See, for example, Acting Regional Director, F&WS to Royce Purinton, October 26, 1984, in "ADF&G Regional Councils thru FY 86" folder, AKSO-RS.

³⁹ The difficulties with the state's advisory system (as expressed by a non-Native) are encapsulated in a letter by the Southcentral Regional Council chairman to Governor Steve Cowper on September 7, 1989, in "ADF&G Regional Councils, FY 87-90" folder, AKSO-RS.

⁴⁰ Morehouse and Holleman, When Values Conflict, 15-16. As Taylor Brelsford noted in a January 18, 2002 letter to the author, RuralCAP (Rural Alaska Community Action Program, Inc.) played a major role in spotlighting rural residents' frustration with the state-managed regional council system.

⁴¹ Morehouse and Holleman, When Values Conflict, 13; Terry Haynes (ADF&G) interview, April 7, 1999; James A. Fall, "The Division of Subsistence of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game: An Overview of its Research Program and Findings, 1980-1990," Arctic Anthropology 27 (1990), 70.

⁴² Boyd Evison email, April 12, 2001. Of particular assistance to Waller during this period was G. Ray Bane, a management assistant who worked at both the Gates of the Arctic and Northwest Areas offices. C. Mack Shaver (at NWAK) and James Pepper (at GAAR) also contributed to the formulation of NPS subsistence policies.

⁴⁴ Ibid.; ANIA SRC minutes, April 18, 1984; GAAR SRC minutes, May 4, 1984, 8.

⁴⁵ At Lake Clark, an NPS official stated that "there is very little actual subsistence hunting within the park itself, most of the hunting is done around in the preserve," while at Denali, the SRC chair noted that "we are lucky, at Denali, to have very very few people in the area who use the park for subsistence." DENA/LACL SRC minutes, May 10-11, 1984, 6; Florence R. Collins to Walter [Sampson], April 20, 1987, in DENA SRC file.

⁴⁶ CAKR SRC minutes, November 29, 1984, 7; February 1, 1985, 1. Later, CAKR's SRC raised the quorum to five. The SRC for WRST, and KOVA (and perhaps other parks as well) also decided that five members constituted a quorum. Walter Sampson to Robert Newlin, Noorvik, February 15, 1985, in KOVA SRC file; WRST SRC minutes, May 16, 1984, 5.

⁴⁷ WRST SRC minutes, November 1, 1984, 2; CAKR SRC minutes, February 1, 1985, 1; January 29, 1986, 1. The August 1-2, 1985 meeting of the WRST SRC featured three proxy votes, but as the minutes noted, "The proxy vote system is not the proper way to conduct business. All members of the Commission should be serving."

⁴⁸ GAAR SRC Resolution 86-12, March 26, 1986; C. Mack Shaver to Frank Stein, November 1986, in CAKR SRC file. Shaver stated that the change had been "proposed by Lou Waller of our Regional Office...". As a result of the SRC's action, Alaska's seven SRC charters—all of which were renewed by the Interior Secretary on November 19, 1986—contained an extension provision. That provision became part of federal law in October 1992, when Public Law 102-525 was signed by President Bush. That law, which provided for "the establishment of the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site in the State of Kansas, and for other purposes," contained Section 301(b) which read, "In the case of any advisory commission or advisory committee established in connection with any national park system unit, any member of such Commission or Committee may serve after the expiration of his or her term until a successor is appointed."

⁴⁹ At the initial Cape Krusenstern SRC meeting, for example, an NPS official noted that "the information the commission develops for a subsistence hunting program will be used in the general management plan." CAKR SRC minutes, May 4, 1984, 2-3.

⁵⁰ The park's SRC was unable to provide input into the final GMP. That document's subsistence section was distressingly brief, although references to subsistence were sprinkled elsewhere in the volume. NPS, Lake Clark National Park and Preserve General Management Plan and Environmental Assessment (Anchorage, the author, August 1984), 4, 8-9, 17-18, 32-33, 87.

⁵¹ The State of Alaska's comments on the various revised draft GMPs (issued in December 1985) were highlighted in the Anchorage Times, April 24, 1986, B-1.

⁵² Denali was the first SRC to pass hunting plan resolutions; its first two were in June and July 1984, respectively. The Gates of the Arctic SRC, at its May 1984 meeting, hoped to submit its initial recommendations by July 1984, but it did not do so until March 1985. Other SRCs that submitted proposals in 1985 included those representing Aniakchak, Lake Clark, and Wrangell-St. Elias.

⁵⁵ NPS, Cape Krusenstern National Monument General Management Plan, Land Protection Plan, and Wilderness Suitability Review (Denver, NPS, December 1986), viii; NPS, Denali National Park and Preserve GMP (Denver, NPS, December 1986), vi, 44.

⁵⁶ Benjamin P. Nageak to George N. Ahmaogak, December 19, 1984, 3-4; GAAR SRC Resolution 86-08, January 31, 1986; both in GAAR SRC file. In 1985, the Gates of the Arctic SRC passed seven hunting plan resolutions, and at its January 1986 it passed eight additional resolutions. Based on those actions, Resolution 86-08 stated that "reference to a separate plan by the National Park Service be deleted in the General Management Plan" because it "appears to duplicate the hunting program the Subsistence Resource Commission is currently developing."

