international journal of wilderness, vol 10 no 2, aug 2004

I N T E R N A T I O N A L

Journal of WildernessAUGUST 2004 VOLUME 10, NUMBER 2

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SCIENCE AND RESEARCHThe Relationship between Qikiktagrugmiut(Kotzebue Tribal Members) and the WesternArctic Parklands, Alaska, United StatesBY ALEX WHITING

Montane Lake Research ProgramBY ROLAND A. KNAPP

PERSPECTIVES FROM THE ALDO LEOPOLDWILDERNESS RESEARCH INSTITUTEThe Wilderness Stewardship Reference SystemBY PETER LANDRES

EDUCATION AND COMMUNICATION“A Minor Accomplishment”Roald Amundsen’s Classic Alaskan TrekBY JIM GLOVER

The Wrangell Mountains Center’sCollege Field ProgramStudent-Faculty Groups EngageAlaska Wilderness Issues in Rugged TerrainBY BENJAMIN A. SHAINE

INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVESSouth Africa’s uKhahlamba Drakensberg ParkWorld Heritage Site Celebrates 30 Yearsof WildernessBY SONJA KRÜGER and JOHN CROWSON

WILDERNESS DIGESTAnnouncements and Wilderness Calendar

Book ReviewsMaking Sense of Intractable Environmental Conflicts:Concepts and Cases

Edited by R. J. Lewicki, B. Gray, and M. ElliottREVIEW BY JOANNA KAFAROWSKI

FEATURESEDITORIAL PERSPECTIVESThe Wilderness and People of Alaska Welcome8th World Wilderness Congress Delegates in 2005BY ALAN E. WATSON

SOUL OF THE WILDERNESSA Taste of the NorthVoices from the Wilderness about theWilderness Character of AlaskaCOMPILED BY ALAN E. WATSON, KATIE KNEESHAWand BRIAN GLASPELL

STEWARDSHIPWilderness in a Changing AlaskaManaging for ResilienceBY F. STUART CHAPIN, III, LAURA HENRY,and LA’ONA DEWILDE

Alaska’s Big FiveSignificant Threats to Wilderness ResourcesBY NICOLE WHITTINGTON-EVANS

Subsistence, Inholdings, and ANILCAThe Complexity of Wilderness Stewardshipin AlaskaBY RANDY J. TANNER

Zoos Behind the Wild FacadeBY JON KOHL

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47FRONT COVER At home in thewilderness, Alaskan Brown Bear,or grizzly (Ursus arctos). Photoby Cathy Hart.

INSET Glacier viewing in Alaska,up-close. Photo by Cathy Hart.

2 International Journal of Wilderness AUGUST 2004 • VOLUME 10, NUMBER 2

EDITORIAL BOARDPerry Brown, University of Montana, Missoula, Mont., USA

Vance G. Martin, WILD Foundation, Ojai, Calif., USAAlan Watson, Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute, Missoula, Mont., USA

John Shultis, University of Northern British Columbia, Prince George, B.C., CanadaSteve Hollenhorst, University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho, USA

Wayne A. Freimund, University of Montana, Missoula, Mont., USARebecca Oreskes, White Mountain National Forest, Gorham, N.H., USA

EDITOR-IN-CHIEFJohn C. Hendee, Professor Emeritus, University of Idaho Wilderness Research Center, Moscow, Idaho, USA

MANAGING EDITORChad P. Dawson, SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, Syracuse, N.Y., USA

ASSOCIATE EDITORS—INTERNATIONALGordon Cessford, Department of Conservation, Wellington, New Zealand; Karen Fox, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada; Andrew Muir,Wilderness Foundation Eastern Cape, South Africa; Ian Player, South Africa National Parks Board and The Wilderness Foundation, Howick, Natal, Republic ofSouth Africa; Vicki A. M. Sahanatien, Fundy National Park, Alma, Canada; Won Sop Shin, Chungbuk National University, Chungbuk, Korea; Anna-LiisaSippola, University of Lapland, Rovaniemi, Finland; Franco Zunino, Associazione Italiana per la Wilderness, Murialdo, Italy.

ASSOCIATE EDITORS—UNITED STATESGreg Aplet, The Wilderness Society, Denver, Colo.; David Cole, Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute, Missoula, Mont.; John Daigle, University ofMaine, Orono, Maine; Don Fisher, USFS, Washington D.C.; Joseph Flood, East Carolina University, Greenville, N.C.; Lewis Glenn, Outward Bound USA,Garrison, N.Y.; Glenn Haas, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colo.; Troy Hall, University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho; William Hammit, ClemsonUniversity, Clemson, S.C.; Greg Hansen, U.S. Forest Service, Mesa, Ariz.; Dave Harmon, Bureau of Land Management, Portland, Oreg.; Bill Hendricks,California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, Calif.; Ed Krumpe, University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho; Jim Mahoney, Bureau of Land Management,Sierra Vista, Ariz.; Bob Manning, University of Vermont, Burlington, Vt.; Jeffrey Marion, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Blacksburg, Va.; Leo McAvoy,University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minn.; Michael McCloskey, Sierra Club; Christopher Monz, St. Lawrence University, Canton, N.Y.; Connie Myers,Arthur Carhart Wilderness Training Center, Missoula, Mont.; Roderick Nash, University of California, Santa Barbara, Calif.; David Ostergren, NorthernArizona University, Flagstaff, Ariz.; Marilyn Riley, Wilderness Transitions Inc., Sausalito, Calif.; Joe Roggenbuck, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Blacksburg, Va.;Holmes Rolston III, Colorado State University, Ft. Collins, Colo.; Susan Sater, U.S. Forest Service, Portland, Oreg.; Tod Schimelpfenig, National OutdoorLeadership School, Lander, Wyo.; Rudy Schuster, SUNY-ESF, Syracuse, N.Y.; Elizabeth Thorndike, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.; Jay Watson, The WildernessSociety, San Francisco, Calif.; Dave White, Arizona State University, Tempe, Ariz.

