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Obama to seek wilderness designation for Alaska refuge

By Rod Boyce

 

FAIRBANKS - The Obama administration on Sunday recommended the full Arctic National Wildlife Refuge be designated as wilderness, igniting outrage among Alaska’s all-Republican congressional delegation and others in the state.

 

Wilderness status supporters in Alaska and the Lower 48 praised the Obama administration’s proposal.

 

The recommendation, in the form of what’s called a comprehensive conservation plan and a final environmental impact statement, would apply the most restrictive level of conservation management possible to the 19.3 million acre refuge. The document is intended to guide refuge management for the next 15 years.

 

The proposed wilderness designation would encompass the controversial 1.5 million acre coastal plain, an area set aside under the 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act as a potential area for oil and gas development within the refuge.

 

A separate act of Congress is required to actually permit oil and gas development in the coastal plain, however. Congress gave its approval in 1995 as part of a budget bill, but President Clinton vetoed the bill in part because of his opposition to opening ANWR.

“What makes this administration think they are going to have a snowball’s chance in getting this through Congress?” Sen. Lisa Murkowski, chairwoman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said Sunday in an interview with the News-Miner.

 

“It will help fill the treasuries of some environmental organizations that do nothing but fund off of ANWR,” said Murkowski, R-Alaska. “And in meantime, even knowing they are not going to get Congress’s support, they are moving forward on a process that is going to use taxpayer dollars moving through process.”

 

The Interior Department is also expected to announce this week two other items that will anger pro-development Alaskans: a five-year Outer Continental Shelf leasing plan that removes portions of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas from consideration and further restrictions on development in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.

 

ANWR impact

 

It was the ANWR announcement that attracted most of the attention on Sunday.

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s comprehensive conservation plan and final environmental impact statement for ANWR has three major points:

 

• Recommends that 12.28 million acres of ANWR, including the coastal plain, be designated as wilderness. More than 7 million acres of the 19.3 million acre refuge are currently managed as wilderness. Only Congress can grant the wilderness designation, however.

 

• Recommends the Atigun, Hulahula, Kongakut, and Marsh Fork Canning rivers be added to the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System.

 

• Implements actions to “improve visitor experience and resource conditions” in the Kongakut River valley. These include reducing the number of visitors and increasing the enforcement of permit conditions and refuge regulations.

 

A news release from the agency says public comment on the revised plan and EIS is no longer being accepted but that the plan and EIS will be available to the public for review for 30 days. At that point, the agency will publish its record of decision. Obama will then make the formal request to Congress for wilderness designation.

 

The Fish & Wildlife Service’s new plan says the lands recommended for wilderness status will be managed under the “minimal management” category unless Congress changes them to the more-restrictive wilderness status. Minimal management is one of three management categories that have applied to various parts of ANWR since the most recent updating of its management plan in 1988. Wilderness and wild rivers are the other two.

 

The new management plan retains those three categories but changes the definition of them. The plan says changes were made “to better reflect the refuge’s vision, special values, and purposes, and to maintain the ecological function and wilderness characteristics of the refuge’s lands and waters.”

 

“Uncertain right now,” is how Murkowski described the potential impact in ANWR. “We need to make sure the people of Kaktovik (located in ANWR) aren’t going to be impacted when they go out hunting.”

 

Strong, divided reaction

 

The administration’s announcement led to a swift and damning response from Alaska’s all-Republican congressional delegation.

 

Rep. Don Young, who has seen more ANWR battles than either of Alaska’s two senators, called the recommendation a “wholesale land grab” and a “widespread attack on our people and our way of life.”

 

Young also, like many who favor opening ANWR’s coastal plain to development, said granting wilderness status would be a “clear violation” of the 1980 Alaska lands act.

The act contains a provision that is often referred to as the “no more” clause, which states "No further studies of federal lands in the state of Alaska for the single purpose of considering the establishment of a conservation system unit, national recreation area, national conservation areas or for related or similar purposes shall be conducted unless authorized by this act or further Act of Congress.”

 

The act defines “conservation system unit” to include “additions to such units, and any such unit established, designated, or expanded hereafter.”

 

“As if on command from the most extreme environmentalist elements, this president and his team of D.C. bureaucrats believe they alone know what’s best for Alaska, but this brazen assault on our state and our people will do the complete opposite,” Young said in a news release.

 

Other Alaska leaders weighed in, on both sides.

 

“We will defeat their lawless attempt to designate ANWR as a wilderness, as well as their ultimate goal of making Alaska one big national park,” said Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska. “This decision disregards the rule of law and our constitution and specifically ignores many promises made to Alaska in ANILCA.”

 

Gov. Bill Walker, who won election as an independent but is a former Republican, focused his comments on the impact to Alaska rather than on the Obama administration’s action.

 

Walker, at a news conference Sunday in Anchorage, said he received a call from Interior Secretary Sally Jewell earlier in the day informing him of the administration’s intentions.

“This is a significant step in the wrong direction,” Walker said. “They are taking our economy away from us piece by piece.”

 

Walker said, however, suing the federal government would not be his first option. He indicated he would prefer, initially, to work with governors of Western states to pressure the administration.

 

“We will have a plan of action about what to do,” he said. “I’m very concerned about this message.”

 

Cindy Shogan, executive director of the Alaska Wilderness League, said the action “erases the Reagan era pro-development position.”

 

“Alaska Wilderness League has been working to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for almost 20 years,” she said. “In the history of the Arctic Refuge, this is the closest that we have come to advancing wilderness for the coastal plain.”

 

Sarah James, chairwoman of the Gwich’in Steering Committee, cited the importance of the area’s caribou as a reason to impose wilderness status.

 

“This is a human rights issue,” she said. “Oil development there would hurt the caribou and threaten the Gwich’in way of life.”