⁵⁷ The Aniakchak SRC sent in a four-part resolution on March 17, 1986; one day later, the Lake Clark SRC sent in a two-page subsistence hunting program.

⁵⁸ The Cape Krusenstern and Kobuk Valley SRCs, at a joint meeting, had passed a single (and identical) resolution in January 1986, but the resolution was not sent to the Interior Secretary until years later, well after the federal government had begun to assume subsistence hunting management on federal lands. Cape Krusenstern SRC chair Frank Stein, asked by other SRC chairs in November 1988 why the resolution had not yet been forwarded to the Interior Secretary, replied that "we're waiting for their mistakes." CAKR SRC minutes, June 22, 1989, 1. See page 129.

⁵⁹ The Denali and Gates of the Arctic SRCs originally passed six and twenty-four recommendations, respectively, but negotiations between SRC members and NPS staff regarding appropriate themes for hunting plan recommendations resulted in fewer recommendations being submitted to the Interior Secretary.

⁶⁰ Because few Washington-based DOI or NPS officials had much subsistence expertise, Alaska NPS officials found it difficult to either move, or obtain comments on, the various SRC recommendations. Lou Waller interview, July 25, 2000.

⁶¹ Although William Horn remained as the Interior Department's Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks until July 1, 1988, he had let it be known several months earlier that he was interested in leaving his position in order to work for the Washington, D.C. office of an Alaska law firm. Because of the probable conflicts of interest involved, Horn recused himself from an active involvement on Alaska-based issues during his last several months of federal service. Anchorage Daily News, December 2, 1988, C4; December 2, 1990, B1.

⁶² Aniakchak SRC recommendation 85-01(4), March 12, 1986, in ANIA SRC file; W. T. Ellis to "Dear Reviewer," August 15, 1985, in WRST SRC file. As noted in an October 1987 memo, Slana was a worrisome issue because a 1983 land withdrawal had engendered the "new community" of New Slana, which during the intervening period had grown to "over 200 persons, living directly along the northern boundary of the preserve ... this is a significant threat to park resources." Lou Waller to Paul Haertel, October 16, 1987, in WRST SRC file.

⁷⁰ Frank Stein to Bill Sheffield, April 28, 1986; CAKR/KOVA SRC minutes, June 6, 1986, 1. Lou Waller (interview, July 25, 2000) notes that Bane helped write the resolution and even readied it for mailing.

⁷¹ CAKR SRC minutes for July 13-14, 1987, 3 and 5, and June 22, 1989, 1. See endnote 58, above.

⁷² NPS, Denali National Park and Preserve, Draft Subsistence Management Plan, February 6, 1999, 2:43; Hollis Twitchell to author, email, June 9, 2000. Twitchell noted that park officials imposed the boundary "without any public input because they were scared to death that the population of Cantwell was going to explode."

⁷³ Resource Manager to Supt. DENA, January 13, 1986; DENA SRC minutes, April 15, 1986; Denali NP SRC Hunting Program, April 1986, Recommendation 2.

⁷⁴ Susan Reece to Mrs. Florence Collins, April 22, 1988, in DENA SRC file; Hollis Twitchell interview, April 6, 1999.

⁷⁵ WRST SRC minutes, August 1, 1985, 3; Boyd Evison to Jack Hession, November 1, 1985, in "WRST thru FY 87" file, AKSO-RS.

⁷⁸ "Dear Interested Citizen or Organization," December 29, 1989, in WRST SRC file.

⁷⁹ GAAR SRC minutes, May 4, 1984, 6. This verbiage was taken almost verbatim from the legislative history (Congressional Record, November 12, 1980, H 10541).

⁸⁰ "Denali NP SRC Proposed Recommendation Regarding Resident Zones," June 12, 1984, in DENA SRC file.

⁸¹ DENA SRC minutes, August 9-10, 1985; "Public Notice," August 1985; both in DENA SRC file; Hollis Twitchell to author, email, June 9, 2000.

⁸³ NPS, "Initial Comments," ca. June 1986; Susan Reece to Florence Collins, April 22, 1988; both in DENA SRC file.

⁸⁴ LACL SRC minutes, May 11, 1985; Glen R. Alsworth, Sr. to Secretary Donald Hodel, March 18, 1986, in LACL SRC file; John Branson interview, July 25, 2000.

⁸⁵ Bill Sheffield to Glen R. Alsworth, Sr., May 2, 1986; Don W. Collinsworth to Alsworth, September 16, 1986; Susan Reece to Alsworth, April 22, 1988, all in LACL SRC file.

⁸⁶ Reece to Alsworth, April 22, 1988, in LACL SRC file; DENA SRC minutes, June 17, 1988.