International Journal of Wilderness

International Journal of Wilderness (IJW) publishes three issues per year(April, August, and December). IJW is a not-for-profit publication.

Manuscripts to: Chad P. Dawson, SUNY-ESF, 320 Bray Hall, OneForestry Drive, Syracuse, N.Y. 13210-2787, USA. Telephone: (315)470-6567. Fax: (315) 470-6535. E-mail: [email protected].

Business Management and Subscriptions: WILD Foundation, P.O. Box 1380,Ojai, CA 93024, USA. Telephone: (805) 640-0390. Fax: (805) 640-0230.E-mail: [email protected].

Subscription rates (per volume calendar year): Subscription costs are inU.S. dollars only—$35 for individuals and $55 for organizations/libraries. Subscriptions from Canada and Mexico, add $10; outside NorthAmerica, add $20. Back issues are available for $15.

All materials printed in the International Journal of Wilderness, copyright© 2004 by the International Wilderness Leadership (WILD) Foundation.Individuals, and nonprofit libraries acting for them, are permitted to makefair use of material from the journal. ISSN # 1086-5519.

Submissions: Contributions pertinent to wilderness worldwide aresolicited, including articles on wilderness planning, management,and allocation strategies; wilderness education, including descriptionsof key programs using wilderness for personal growth, therapy, andenvironmental education; wilderness-related science and research fromall disciplines addressing physical, biological, and social aspects ofwilderness; and international perspectives describing wildernessworldwide. Articles, commentaries, letters to the editor, photos, bookreviews, announcements, and information for the wilderness digest areencouraged. A complete list of manuscript submission guidelines isavailable from the managing editor.

Artwork: Submission of artwork and photographs with captions areencouraged. Photo credits will appear in a byline; artwork may be signedby the author.

World Wide Website: www.ijw.org.

Printed on recycled paper.

SPONSORING ORGANIZATIONS• Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute • Conservation International • National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS)• Outward Bound™ • SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry • The WILD® Foundation • The Wilderness Society• University of Idaho Wilderness Research Center • University of Montana, School of Forestry and Wilderness Institute • USDAForest Service • USDI Bureau of Land Management • USDI Fish and Wildlife Service • USDI National Park Service • WildernessFoundation (South Africa) • Wilderness Leadership School (South Africa)

The International Journal of Wilderness links wilderness professionals, scientists, educators, environmentalists, and interestedcitizens worldwide with a forum for reporting and discussing wilderness ideas and events; inspirational ideas; planning, management,

and allocation strategies; education; and research and policy aspects of wilderness stewardship.

International Journal of Wilderness AUGUST 2004 • VOLUME 10, NUMBER 2 3

FEATURES

E D I T O R I A L P E R S P E C T I V E S

Ten years of dreams, proposals, negotiation, and de-bate culminated in 1980 with passage of the AlaskaNational Interest Lands Conservation Act

(ANILCA). With over 56 million acres (22.7 million ha)newly designated as wilderness, entire ecosystems wereassured protection, a world standard for remote and wildopportunities for recreation visitors was created, and thesustainability of traditional relationships between rural andNative Alaskans and vast wilderness landscapes becamemore likely. Now, nearly 25 years after this designation,with spectacular wilderness resources legally protected,many issues that block full realization of the lofty intent ofANILCA remain unresolved. This special issue of the IJW isintended to provide a snapshot of some of those issues tohelp delegates to the 8th World Wilderness Congress(WWC), to be held in Anchorage, Alaska, from September30 through October 6, 2005, understand the setting forthis world event.

In this issue, we hear many voices beckoning from theAlaska wilderness. We hear the story of the Qikiktagrugmiutof Kotzebue about the Western Arctic Park lands and themeanings these Inupiaq people attach to places in some ofthe wildest Alaska landscapes. They also tell us about someof the things that threaten this relationship. We learn aboutthe relationships that students of the Wrangell MountainCenter develop with our nation’s largest national park andwilderness and how those relationships affect thesestudents. The Wilderness Society expresses concern over

lands and waters notprotected as wildernessbut that demonstrateoutstanding wildernesscharacter. WildernessWatch, however, dem-onstrates more focus onthe complexities of apply-ing ANILCA to currentWilderness stewardshipissues. The landscapesand the cultures ofAlaska are constantlyevolving. In this issuewe also find a proposalfor principles to guide usin stewardship of theseconstantly changingplaces, people, and relationships between the two.

People from many countries and cultures will cometogether in Anchorage, Alaska, in 2005 to discuss the arrayof human and wilderness connections. It is appropriate thatwe begin our analysis at home, with this special issue onAlaska, The Great Land. The wilderness and the people ofAlaska have great things to offer. I only hope that WWCdelegates find opportunities to come to know both.

ALAN E. WATSON is a Research Social Scientist at the AldoLeopold Wilderness Research Institute and an IJW Editor.

The Wilderness andPeople of Alaska Welcome

8th World Wilderness CongressDelegates in 2005

ALAN E. WATSON

Article author Alan Watson.


S O U L O F T H E W I L D E R N E S S

FEATURES

A Taste of the NorthVoices from the Wilderness about the

Wilderness Character of Alaska

COMPILED BYALAN E. WATSON, KATIE KNEESHAW, and BRIAN GLASPELL

These voices from the wilderness were compiled toillustrate some of the values of wilderness in Alaska.Wilderness visitors, non-native Alaska residents, and

rural, native people can all have different perceptions of wil-derness character, define wilderness differently, go towilderness for different reasons, see different things when theyare there, perceive wildness differently, and attach differentimportance to feelings of fear while in the wilderness, but theyall find challenge in getting there, value wildlife as part of thewilderness, identify strongly with wilderness places, and findwilderness in Alaska to be unique (see Figure 1).

