The Battle of Alaska

If you are old go by all means; but if you are young stay away until you grow older. The scenery of Alaska is so much grander than anything else of the kind in the world that, once beheld, all other scenery becomes flat and insipid. It is not well to dull one's capacity for such enjoyment by seeing the finest first.

Geographer Henry Gannett, who mapped much of the American West, wrote those words at the turn of the century. But even today, Alaska's scenic grandeur almost defies description. Larger than Texas, Montana and California combined, the 49th state possesses more coastline than the rest of the nation. It boasts North America's tallest mountain, the nation's third longest river and, in addition to Alaskan brown bears, the world's largest land carnivores, a glacier the size of Rhode Island. Purchased from Russia in 1867 for a paltry $7.2 million, Alaska also contains some of the country's richest and most extensive mineral deposits. As a result, it has become the center of a classic clash between environmentalists, who want to preserve some of its spectacular and environmentally unique sections for posterity, and developers, who want to exploit the potential riches.

The lines for this battle were drawn last week as advocates from both sides converged on Washington for hearings on legislation to turn 45.6 million hectares (114 million acres) of federally owned lands--some 30% of Alaska's total area--into protected parklands. The first rumblings of the Alaska land war were heard in 1959, when the vast territory became a state. The Statehood Act allowed the state to select 41.6 million hectares (104 million acres) of Alaska's 150 million hectares (375 million acres) --an area the size of New England, New York and Pennsylvania--for economic development, but it ignored the claims of an estimated 77,000 native Alaskan Eskimos, Aleuts and Indians. The 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act resolved this problem by awarding the natives $962 million in cash and some 17.6 million hectares (44 million acres) of their own. The act further directed the Interior Department to designate up to 32 million hectares (80 million acres) as potential national parks and monuments, wildlife refuges and wild and scenic rivers.

The Interior Department acted promptly. In 1973, Secretary Rogers Morton recommended that Congress permanently protect 28 areas totaling almost 33.6 million hectares (84 million acres). For three years, legislation languished. But now, with these Alaskan lands scheduled to be turned over to the Bureau of Land Management and opened for "multiple use," meaning development, in 1978, Congress is beginning to move. Representative Morris Udall of Arizona has offered legislation that would add more than 12 million hectares (30 million acres) to the original Interior Department package. His bill, H.R. 39, would more than double the size of the country's national park system, and preserve for posterity some of the world's most extensive wilderness areas. Among them:

ANIAKCHAK CALDERA. Located near the eastern end of the Aleutian island chain, the area is a geological oddity--a volcanic crater 10 kilometers (6 miles) in diameter and dotted with smaller volcanoes. Inside the crater is a remarkable blue-green lake on which seaplanes carrying sightseers can land. The more adventuresome can canoe down the Aniakchak River, which flows out of the lake through a cleft in the crater wall and drops some 600 meters (2,000 ft.) and 43 kilometers (27 miles) to the North Pacific.

KOBUK VALLEY. Fifty-six kilometers (35 miles) north of the Arctic Circle, the Kobuk Valley presents another topographical surprise--a stretch of glacier-formed sand dunes, some as high as 30 meters (100 ft.), where summer temperatures can soar to more than 38DEG Celsius (100DEGF.). The desert-like dunes are more than 33,000 years old; pre-Eskimo archaeological sites along Onion Portage, which cuts through them, are estimated to be 10,000 years old and are considered among the most important in the Arctic.

HARDING ICEFIELD--KENAI FJORDS.

A region of deep inlets and fir forests south of Anchorage, the Kenai Fjords area is notable for bird-covered cliffs and a vast population of mountain goats and sea mammals. It also has the remnant of an icefield formed during the Pleistocene epoch, which ended some 10,000 years ago.

CAPE KRUSENSTERN. A remnant of the vanished Bering land bridge, the cape lies on the route along which man traveled to North America from Asia. The area includes 114 sea-sculpted beach ridges, which contain spearpoints and other artifacts that record in chronological order every major cultural period associated with Eskimo prehistory.

GATES OF THE ARCTIC. Above the Arctic Circle in the central Brooks Range, the Gates of the Arctic is the crown jewel of Alaska's proposed parklands, a haunting, austere land of towering peaks and unspoiled wilderness. White, curly-horned Ball sheep, caribou, wolves and other game are found in the park. Nunamiut Eskimos and Athabaskan Indians venture into its vastness to hunt these animals for food.

Udall believes that the legislation now before Congress offers the U.S. a unique opportunity to preserve these and other valuable lands as a part of the national heritage. Says he: "Never before in our history have we been able to set aside areas of this magnitude." Other conservationists, including spokesmen for the 16-organization Alaska Coalition, endorse his views. "This is it," says Jack Hession of the Alaska chapter of the Sierra Club. "This is the nation's last chance to set aside meaningfully large areas of Arctic and subarctic lands. It doesn't make sense to sacrifice the lands now for short-term economic gains."

Backers of the Udall bill insist that the enormous acreage they seek is essential if Alaska's fragile ecosystems are to be preserved. Tundra, for example, recovers so slowly that a tractor's tracks are visible years after they are made; many of Alaska's animals require substantial sections of terrain for forage. "While 114 million acres may sound like a lot, there's an awful lot to preserve up there," says the Sierra Club's Charles Clusen. "It takes 100 square miles to support a single arctic brown bear."

Opponents of the Udall bill disagree--and strongly. Mining companies want to get at the minerals that may lie under the proposed parklands. J. Allen Overton Jr., of the American Mining Congress, warned last week: "We've got to find and produce 40,000 additional pounds of minerals for every man, woman and child in this country every year. How are we going to do that by locking up a piece of America 2 1/2 times the size of California?"

Edwin Dowell, a spokesman for Kennecott Copper Corp., which has made the highest-grade copper strike ever in Alaska, sounded an even more alarming note. Said he: "Withdrawals of public lands have reached such proportions that our national security already may be jeopardized." Oil companies, already drilling on Alaska's North Slope, want a chance at least to prospect the potential parklands, and loggers are casting avid eyes on Alaska's timber resources.

Some Alaskans believe the Department of the Interior is land-happy. "We can't turn everything into a park when the survival of the country is at stake," says Hunting Guide Terry Brady of Anchorage. Others resent what they see as outside interference in Alaskan affairs. "We're being made the scapegoat by a lot of people who draw lines on maps," Alaska's Senator Ted Stevens complained. "The people in the Brooklyn tenements and Florida condominiums look about them and see the devastation that development has caused in their area and they're determined to prevent the same thing from happening in ours."

Stevens hopes to head off the parklands proposal with a hastily drafted plan that would preserve a fraction of the acreage in question and place buffer zones under control of a commission that would be free to permit development. But the preservationists are expected to win the battle of Alaska. The public, by using U.S. national parks in ever-increasing numbers, has demonstrated that it needs more wilderness. So has the Carter Administration, which despite its emphasis on energy, pledged last week to place high priority on preserving Alaska's wilderness.

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