⁸⁷ Collinsworth to Boyd Evison, October 28, 1988; Collinsworth to Stan Leaphart, February 28, 1989; both in Terry Haynes (ADF&G) files. Collinsworth complained that the proposed regulation would cause "situations where Alaskan citizens that fully qualify for subsistence privileges under state laws and policies will not qualify as a bona fide subsistence user within the National Parks." Therefore, "these proposals may result in a declining use of parklands for subsistence purposes in the future, as the effect of the 'roster' concept has the potential to limit and reduce eligibility over time. We do not believe this is in keeping with the spirit and intent of ANILCA."

⁸⁸ "First Meeting, Denali SRC Committee Meeting, July 7, 1988;" Steve Cowper to Manuel Lujan, Jr., August 2, 1989; Subsistence Division to [NPS] Regional Director, Alaska, August 11, 1989; all in DENA SRC file.

⁸⁹ LACL SRC minutes, May 2, 1989, 2; November 6, 1989, 1; May 10, 1990, 1-2.

⁹² Waller to author, December 20, 2001; Hollis Twitchell interview, April 6, 1999; Steve Ulvi interview, April 6, 1999.

⁹⁴ "Recommendations Subsistence Hunting Program, Lake Clark National Park," August 1985, LACL SRC file.

⁹⁸ DENA SRC, "Proposed Recommendation Regarding Resident Zones," June 12, 1984. Denali was not the only SRC to address the needs of post-ANILCA in-migrants. The Cape Krusenstern and Kobuk Valley SRCs, for example, passed a draft resolution in January 1986 stating that "persons not qualifying under the provisions of [the December 1980 residency date] may petition the appropriate Subsistence Resource Commission for such privileges." Two months later, the Gates of the Arctic SRC voted to recommend a procedure (Resolution 86-16) whereby recent residents might gain subsistence access to the park. And three months after that, the same body recommended that a twelve-month residency requirement be imposed before residents could begin harvesting subsistence resources. The state, however, objected to the residency requirement, and the Interior Department, in a March 1988 letter, rejected such a requirement in favor of either an individual or community-based subsistence permit system.

⁹⁹ Bill Sheffield to Orville E. Lind [etc.], May 5, 1986; Don Collinsworth to Lind, September 16, 1986; both in ANIA SRC file. Sheffield sent a similar letter (on May 2, 1986) to the Lake Clark SRC chair, Glen Alsworth.

¹⁰⁰ See C. Mack Shaver to Subsistence Coordinator, Alaska Regional Office, July 31, 1986, GAAR SRC file.

¹⁰¹ The approval of the Gates of the Arctic recommendation had appeared in the park and preserve's General Management Plan (p. 123), which had been released in December 1986, while the approval of Lake Clark's resolution was included in the department's April 22, 1988 response to the SRC's hunting plan recommendation. The Interior Department did not respond to the Aniakchak or Cape Krusenstern-Kobuk Valley recommendations inasmuch as they were never formalized.

¹⁰² Susan Reece to Florence Collins, April 22, 1988, in DENA SRC file. The Interior Department's acceptance of the 1986 cutoff date appears to have been a compromise between the position of the NPS, which preferred a 1980 cutoff date, and that of the State of Alaska, which felt that "it might not be valid to make eligibility retroactive." NPS, "Initial Comments," c. June 1986, DENA SRC file; DENA SRC minutes, June 5, 1987, 2. This tension remained long after the Interior Department issued its letter; in August 1989, for example, Governor Cowper urged the Interior Department to abandon any proposed rulemaking that might preclude all qualified residents from hunting in parks, and two years later, a Sierra Club representative warned that "1986 can not be legally used" as a cutoff date and that December 1980 should be substituted instead. Steve Cowper to Manuel Lujan, Jr., August 2, 1989; Jack Hession to Boyd Evison, October 30, 1989; both in DENA SRC files.

¹⁰³ Congressional Record, November 12, 1980, H 10541. Similar language appeared in Senate Report 96-413, 169. Also see Federal Register, June 17, 1981, 31851-52, 31861, 31863-64. Native leader Byron Mallott, who hailed from Yakutat, insisted upon the Malaspina Forelands exception because the area's harsh, unpredictable weather often made water access unsafe.

¹⁰⁴ According to the June 17, 1981 Federal Register (p. 31841), "residents of Glennallen, Slana, and Tok submitted several comments [in response to the issuance of proposed subsistence regulations] that argued for allowance of aircraft as 'the most feasible and ecologically sound access means in many cases," but perhaps because other respondents had opposed aircraft for any subsistence uses, the proposed regulations were not changed. But here, as elsewhere in the state, the regulations were not immediately enforced. Local subsistence user Fred T. Williams, in a letter to Senator Frank Murkowski (August 13, 1985, in "WRST thru FY 87" file, AKSO-RS), noted that "The first couple of years [after ANILCA's passage] went along fine. Local residents were able to fly into the Park and hunt caribou, sheep and moose."

¹⁰⁵ W. T. Ellis to Regional Director, NPS, August 2, 1985, in WRST SRC file.