Unique Alaskan WildernessThe Brooks Range is a towering rampart against thenorth, the Aleutian and Alaskan Ranges a matchingbulwark to the south, between them a complex ofmany other ranges, peaks, and valleys that are stillrelatively unknown and unnamed. Along its rugged,beetling coasts are fiords, living glaciers, and ice fieldswhich remind one of an age that is past. (SigurdOlsen, in Hedin and Holthaus 1989, p. 2)

This is a glacial mountain wilderness, for the mostpart it’s not very hospitable … and there just haven’tbeen people living up here. I don’t know theindigenous history, but I can’t even imagine therewere many indigenous people way up the passesbecause the glaciers are there and that’s not anenvironment that anybody can live on permanently.(A wilderness visitor’s voice)

Our wilderness here in Alaska is very different fromthe wilderness elsewhere, because of the use ofaircraft, because of the history. An active area of

mining in 1980 all of a sudden has been declared anational park. … All of a sudden it becomeswilderness, when in fact it always was wilderness.So the fact that there’s other people in there, orthere’s activities that are historical, fits with thesituation. (An Alaska resident’s voice)

What Is Wilderness in Alaska?We climbed on top of the glacier and stopped foran hour at the center while a pile of rock had fallenfrom the mountain above. It seemed to be the endof the earth or the heart of another earth as weperched on top of this remnant of a long-vanishedage. Everything we looked upon was unknown tohuman gaze. The nearest humans were a hundredand twenty-five miles away, and the civilization ofwhich they constituted the very fringe … seemedunreal, unbelievable. Our present situation seemedalso unreal. … It was the unreality of a remoteness

Figure 1—“In the Lower 48, if you can drive there it isn’t wilderness.You have to walk. In Alaska, if you can walk there, it isn’t wilderness.You have to fly” (student at the University of Alaska, Anchorage).Photo courtesy of U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.


which made it seem as if we had landedmiraculously on another planet which throughoutall passage of time had been without life. (BobMarshall, in Hedin and Holthaus 1989, p. 158)

Very rough terrain, wild. … at first you need tofight against something, but after that you need to,to be humble, and just go with nature, and this waseasier. We had the opportunity to see every kind ofterrain. We had bad weather, a few sunny days …it was really wild. I mean, for me … it wassomething that, I won’t say that I survived, but itwas amazing … pushing yourself every day furtherand further. (A wilderness visitor’s voice)

For me it was an adventure because you never knewwhat was gonna be around the next corner, or if we’dbe able to make it over the next pass, or what it wouldbe like, or … our whole goal initially was to get tothe Regal Glacier, in 7 days, and it took us 12 days toget there and we turned the corner and it was totallyimpassible. (A wilderness visitor’s voice)

I can’t explain what I’ve seen or felt over the last sixdays. It makes you question yourself and learnabout yourself, how far can I go, how hard can Ipush myself, and when I get to that end, what doesit take to go on, because nobody can get you outexcept you. I learned a lot about myself this time.(A wilderness visitor’s voice)

Freedom and the ability to get out there as anAlaskan Native … instead of being restricted whenI go out. Clean water—unpolluted—so we can getclean water and ice, that is pretty important. (ANative voice from the village of Kotzebue)

Why They Go to WildernessA lot of predictions were made that Alaska would goto hell if this much precious land was taken awayfrom the developers and the oil companies. Yet,Alaska’s population has grown by fifty per cent andtourism has more than tripled. … Tourists don’t cometo look at the back of the necks of others pouring offthe tour ships into small villages along the coast,nor to see oil wells, nor to hear the constant noise ofhelicopters and snowmobiles. They come to find adifferent form of human pleasure and enjoyment,solitude, beauty, and sights that are not available toa Georgian or to a person from New Mexico or Maineor Texas. (Jimmy Carter, in Smith, Anderson,Kendall-Miller, and Van Tuyn 2000, p. 7)

Glaciers, volcanoes, spectacular gorges, big widerivers, real wildlife, inaccessibility, vast territory. Itgives me a greater respect for the wilderness. You

come to ... wilderness like this because you realizehow feeble and insignificant you are. Four-thousand-foot cliffs, mile-wide glacial valleys, youknow? (A wilderness visitor’s voice)

I just love being out in the country. I also use it in areciprocal way—like use the money I get from furs Isell to afford to go out in the country again and again—I enjoy it. (A Native voice from the village of Kotzebue)

It was pleasant to feel so removed from everything.Especially coming from New York. Just two differentworlds. (A wilderness visitor’s voice)

What They See in Alaska WildernessMy analytically inclined left brain grappled withthe spectacle before me. … At around one thousandkilometers up, the blazing began. The solar windslammed into atmospheric gases, exciting them,energizing them, igniting them into an auroraldisplay of ionospheric neon. Hydrogen, nitrogenand oxygen glowed red, violet and green. Or theymight as easily have glowed green, blue and yellow-green respectively, depending on the collisionaltitude, the atmospheric temperature, the amountof energy released, and so on and so on. … I blinkedhard. … My aesthetically inclined right brain satup and took notice … the lights danced. Cosmicchoreography. (Jamie Bastedo 1998, p. 19)

The highlight for me, being in this mountain range,was being so far removed from any sign of civilizationat all. We had incredible views for miles and miles,and after 30 days this is the first time I’ve seen … ashed, or anything like that. Coming from the Lower48 and particularly New Jersey, which is a much morepopulated area, there hasn’t been a night in my lifewhere I could look out into the night sky and notsee the lights of a distant city, even if I were in apark, somewhere in upstate New York. Last nightseeing the northern lights was an incredibleexperience. You really have to be out there away fromcivilization it seems in order to experience somethinglike that. (A wilderness visitor’s voice)

We have the best country around here, evencompared to the rest of Alaska because of the greatdiversity of animals and landscapes—mountains,rivers, tundra, trees. (A Native voice from the villageof Kotzebue)

I mean it was beautiful, just everything was huge,it’s typical Alaskan scale, it’s, you know, 10 timesbigger than even like Montana and Yellowstone,where it’s big country for the Lower 48. (Awilderness visitor’s voice)


Will You Find Wildness?The West of which I speak is but another name forthe Wild; and … in Wildness is the preservation ofthe World. Every tree sends its fibres forth in searchof the Wild. The cities import it at any price. Menplough and sail for it. From the forest andwilderness come the tonics and barks which bracemankind. (Henry David Thoreau 1950, p. 613)