¹⁰⁶ Regional Director NPS to Alaska Superintendents, July 2, 1985; William P. Horn to Sue Entsminger, August 14, 1985; both in WRST SRC file. Those who were "otherwise permitted via exception" included certain residents of Anaktuvuk Pass and Yakutat, for reasons explained above.

¹⁰⁷ Ellis was a longtime area hunting guide who had lost much of his guiding area when Wrangell-St. Elias National Park had been established, so his opposition to Contor's interpretation had personal as well as political implications.

¹⁰⁸ W. T. Ellis to Regional Director, NPS, August 2, 1985; Ellis to "Dear Reviewer," August 15, 1985; both in WRST SRC file.

¹⁰⁹ The "previous and incorrect interpretation," of course, was Budge's February 1984 letter. Horn further noted that "the July 2 memorandum does not constitute a restriction or closure, in the sense that no change in the Code of Federal Regulations was made." Thus no public hearings or comment period was necessary. Horn to Bill Ellis, October 29, 1985, in WRST SRC files.

¹¹⁰ Horn to Bill Ellis, October 29, 1985; Horn to Sue Entsminger, August 14, 1985; both in WRST SRC file.

¹¹¹ Stanley T. Albright to Frank Murkowski, May 6, 1987, in "WRST thru FY 87" file, AKSO-RS; Horn to Ellis, October 29, 1985, in WRST SRC file. The NPS also held an open house in Fairbanks on the same subject.

¹¹² Fred T. Williams to Frank Murkowski, August 13, 1985, in "WRST thru FY 87" file, AKSO-RS; W. T. Ellis to Florence Collins, April 29, 1986, in DENA SRC file.

¹¹³ Regional Director, Alaska Region to [various Alaska NPS] Superintendents, July 2, 1985; W. T. Ellis to Regional Director NPS, October 4, 1985; Bockmon to Regional Director NPS, April 2, 1986; all in WRST SRC file. Although Bockmon's decision was the Interior Department's final word on the subject, the park's SRC in August 1986 nevertheless decided to submit its non-emergency recommendation regarding aircraft access to the Interior Secretary. The department, in May 1988, rejected the recommendation and cited "the 1985 memorandum from the NPS Alaska Regional Director" as a principal clarifying document. The SRC, unbowed by this action, recommended in late 1989 that the Interior Secretary "list each of the park's resident zones as 'exempt communities' in order to continue traditional access via aircraft for subsistence activities," and it also recommended that the Interior Secretary "rescind the 1985 policy which bans eligible residents from subsistence activities if access to adjacent state, private, or preserve lands involves aircraft." The SRC, however, never forwarded these recommendations to Washington.

Richard Martin, who served as Wrangell-St. Elias's superintendent throughout this period, noted in a recent letter that a major effort during his tenure was "educating subsistence-eligible folks on the principle of surface transportation for subsistence activities. ... It took significant fortitude to reasonably communicate that message. I believe, ultimately, understanding and acceptance was achieved." Bill Ellis to "Dear Interested Citizen," December 29, 1989, in WRST SRC file; Martin to Betty Knight, August 30, 2001, in Admin History Correspondence File.

¹¹⁶ William P. Horn to Orville Lind, March 15, 1988, in ANIA SRC file; GAAR Subsistence Management Program, May 1987, in GAAR SRC file; Susan Reece to Benjamin Nageak, May 18, 1988, in GAAR SRC file.

¹¹⁷ James J. Berens to Regional Solicitor, USDI, August 7, 1985; Lou Waller to File, September 25, 1985; both in WRST SRC files.

¹¹⁸ See, for example, Tracks in the Wildland; a Portrayal of Koyukon and Nunamiut Subsistence by Richard K. Nelson, Kathleen H. Mautner, and G. Ray Bane (Fairbanks, University of Alaska, 1982), pp. 90-107 and pp. 116-23. Although this study was published in the early 1980s, it was modified only slightly (and not updated) from a similar study, Kuuvangmiit, which was printed in January 1976.

¹²¹ President Nixon issued E.O. 11644 on February 8, 1972; on May 24, 1977, President Carter issued E.O. 11989, which amended that order. Both actions were published in the Federal Register a day after they were issued.

¹²² LACL/DENA SRC minutes, May 10-11, 1984, 7. The unnamed NPS official may have been describing Cantwell—a town bordering Denali National Park—as the area where ATVs had been "around for quite awhile." As noted in Chapter 8, Cantwell-area residents during the early 1990s noted that ATV use on the south side of the Alaska Range had commenced between 1940 and 1950.

¹²³ NPS, Denali National Park and Preserve General Management Plan, December 1986, 45; LACL SRC minutes, May 10-11, 1984, 6.

¹²⁴ NPS, Cape Krusenstern National Monument General Management Plan, December 1986, 61-62.

¹²⁵ See, for example, the NPS's Kobuk Valley National Park General Management Plan, December 1986, 87.