You know, it’s really feeling like you’re the only onethere. … You may be the first one that’s been there;you might not have been, but it feels like it. Youcan’t tell you’re not. That’s kind of what wild is. (Awilderness visitor’s voice)

Everything that happens out here is at a balanceand it’s doing it on its own, like the glacier functionson its own, the animals function on their own, thelandscape functions on its own, and that’s whatmakes this place special is we have no part in whatit does. It just does it. (A wilderness visitor’s voice)

It’s like here you’re subject to the wildness. You’resubject to natural events, like if the river’s too highbecause it’s been a hot day and the meltwater is reallyswift like okay, so you don’t get across the river thatday, or if the trail, well the lack of trails, the brush istoo thick, you gotta go another way, we’re not incontrol here. (A wilderness visitor’s voice)

Wilderness Is Our IdentityBut our fight is not just for the caribou. It’s for thewhole ecosystem of Gwich’in country, which coversnortheast Alaska, the northern part of the YukonTerritory, and the McKenzie Delta. And our fight is ahuman rights struggle—a struggle for our rights tobe Gwich’in, to be who we are, a part of this land.(Sarah James, in Lentfer and Servid 2001, p. 5)

It rejuvenates my Inupiaq spirit. Keeps my spiritalive like a vitamin for my inner strength and spirit.Reminds me of how weak and small we arecompared to the powers of the land and ocean. (ANative voice from the village of Kotzebue)

My whole life revolves around it. (A Native voicefrom the village of Kotzebue)

I just really hope that the Park Service really tries totake the local views, the visitors’ views also, butespecially the local views, because I think it is unique,almost more so than the actual national park, andjust remember that there are people living out herethat live here for a certain reason and that the ParkService should really try to take those reasons intoaccount and to really remember that it is a special

place and that we should try to keep it, have it so ithas the same feel that it did for a long time in thepast, you know change isn’t necessarily bad, but Ihope the Park Service doesn’t change it so much thatI have to change my whole lifestyle and that I haveto look at the whole place in a different way than Idid in the past. (An Alaska resident’s voice)

It sustains all the life that is out there—from thesmallest fauna to the whole chain of life that goesup from there. It’s beautiful to be a part of that chain.(A Native voice from the village of Kotzebue)

Wildlife Is an Important Aspect ofWilderness in Alaska

The herd occupied the whole length of the big muskegflat clear to the river, which stretched for at least amile. Now some were feeding, some even lying down,and the background chorus continued. Calves ran hereand there, and we were glad to see them. Small groupssplit off and came back toward our camp. There weremany bulls in dark summer coat, with great antlerslooking black against the sunlit green muskeg. Somehad black patches of new hair on their backs likesaddles, light underneath; some were still in fadedwinter coats. Every kind and variety was here;something, in some valley west of here, had broughtthem together into this sixteen-hundred-strong herdof talking, grunting pilgrims—they traveled as thoughthey had a goal and knew the way and were notstopping. (Margaret E. Murie 1997, p. 314)

I mean, on all of my backpacks, I’ve never seen thismuch wildlife. I mean, big wildlife, you know. …Grizzly bears were the first time. The wolverine wasa first time. The caribou. So, yeah, the wildlife wasamazing. (A wilderness visitor’s voice)

Seventy-five percent of my life depends on goingout and getting caribou, rabbits, ptarmigans andhunting and trapping. It really does mean a lot tome. (A Native voice from the village of Kotzebue)

We saw bears, which of course everybody who goesback there wants to see bears, including me. And itwas a mother with two yearlings and they took turnsstanding up on their rear paws and looking at usand then they’d pop down and one of the otherswould pop up. We just watched them for hours. (Awilderness visitor’s voice)

The Challenge of Getting TherePeople from outside write and say to friends in Alaskathat they want to come stay with them and fish. “Fine,”says the return letter, “but you’ll have to charter. Aircharter.” “No,” says the next letter. “We just want to


stay at your place and fish from there.” Urban Alaskansshake their heads at such foolishness and say, typically,“These people in the Lower Forty-eight, they don’tunderstand. (John McPhee 1979, p. 11)

But getting there is a bit more difficult, you knowkind of finding the way, and then you’d run into ariver or something, you’d have to backtrack and goa little bit further down and find another river thatyou couldn’t cross and go a little bit further down.Eventually I made it. Went down and then tried toclimb Donoho, and then I had some bushwhackingproblems, not a whole lot of fun, but you know,like they say, it’s part of the experience, makes youappreciate some of the alpine trips or glacier typestuff that you can do, when you have to deal withthe alders and the bugs and stuff like that. Buildscharacter. (A wilderness visitor’s voice)

I mean when you wander off through the woods andit finally gets so overgrown that you think that 25feet a minute is the best you can do, and you justkeep going, keep going. You finally get out and yousit down on the sandbar and you wait for the airplaneand you go, “Ah, I did it.” Something right there[pointing to his heart], it clicks, and it makes youfeel good about yourself. (A wilderness visitor’s voice)

It was a rough trip. We probably hiked 10 to 12 hoursa day, a lot of it through brush, bushwhacking, notrail. I guess we probably hiked through 12 miles ofbrush … but I mean brush where you’re just tearingaway at it, and it’s over your head, that was the worst,but pretty country, high country. No trees, just brushand mountain and rock, a lot of rock, a lot of moraine.(A wilderness visitor’s voice)

The Value of FearThe experience of fear in a wild landscape, even ofshort duration, leads to a reorientation of mind. Itcan clear out the clutter of the modern scene and allowone to see life and land in a new context. … My timein Alaska … and on the Mogollon Rim with my father,was a coming of age. (Luna Leopold 2000, p. 6)

It’s a very beautiful place. People that don’t believe[he pauses as he tears up], people that don’t have anyfear of life or have experience with making it on theirown or being independent, or doing things andmaking for themselves have no concept of what thisis about. Backpacking to me initially was a sport thatyou went out and you did, and I guess I thought youhiked trails where people had been, maybe like RockyMountain National Park. You come up here and there’snone of that available, so you realize that you’re outin the element, and you can die real quick, so youtake that into consideration and what you’re doing,