¹²⁷ NPS, Aniakchak GMP, 33, 173; Denali GMP, 45, 195; Gates of the Arctic GMP, 123-24, 289; Evison email, April 17, 2001. The nontraditional nature of ATV use in Anaktuvuk Pass, located within Gates of the Arctic NP, was explained in a January 28, 1986 memo from the Acting Associate Regional Director, Operations to the park superintendent. See "Initial comments, GAAR Recommended Subsistence Hunting Program," January 8, 1987, in GAAR SRC file. This determination was a key rationale for a three-way land trade that was hammered out in 1986 and 1987; see description below.

¹²⁹ NPS, Cape Krusenstern GMP, ix, 90-91; Lake Clark GMP, 17, 33; Richard Stenmark to Judith Gottlieb, December 8, 2001. In September 1984, a month after Lake Clark's GMP was released, superintendent Paul Haertel told the park's SRC members that "the subject of off road vehicles is something that we haven't addressed yet in our management and it is something that we need to." LACL SRC minutes, September 29, 1984, 3.

¹³¹ A possible exception to this rule was a resolution from the Denali SRC; this resolution sought to ensure that "in those areas and routes open to subsistence surface transportation, only those means traditionally used in those specific areas and routes could continue to be used." DENA SRC, "Proposed Recommendation Regarding Surface Access," July 13, 1984, in DENA SRC files.

¹³² ANIA SRC Hunting Plan Recommendation 85-01; William P. Horn to Orville Lind, March 15, 1988; both in ANIA SRC file.

¹³³ WRST SRC minutes, November 1-2, 1984, 3. The minutes of the April 7-8, 1986 meetings bear the following overprinted message; "Millie [Buck] and Walter [Charley, both SRC members] cautioned that many local people use ORV's currently & would not want to cut them out!"

¹³⁴ The first ATV, according to anthropologist Edwin Hall, had arrived there in 1961, three years before the arrival of the first snowmobile. Edwin S. Hall to James A. Schwarber, February 6, 1986, in GAAR SRC file. But the 1991 draft legislative EIS (see below, p. 4) noted that "ATVs were first introduced to the area by the U.S. Geological Survey in the late 1950s.... ATVs were used in the village in the early 1960s, but [Michael] Kunz [in a 1989 study] notes that the first Native-owned ATV—a Coot—was acquired in 1969." See Edwin S. Hall, Jr., Craig Gerlach, and Margaret B. Blackman, In the National Interest: A Geographically Based Study of Anaktuvuk Pass Inupiat Subsistence Through Time, 2 vols. (Barrow, North Slope Borough), 1985.

¹³⁵ NPS, Draft Legislative Environmental Impact Statement, All-Terrain Vehicles for Subsistence Use, Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve (Anchorage, the author, January 1991), 1-2, 4, 10.

¹³⁶ CAKR SRC minutes, November 29, 1984. The Anaktuvuk Pass meeting was held on July 31 and August 1, 1984.

¹³⁷ Stan Leaphart (Citizens' Advisory Commission on Federal Areas) to Jim Schwarber, January 23, 1985; Randy R. Rogers (Northern Alaska Environmental Center) to Schwarber, June 11, 1985; SRC minutes, January 29-31, 1986, 5; SRC minutes, June 17-19, 1986, 2; SRC Resolution 86-05, January 31, 1986; all in GAAR SRC file. The ATV study, written by Michael Kunz and Keith Troxel, was entitled The Anaktuvuk Pass All-Terrain Vehicle Study, 1986-1988; a Narrative Report of Field Operations and Dispersed ATV Use (Anchorage, NPS), 1989.

¹³⁸ GAAR SRC, Resolution 86-10, March 26, 1986; SRC minutes, June 17-19, 1986, 2.

¹³⁹ Tony Sisto to Lou Waller, March 13, 1987; SRC minutes, March 17-18, 1988, 4; both in GAAR SRC file; NPS, Draft Legislative EIS, January 1991, 11, 195-249.

¹⁴⁰ Gates of the Arctic, it may be recalled, had been the subject of a proposed, ad hoc traditional use zone back in the original (January 1977) version of HR 39, and the legislative history for both the House and Senate bill provided a rationale for this concept. Page 147 of Senate Report 96-413, for example, noted that "subsistence uses of some areas of the park may be essential periodically or continuously for the continued survival of the local people." Similarly, the Senate Committee felt "that the subsistence patterns of the park are well known and can be identified." The report listed fourteen drainages within the park that "have apparently been used for subsistence hunting." It further noted that "It is not the intent of the committee that these drainage be considered the only places where subsistence can occur. But it is the Committee's intent to restrict subsistence hunting in the park to traditional use areas." Also see Congressional Record, November 12, 1980, H 10535, and Federal Register 46 (June 17, 1981), 31848.

¹⁴¹ LACL SRC minutes, September 29, 1984, 4; Federal Register, June 17, 1981, 31848-49. Both the Senate and House records supported this conclusion; page 147 of Senate Report 96-413, for example, stated that "a park subsistence resource commission established by this Act will help further determine or modify these areas," and Rep. Morris Udall (in the Congressional Record, November 12, 1980, p. 10547) said that "fundamental fairness seems to require that the designation and boundaries of those zones be made by the subsistence resource commissions established by section 808, rather than by park planners and researchers."