Figure 2—“In the Lower 48, the wilderness is surrounded by development. InAlaska, the development is surrounded by wilderness, and that is surrounded bywilderness” (student at the University of Alaska, Anchorage). Photo courtesy ofLeopold Institute.

where you’re going, and why you are out here. Weonly saw a real small part of this thing, and it’s huge,it’s huge beyond belief, so to come back and relate it,it’s difficult. … I mean we’re so oriented to the cityand having things. (A wilderness visitor’s voice)

He fell, and it was fortunate that one of the guys hadput a rope on him, made him take a rope, or he’d abeen gone, and that’s a hard thing to think about.You know, to be on a trip with somebody that dies.Life is being born and living, and you don’t thinkabout the end, and you certainly don’t want to end itin a mountain stream, and when you pull that offand get him out of there, and you sit down, and youthink about what you’re doing, and you make it back,wow, it’s pretty neat. (A wilderness visitor’s voice)

I guess initially I was afraid that we were gonna goout here and get eaten by a bear, so we came up herewith guns and you know, protective things, and Irealize at this point the only thing you need to protectyourself from is yourself, ’cause you can get out hereand if you don’t have confidence in yourself andknowing where you’re going, you could hurt yourselfeasy. (A wilderness visitor’s voice)

These wilderness voices are not the only voices for Alaskawilderness. In this compilation, we have failed to representthose distant people who only dream of visiting Alaskawilderness, or those who never plan to visit but take pleasurein knowing it exists. There are also outfitters and guides,pilots, dog mushers, lodge owners, miners, loggers, anglers,skiers, mountain climbers, and hunters that could tell usabout their relationships with wilderness, if we only listen(see Figure 2). But, the generations of the future cannotspeak to us, so it is our responsibility to try to imagine howimportant wilderness will be to them in their time.


REFERENCESBastedo, J. 1998. Reaching North. Red Deer,

Alberta, Canada: Red Deer College Press.Glaspell, B., A. Watson, K. Kneeshaw, and D.

Pendergrast. 2003. Selecting indicators andunderstanding their role in wildernessexperience stewardship in Gates of the ArcticNational Park and Preserve. The GeorgeWright Forum, 20 (3): 59–71.

Glaspell, B., and A. Watson. 2003. 2002Wrangell-St. Elias Fall Visitor Study. Reportto the National Park Service.

Hedin, R.; and G. Holthaus. 1989. Alaska:Reflections on Land and Spirit. Tucson: TheUniversity of Arizona Press.

Kneeshaw, K., A. Watson, and B. Glaspell.2004. Understanding Wilderness VisitorExperiences at Wrangell-St. Elias NationalPark and Preserve in the Alaska RegionalContext: Wrangell-St. Elias National Parkand Preserve Summer 2003 Visitor Study.Report to the National Park Service.

Lentfer, H.; and C. Servid. 2001. Arctic Refuge:A circle of testimony. Minneapolis, MN:

Milkweed Editions.Leopold, L. 2000. A value in fear: Some rivers

remembered. IJW, 6 (3): 4–6.McPhee, J. 1979. Coming into the Country. New

York: Bantam Books.Murie, M. E. 1997. Two in the Far North. Port-

land, OR: Alaska Northwest Books.Smith, A. E.; M. Anderson; H. Kendall-Miller;

and P. Van Tuyn. 2000. Alaska NationalInterest Lands Conservation Act Citizens’Guide. Anchorage, AK: The WildernessSociety.

Strickland, R. 1992. Alaskans: Life on the LastFrontier. Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole Books.

Thoreau, H. D. 1950. Walden and Other Writ-ings of Henry David Thoreau. New York:Random House.

Waterman, J. 1998. In the Shadow of Denali:Life and Death on Alaska’s Mt. McKinley.New York: Dell Publishing.

Whiting, A. 2004. The Relationship betweenQikiktagrugmiut (Kotzebue Tribal Members)and the Western Arctic Parklands, Alaska,United States, IJW 10(2) (this issue).

ALAN E. WATSON, KATIE KNEESHAWand BRIAN GLASPELL are respectively,Research Social Scientist, ResearchAssistant in Social Science, and Post-Doctoral Research Social Scientist at theAldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute,Box 8089, Missoula, MT 59807 USA; Alan E.Watson E-mail: [email protected].

Figure 4—Respondents attach value to opportunities to showchildren how the land provides what they need to survive. Photoby Siikauraq Whiting.

Wilderness Research Institute whichfunded the project. Henry Huntingtonprovided assistance with project andpaper development. Siikauraq Whitingand Jeff Johnson provided editorialcomments.

REFERENCESBurch, E. S., Jr. 2003. The Cultural and Natural

Heritage of Northwest Alaska: Volume VI—The Organization of National Life inKotzebue. NANA Museum of the Arctic and

Anchorage: U.S. National Park Service.Leopold, A. 1949. A Sand County Almanac

and Sketches Here and There. UK: OxfordUniversity Press.

Norris, F. B. 2002. Alaska Subsistence: A NationalPark Service Management History. AlaskaSupport Office, National Park Service, Anchor-age: U.S. Department of the Interior.

Stadel, A., R. Taniton, and H. Heder. 2002.Northwest Territories Protected Areas Strat-egy: How community values are shaping theprotection of wild spaces and heritageplaces. In A. E. Watson, L. Alessa, and J.Sproull, comps. 2002. Wilderness in theCircumpolar North; Searching for Compat-ibility in Ecological, Traditional, andEcotourism Values. (20–26). ProceedingsRMRS-P-26. Ogden, UT: U.S. Departmentof Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Moun-tain Research Station.

Watson, A., L. Alessa, and B. Glaspell. 2003.The relationship between traditional ecologi-cal knowledge, evolving cultures, and wil-derness protection in the circumpolar north.Conservation Ecology, 8(1): 2. [online]:http://www.consecol.org/vol8/iss1/art2.