¹⁴² Leslie Barber, "The Fine Point of Subsistence," Alaska 51 (September 1985), 18.

¹⁴⁴ During this period, as noted above, the community of Anaktuvuk Pass was in the midst of discussions of a possible land trade as well as the traditional use zone idea. So in order to gauge local opinion on these issues, Regional Director Roger Contor visited the community and discussed these and other NPS-related issues. During an April 11, 2001 interview, Contor recalled that one elderly Inupiat resident, during a community meeting, took him aside and (using a translator) suggested that certain named valleys near the community should be closed to snowmachines. Contor asked the gentleman if he could present that opinion to the larger group; having received that permission, he received a broad degree of approval from all those present. But when he related those discussions at a Fairbanks meeting of Doyon, Ltd. officials a few months later, he was severely criticized for attempting to limit local residents' options. That criticism, moreover, dogged Contor for months afterward.

¹⁴⁵ Supt. GAAR to Regional Director, ARO, May 31, 1984; "Public Notice, Extension of Request for Information," ca. January 1985; William P. Horn to Rep. Don Young, April 18, 1985; NPS, "Draft Briefing Statement for GAAR SRC Draft Hunting Plan Recommendation 9," July 21, 1994, 3, all in GAAR SRC file; Jim Kowalsky, "Subsistence Board Protests Park Service Hunting Zones," The Council (TCC newsletter), February 1985;.

¹⁴⁶ Vernita Zilys, "Remarks to the Gates of the Arctic Subsistence Resource Commission," January 23-24, 1985, in GAAR SRC file.

¹⁴⁷ Stan Leaphart (CACFA) to Jim Schwarber, January 23, 1985, in GAAR SRC file. (Udall's statement comes from the Congressional Record, November 12, 1980, H 10547.) A follow-up statement on the subject (Leaphart to Richard Ring, March 4, 1985, in GAAR SRC file), noted with some irony that "subsistence areas that overlap the most popular visitor areas have been left off the map altogether or off of summer subsistence zones. This interpretation ... makes it seem like a deliberate attempt to avoid subsistence/visitor conflicts." He then listed four popular recreational areas and linked each to various community subsistence areas.

¹⁴⁸ George Ahmaogak to James A. Schwarber, ca. January 23, 1985, in GAAR SRC file.

¹⁴⁹ ALSC, "Comments of Alaska Legal Services Corporation," January 21, 1985, in GAAR SRC file.

¹⁵⁰ GAAR SRC Resolution 85-01, January 24, 1985. Two months later, the ADF&G commissioner made a similar argument in a letter to the NPS. Don Collinsworth to Roger Contor, March 14, 1985, in GAAR SRC file.

¹⁵¹ James A. Schwarber to William Clark, January 28, 1985; Schwarber to Rep. Don Young, January 28, 1985; both in GAAR SRC file.

¹⁵² Roger J. Contor to James A. Schwarber, February 26, 1985, in GAAR SRC file. Judy Alderson (interview with author, June 27, 2000), who worked at the park during this period, noted that park staff "backed down" on the issue shortly after the January 1985 SRC meeting.

¹⁵³ NPS, "Public Notice, Information Requested," May 6, 1985, in GAAR SRC file. Boyd Evison, in an April 17, 2001 email, noted that the issue, and Supt. Ring's position on it, had put him "at serious odds with people at Anaktuvuk Pass;" by the summer of 1985, a widely-circulated petition demanding Ring's ouster had been presented to Sen. Ted Stevens.

¹⁵⁴ GAAR SRC Resolutions 86-04 and 86-06, January 31, 1986; GAAR SRC minutes, January 29-31, 1986, 22-23. Resolution 86-06 asked that the word "will" in the following two sentences (which appeared in the recently-released revised draft version of the park's GMP) be changed to "may;" "The Subsistence Resource Commission will address the issue of designation of traditional use areas. Based on their recommendations, the Park Service will propose the designation of traditional use areas for resident zone communities for review and comment by the affected communities and the general public." The park's final GMP, issued in December 1986, reflected the SRC's request. But in early 1986 the SRC was unsure of how the NPS would decide in the matter, so that March it forged ahead and passed Resolution 86-11, as described below.

¹⁵⁵ GAAR SRC Resolution 86-11, March 26, 1986; GAAR SRC minutes, March 25-26, 1986, 4.

¹⁵⁷ GAAR SRC, "Final Draft Outline, Subsistence Management Program for Gates of the Arctic National Park," June 19, 1986, in GAAR SRC file.

¹⁵⁸ NPS, "Public Notice," July 23, 1986; Supt. NWAK to Subsistence Coordinator ARO, July 31, 1986; both in GAAR SRC file. Shaver's narrow perception of traditional activities is further borne out by the following statement that described Eskimos' changing lifeways: "Because once-traditional subsistence activities now take less time with modern technology and because jobs are scarce, time often hangs heavily on people's hands." C. Mack Shaver, "Traditional National Park Values and Living Cultural Parks: Seemingly Conflicting Management Demands Coexisting in Alaska's New National Parklands," in International Perspectives on Cultural Parks; Proceedings of the First World Conference, Mesa Verde National Park, 1984 (NPS/Colorado Historical Society, 1989), 313.