ALEX WHITING is environmental protectionspecialist, Native village of Kotzebue, P.O.Box 296, Kotzebue, AK 99752, USA. E-mail:[email protected].

From RELATIONSHIP on page 31

From BIG FIVE on page 17

wilderness identified by The Wilder-ness Society. Often, Alaska’s massiveconservation system units consist oflarge areas of rock and ice punctuatedby pockets of ecologically rich andvaluable habitat. It is imperative thatthese ecologically rich areas, or bio-logical hearts, retain their wildernessintegrity. This action is necessary inorder to maintain diverse wildlifepopulations, Alaskan subsistence cul-tures, and our natural and wildheritage for generations to come.

REFERENCESAlaska Department of Fish and Game. 2000.

Tongass Road Condition Survey Report.Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act

(16 U.S.C. 3170), Sec. 1110.(a).Amstrup, S. C. and C. Gardner. 1994. Polar

bear maternity denning the Beaufort Sea.Journal of Wildlife Management, 58: 1–10.

ANILCA Report of the Senate Committee onEnergy and Natural Resources. 1980. Sen-ate Rep. No. 96-413, at 247-48, reprintedin 1980, U.S.C.C.A.N. 5191–92.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 2001. Refugebird List. Arctic National Wildlife Refugeofficial website: http://www.r7.fws.gov/nwr/arctic/muskox.html.

U.S. Forest Service. Chugach National Forest,Revised Land Resource Management Plan,Juneau, AK: 3–21 and 4–91.

NICOLE WHITTINGTON-EVANS is theassistant regional director with the AlaskaOffice of The Wilderness Society. She canbe reached at [email protected].

Don’t Miss the

30 September to 6 October 2005ANCHORAGE, ALASKA

www.8wwc.org


Forces Shaping Alaskan WildernessWilderness is popularly viewed as a pristine land withoutpeople, a land that changes only by “natural” processes,unaffected by human actions. Wilderness, however, is adynamic system in which physical, ecological, and culturalprocesses interact in ways that retain their natural essenceand are resilient to perturbations. Alaska is widely recog-nized as a region that has retained its wilderness character.In this article, we briefly probe the history, dynamics, andpossible future of Alaskan wilderness, with an emphasis onthe role of people as an integral component of the system.

The topographic diversity of Alaska is a product of itsgeologic history. Terranes of multiple origin rafted acrossthe Pacific Ocean and collided with the North AmericanPlate, producing mountain ranges that include the highestpeaks in North America (Thorson 1986). These mountainsalso contribute to Alaska’s climatic diversity by intercept-ing the rainfall that generates temperate rain forests insoutheastern Alaska. blocking moisture from the continen-tal areas of interior Alaska, and focusing the frontalboundary between the cold air mass of the arctic slope andmore moderate climates to the south (Gallant et al. 1995).

These climatic patterns result in a large-scale mosaic offorests, tundra, glaciers, and wetlands that are home to bothpermanent residents and migratory animals such as tropicalsongbirds, salmon, and whales. During glacial periods, Alaskawas functionally part of the Asian continent and isolated fromthe rest of North America by glaciers. In warmer periods,Alaska’s biological links have been with North America. Thisbiogeographic ambivalence, combined with topographic andclimatic diversity, has contributed to unusually high biologi-cal diversity for a region of such high latitude (Walker 1995).

People have been an integral component of Alaskan eco-systems for at least 11,000 years (Aigner 1986). However,due to its low productivity and harsh environmental condi-tions, interior Alaska has always had a relatively low densityof human inhabitants. During much of its human history,Alaska has been occupied by multiple cultures, each of whichinteracted with its environment in substantially different ways.For example, depending on the region, the primary subsis-tence base has been fish, marine mammals, or terrestrialmammals (Langdon 1986; Burch 1998). During its periodof human habitation, Alaska has experienced both gradualand abrupt change. Climate warmed rapidly at the end ofthe Pleistocene to its thermal maximum about 9,000 yearsago. Subsequently, there has been a gradual cooling and cli-mate moistening, a rising sea level that inundated the landbridge to Asia, and melting continental glaciers that had iso-lated Alaska from the rest of North America.

These trends led to large-scale changes in vegetation. Forexample, in interior Alaska, which was never glaciated, therewere gradual changes from steppe tundra typical of glacial timesto poplar forests to white spruce forests to black spruce forests.This last change occurred abruptly 6,000 years ago, when black

STEWARDSHIP

Wildernessin a Changing Alaska

Managing for Resilience

BY F. STUART CHAPIN, III, LAURA HENRY, and LA’ONA DEWILDE

Article co-authors (l to r) F. Stuart Chapin, III; Laura Henry; and La’ona DeWilde


spruce became widespread in responseto the moistening climate. Its high flam-mability caused a sudden increase in firefrequency, instituting a new disturbanceregime that has persisted to the present(Lynch et al. 2003). In northern Alaska,vegetation changed from steppe tundrato poplar forests to the current mosaicof arctic tundra vegetation types. Thewell-developed megafauna of mam-moths, bison, and horses that had beenin Alaska for hundreds of thousands ofyears disappeared during the last sev-eral thousand years. Other componentsof the Pleistocene megafauna such ascaribou and moose have persisted. Therelative importance of changes in cli-mate, vegetation, and human huntingin triggering the change in megafauna isstill actively debated (Zimov et al. 1995;Guthrie 2003). Alaskan ecosystems havecontinued to change over the last 6,000years in response to climatic variation,but these changes have been smaller inmagnitude and more reversible thanthose that occurred earlier, indicatingsubstantial resilience to small-scale en-vironmental change.

In summary, prior to white contact,Alaskan ecosystems underwent re-peated changes in climate, biota, andculture. None of Alaska’s current eco-systems or cultures was present 10,000years ago, and substantial changes havecontinued even during the past 5,000years. Nonetheless, Alaska ecosystemshave retained the basic nature of eco-system processes, including the flow ofenergy; recycling of nutrients; diversityof plants, animals, and cultures; and therelationships between local people andtheir environments. These systems havecontinued to support a diversity ofhuman and nonhuman life, despite

large climatic and cultural changes.People have been part of these ecosys-tems for most of their history and haveboth responded to and contributed tothe changes that have occurred.