¹⁶⁰ Boyd Evison to author, email, April 17, 2001; NPS, "Initial Comments — GAAR Recommended Subsistence Hunting Program," October 20, 1986 (later revised to January 8, 1987), in GAAR SRC files.

¹⁶¹ Richard A. Caulfield to Roger Siglin, March 23, 1987; Bill Horn to Benjamin P. Nageak, July 2,1987; Susan Reece to Nageak, May 18, 1988; all in GAAR SRC file.

¹⁶² DENA SRC minutes, June 5, 1987, 1-2. A year later, at the park's next SRC meeting, the idea surfaced again, but most SRC members felt that "there was no pressing need to establish the zones" and the park's chief ranger, Tom Griffiths, "did not see a management problem at the present time." DENA SRC minutes, June 17, 1988, 4-5.

¹⁶³ Martin to Subsistence Liaison, Alaska Region, November 13, 1986, in WRST SRC minutes.

¹⁶⁴ See, for example, LACL SRC minutes, September 29, 1984; Susan Reece to W. T. Ellis, May 18, 1988, 4, in WRST SRC minutes.

¹⁶⁵ GAAR SRC minutes, May 4, 1984, 5; LACL/DENA SRC minutes, May 10, 1984, 3-4; CAKR SRC minutes, May 4, 1984, 4-5.

¹⁶⁶ W. T. Ellis to "Dear Reviewer," August 15, 1985, in WRST SRC file; C. Mack Shaver to Lou Waller, November 21, 1985, in CAKR SRC file; Senate Report 96-413, 171. The Interior Department, as expected, rejected Wrangell-St. Elias's predator control proposal in its May 1988 response.

¹⁶⁷ CAKR/KOVA SRC minutes, January 29-30, 1986, 1; Evison to ADF&G, November 14, 1986, in "ADF&G Boards, Aug. 86-FY 88" file.

¹⁶⁸ GAAR SRC, "Final Draft Outline, Subsistence Management Program for Gates of the Arctic National Park," June 19, 1986, 11-12; Susan Reece to Benjamin Nageak, May 18, 1988, 2-3; both in GAAR SRC file.

¹⁶⁹ The "standalone preserves" included Bering Land Bridge, Noatak, and Yukon-Charley Rivers, while pre-ANILCA park units that allowed subsistence uses in specified areas included Denali (formerly Mount McKinley), Glacier Bay, and Katmai.

¹⁷⁰ One Hoonah resident who fought for Glacier Bay subsistence rights during this period, and continues to do so today, is Robert Loescher, who served for a time as Sealaska Regional Corporation's Chief Executive Officer. Due in large part to his efforts, the Corporation sponsored a study, written by Norman Staton (A National Treasure or a Stolen Heritage: the Administrative History of Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, with a Focus on Subsistence, 1999) which argues the legitimacy of reopening Glacier Bay to subsistence uses. Wayne Howell to author, December 11, 2001.

¹⁷¹ Catton, Land Reborn, 212, 297-99; Howell to author, December 11, 2001; NPS, Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve General Management Plan (Denver, the author, September 1984), 46, 73.

¹⁷² The study, written by Robert F. Schroeder and Matthew Kookesh, was entitled Subsistence Harvest and Use of Fish and Wildlife Resources and the Effects of Forest Management in Hoonah; it was published as Technical Paper No. 142 in ADF&G's Technical Paper series in November 1990. Similar results were presented in Robert G. Bosworth's "Consistency and Change in Subsistence Use in Glacier Bay, Alaska," in Proceedings of the Second Glacier Bay Symposium (NPS, 1988), 101-07.

¹⁷⁵ DENA SRC minutes, July 13-14, 1984, 1; DENA GMP, December 1986, 42. All of these statements were derived from regulations language; see Federal Register, June 17, 1981, pp. 31839 and 31850-52.

¹⁷⁶ See 36 CFR 1.4 and 36 CFR 13.1(u), as noted in the Federal Register for June 17, 1981, 31855 and June 30, 1983, 30275. The 1983 regulations, which applied to all NPS units outside of Alaska, defined a trap to include "a mechanical device designed to entrap or kill animals other than fish." This more liberal definition allowed for firearm use.

¹⁷⁷ Federal Register 59 (November 15, 1994), 58804. The taking of wolves and other furbearers with a firearm, as just noted, was a serious issue in the national preserves, because sport hunters using aircraft—some of whom held state trapping licenses—could legally access the preserves. It was not, however, an issue in the parks inasmuch as it was generally illegal to land aircraft within the parks and monuments; furbearers, as a result, were in little danger in those areas and few questioned the wisdom of NPS policy on this subject.

¹⁷⁸ See, for example, the ANIA GMP, December 1986, 16 and the WRST GMP, December 1986, 38. Lou Waller interview, July 25, 2000.