Recent Changes in AlaskaIf people are an integral component ofregional systems, cultural changes inpolitical and economic systems willlikely affect regional ecology. Russianand European colonization of Alaskainitiated a relationship between peopleand the land that was qualitatively dif-ferent from that of its originalinhabitants, who were an integral partof the ecosystems that they occupied(Watson et al. 2003). For example,Russian fur traders on the coast ofAlaska and Canadian fur traders in in-terior Alaska used ecosystems as asource of materials to be extracted andexported for profit. Similar motivationlaunched a fishing industry in coastalAlaska and a gold rush in interiorAlaska in the early 20th century (Naskeand Slotnick 1987). European diseasesreduced the Native population ofAlaska substantially and introducednew technologies such as rifles, fish-nets, and motorized transport.

When Alaska became a state in1959, many land ownership issueswere unresolved. In 1971, the federalgovernment ostensibly settled the landclaims of Alaska’s Native peoplethrough the Alaska Native ClaimsSettlement Act (ANCSA), throughwhich Native corporations were estab-lished. The Alaska Federation ofNatives, as a representative of NativeAlaskans, negotiated with the federalgovernment, with the result that thenew corporations received title to 45

million acres (18.2 million ha) of landand payment for the remaining ap-proximately 300 million acres (121.5million ha) of land, which were trans-ferred to state and federal ownership.Through ANCSA, Native Alaskansgave up management of natural re-sources on government land,including traditional hunting andgathering practices (Ross 2000).

The passage of the Alaska NationalInterest Lands Conservation Act(ANILCA) in 1980 designated 225 mil-lion acres (91.1 million ha) of Alaskaland for federal ownership, establishingthe status of key areas recognized fortheir scenic and/or ecological value (Ross2000). ANICLA also opened the doorfor designation of federal wilderness ar-eas while concurrently restoring someof the rights of Native Alaskans to prac-tice traditional hunting and gathering ongovernment lands. However, the stateof Alaska and the federal governmenthave never agreed on how to managethe subsistence practices on publiclands, resulting in different managementpolicies for different types of publiclands. In federal wilderness, Native sub-sistence rights to hunting and gatheringremain and are defined as “customaryand traditional uses by rural residentsof wild, recoverable resources for directpersonal or family consumption.”(ANILCA 1980 in Watson et al. 2003).

Native Alaskans were not displacedfrom their original homes to reserva-tions, as in the Lower 48. Thus, in theLower 48, land unoccupied by whitepeople had almost no inhabitants, butin Alaska, many of the lands remotefrom the road network continued tobe inhabited by both Native andwhite people, who maintained closecultural and subsistence ties to theland. Thus the Eurocentric concept ofwilderness as an area where “manhimself is a visitor who does not remain”(The Wilderness Act 1964) has never

In Alaska, wilderness is the matrix that surroundsrelatively small areas of more intense human activity.


characterized the remote regions of Alaska(Huntington 2002; Watson et al. 2003).

Yet in the continually changing wil-derness of Alaska, Native Alaskans’lives differ significantly from those oftheir ancestors. Whereas most Nativegroups of Alaska were once seasonallyand annually mobile, moving through-out the year to access different typesof resources, they are now settled inpermanent villages (see Figure 1) thatare tied to schools, stores, churches,airports, and opportunities for perma-nent or seasonal wage jobs, usuallywith tribal or governmental agencies(Langdon 1986). This reduction inmobility associated with establishmentof permanent villages has been com-pensated to some extent by moreefficient transport such as snowmo-biles and outboard motors, which arenow an integral part of subsistencehunting and allow people to access alarger area. This technology, however,ties people to a wage economy, andthe regional ecological effects of thesemore sedentary subsistence patternsare not yet known (Gerlach et al. inpress). In addition, after Native popu-lations were reduced by disease andcentralized in permanent villages, chil-dren were often raised or taught bymissionaries who did not allow themto speak their language or practicetheir own religion. The resulting lossof native language, legends, and depthof understanding of the relationship

to land and animals contributed to theshift toward western energy and foodsources. Although Native lifestyles arestill changing, there remains a strongcultural and economic dependence onthe land—a dependence that today issupported by modern means of trans-port. The role of such technology indesignated wilderness areas is a mul-tifaceted issue that has no simpleanswer and continues to be debated.

In summary, remote portions of Alaskahave been remarkably resilient to themassive changes of the last century. Thepopulation density in most of rural Alaskahas increased during the last 50 years(Anonymous 1997), although local pat-terns of distribution are quite different.Most people who live off the road net-work still maintain strong cultural andsubsistence ties to the land, despite radi-cal changes in land tenure, communitystructure, and technology (see Figure 2).In these areas people still consider them-selves part of the same land that visitorsview as wilderness (Huntington 2002;Watson et al. 2003). Other impacts orrecent change have left a more indeliblemark. These include seismic trails andgravel roads associated with oil develop-ment, which have thawed the permafrostand altered hydrology. These geomorphicchanges will remain imprinted on theland for thousands of years until the natu-ral processes of erosion and depositiongradually reshape the landscape. Thisrelationship between industrial activities

and the land is qualitatively different fromthe cultural and subsistence uses byrural residents (Klein 2002).

Although we cannot predict the pre-cise future of Alaska wilderness, weknow that it will be different from whatcharacterizes it today. The climate ofAlaska is now warming as rapidly asany place on Earth (Serreze et al. 2000;Krupnik and Jolly 2002). This region,whose climate has long resisted inva-sions of exotic species, is now beingcolonized by new plants and animals.Salmon populations are changing inresponse to climate, commercial fish-ing, and potentially the introduction ofescaped farm salmon. The culture ofrural Alaska and the institutions thatmanage Alaskan lands are undergoingchange. There is growing pressure fromtourism, as an expanding world popu-lation increasingly values and seeks toexperience Alaskan wilderness. Al-though we cannot predict the precisenature of the future Alaskan wilderness,we can be absolutely certain that it willdiffer in important respects from thelandscape of today.