¹⁷⁹ W. T. Ellis to Donald Hodel, August 29, 1987, in WRST SRC file; Lou Waller interview, July 25, 2000; Clarence Summers interview, August 22, 2001.

¹⁸⁰ Federal Register 59 (November 15, 1994), 58804. To view the proposed rule, see the Federal Register 54 (June 9, 1989), 24852.

¹⁸² The ADF&G-NPS MOU was included as an appendix to various GMPs; see, for example, the ANIA GMP, December 1986, 146.

¹⁸³ See GAAR SRC minutes, May 4, 1984, 2, or LACL SRC minutes, May 10, 1984, 3; Lou Waller to author, December 20, 2001.

¹⁸⁵ Contor to various NPS superintendents, July 2, 1985; Subsistence Liaison to File, September 25, 1985; both in WRST SRC file. In an October 3, 1985 letter to Senator Frank Murkowski, Alaska Regional Director Boyd Evison noted that the agency "decided not to restrict the use of aircraft for access to the national preserves ... due to the potential for public confusion, the circumstances leading up to the 1985 hunting seasons, past precedents, and the lack of clear authority in our regulations."

¹⁸⁶ C. Mack Shaver to Subsistence Coordinator, August 19, 1986, in "ADF&G Boards, Aug. 86-FY 88" folder, AKSO-RS.

¹⁸⁷ Boyd Evison to Director NPS, January 21, 1986, in "WRST thru FY 87" folder, AKSO-RS.

¹⁸⁹ Don Collinsworth to "Dear Reviewer," August 27, 1986; Harold M. Brown to Elizabeth A. Stewart, September 12, 1986; both in "ADF&G Boards, Aug. 86-FY 88" folder, AKSO-RS.

¹⁹⁰ Federal Register, June 17, 1981, 31841; Lou Waller to Cynthia Defranceaux, October 13, 1987, in WRST SRC file.

¹⁹¹ DENA/LACL SRC minutes, May 10, 1984, 2; DENA SRC minutes, July 13-14, 1984, 1.

¹⁹² Randy Rogers (NAEC) to Brenda Johnson, December 4, 1984; Stan Leaphart (CACFA) to Jim Schwarber, January 23, 1985, in GAAR SRC file.

¹⁹³ GAAR SRC meeting, January 29-31, 1986, 9, 17; CAKR GMP, December 1986, viii. Anthropologist Edwin Hall, asked to speak about "natural and healthy" populations at the January 1986 meeting, admitted that "I have difficulty with that concept."

¹⁹⁴ C. Mack Shaver to Subsistence Coordinator, AKSO, July 31, 1986, in GAAR SRC file; Shaver to Subsistence Coordinator, August 19, 1986, in "ADF&G Boards, Aug 86-FY 88" folder.

¹⁹⁵ "Final Draft Outline, Subsistence Management Program, GAAR," June 19, 1986, 11; Tony Sisto to Lou Waller, March 13, 1987, 3; both in GAAR SRC file.

¹⁹⁷ Federal Register, June 28, 1979, 37741; January 19, 1981, 5651; and June 17, 1981, 31840.

¹⁹⁹ CAKR SRC minutes, November 20, 1989, 5; Robert J. Wolfe and James Magdanz, The Sharing, Distribution, and Exchange of Wild Resources in Alaska (ADF&G, Division of Subsistence, January 1993), Section IV; Bob Gerhard interview, July 7, 2000; Paul R. Anderson to Harry Kalmakoff, Jr., December 2, 1998.

²⁰¹ "An Act to Establish a National Park Service, and for Other Purposes" (39 Stat. 535), August 25, 1916, in Lary Dilsaver, ed., America's National Park System, the Critical Documents (Lanham, Md., Rowman and Littlefield, 1994), 46-47.

²⁰² The Gates of the Arctic SRC, on January 24, 1985, passed a resolution—citing language in Section 808(a) of ANILCA—that called on its chairman "to attend, consult, and testify" at a wide range of meetings that affected park-area users. Also see Bob Larson to Lewis [sic] Waller, November 1, 1984, and James A. Schwarber to Richard Ring, January 23, 1986, both in GAAR SRC file.

²⁰³ Richard Ring to Regional Director, ARO, May 31, 1984; Schwarber to Bill Caldwell, February 17, 1985; Schwarber to Bill Sheffield, August 12, 1986; all in GAAR SRC file.

²⁰⁵ W. T. Ellis to Bill Paleck, January 26, 1985, in WRST SRC file; WRST SRC minutes, August 1-2, 1985, 1; CAKR/KOVA SRC minutes, January 29-30, 1986, 2; WRST SRC minutes, April 7-8, 1986, 4; Bob Gerhard interview, February 15, 2001.

²⁰⁶ James Schwarber to Bill Sheffield, August 12, 1986, in GAAR SRC files; W. T. Ellis to Florence Collins, April 29, 1986; Collins to Ellis, May 13, 1986, both in DENA SRC files.