Conceptual Framework forWilderness StewardshipThe challenge of wilderness stewardshipis to manage the inevitable changes thatwill occur in ways that maintain the keycultural and ecological qualities of Alaskawilderness. This goal requires that wemanage not for a set of uniform physi-cal attributes but for protection of awilderness character that is difficult todefine but which acknowledges the in-tegral nature of the dynamic relationshipbetween people and the land. There is agrowing literature on managing social-ecological systems (i.e., systems in whichpeople are an integral component) forresilience in the face of uncertain butinevitable change rather than managingto prevent change (Folke et al. 2002;Gunderson and Holling 2002; Berkes et

Figure 1—The centralization of families intopermanent communities such as Fort Yukon changesthe relationship with traditional lands. Photo byQamar Schuyler.

Figure 2—The use of motorized boats to accessportions of the river distant from communitiesmaintains traditional access of Native Alaskans to theland. Photo by Laura Henry.


al. 2003). In this context, resilience isthe capacity of a system to absorb shocksand still maintain its essential character-istics. This framework seems particularlyappropriate for Alaska wilderness, wherethere are still strong cultural ties of localresidents to the land and where there isa growing interest among nonresidentsin nonconsumptive use of Alaskan wil-derness. Managing for resilience wouldhave the following attributes:1. Sustaining diversity, including:

a. Maintaining large managementunits with a wide range of eco-logical and topographic diversityso organisms can migrate in re-sponse to future climate changesrather than being trapped in alocal preserve that becomesgradually less suitable as habi-tat (Elmqvist et al. 2003).

b. Facilitating institutional diver-sity, including multiple types ofco-management arrangementswith local residents who haveextensive experience in manag-ing local resources (Berkes andFolke 1998). By treating man-agement as an experiment ratherthan a single monolithic entity,it is more likely that novel effec-tive solutions will emerge thatmesh well with local conditions.However, institutional changescan either strengthen or degradewilderness character and mustbe approached cautiously.

c. Allowing for cultural diversity inwhich people with different cul-tural ties to the land (e.g.,subsistence users and backpack-ers) may interact with the landin different, but equally appro-priate, ways.

d. Recognizing that diversity in-creases the range of surpriseswith which a system can copewithout danger of radicalchange in essential properties.

2. Recognizing change as a naturalfeature of social-ecological sys-tems, thus

a, Creating conditions that allowmodest change rather than seek-ing to prevent change, whichmay create conditions that makecatastrophic change more likely(Holling 1986). For example, firesuppression, which reduces theprobability of wildfire in the shortterm, increases the probability offuture larger fires. However, care-fully designed prescribed firesnear communities can enhancewildlife habitat and reduce theprobability of large fires that de-stroy property; these fires mightotherwise become more likely ina warming climate.

b. Treating crises as an opportunityfor change (Gunderson andHolling 2002). When institutional,economic, and other crises occur,it becomes easier to initiate change,because it is clear that the currentsystem no longer functions effec-tively. Such crises should be usedas opportunities to think outsidethe box for novel solutions thataddress future needs.

c. Treating changes that do occur asopportunities to learn. Many ofthe changes that occur outside awilderness context (e.g., industrialdevelopment, predator control,commercial salmon harvest) pro-vide opportunities to learn aboutthe vulnerability of social-ecologi-cal systems to radical change.

3. Focusing on the variables thatregulate long-term change (Car-penter and Turner 2000). Crisismanagement that focuses on issuesof most immediate public concern(e.g., a road, fire, or particularregulation) is often less effectiveover the long term than steward-ship focused on the important

underlying controls, such as theeconomic viability of rural com-munities, patterns of fuel buildup,or the development of effectiveinstitutions for co-management ofresources. Wilderness planningwill fail if it focuses only on im-mediate crises without studyingways in which appropriate rela-tionships between people and theland can be protected or restored.

4. Anticipating variability andchange, including:a. Anticipating predictable change.

These include warming effectson permafrost and infrastruc-ture, increased visitor impact onAlaskan wilderness, and an ice-free Arctic Ocean that increasesthe economic feasibility of arcticoil development (Chapin et al.2004). Planning in the contextof these anticipated changesprovides a context exploringlong-term solutions that aremore likely to be viable.

b. Expecting surprises. We cannever predict everything that willhappen, so planning that fostersdiversity, learning, and flexibilityprovides an environment that ismore likely to cope effectivelywith unanticipated changes.

ConclusionsAlaskan wilderness has a differentcharacter than small reserves, whichremain in more populated regions ofthe world. In Alaska, wilderness is thematrix that surrounds relatively smallareas of more intense human activity.Planning for the long-term integrity ofthis wilderness in the face of certainchanges in climate, culture, andeconomy is a serious challenge, but itrepresents an opportunity to thinkcreatively about the deepest values thatunderlie the human need to be a partof wilderness in an enduring fashion.


AcknowledgmentsThese ideas were developed in the Inte-grative Graduate Education and ResearchTraining program in Regional Resilienceand Adaptation and the Human Dimen-sions of the Arctic System project onHuman-Fire Interactions (National Sci-ence Foundation grants DEB-0114423and OPP-0328282). We thank SarahTrainor, Craig Gerlach, and Gary Kofinasfor constructive comments.

REFERENCESAigner, J. S. 1986. Footprints on the land: The

origins of interior Alaska’s people. In J. S.Aigner, R. D. Guthrie, M. L. Guthrie, F. Nelson,W. S. Schneider, and R. M. Thorson, eds. Inte-rior Alaska: A Journey through Time, 97–146.Anchorage, AK: Alaska Geographic Society.

Anonymous. 1997. The Alaska Almanac: Factsabout Alaska, 21st ed. Anchorage, AK:Northwest Books.

Berkes, F., and C. Folke. 1998. Linking socialand ecological systems for resilience andsustainability. In F. Berkes and C. Folke, eds.Linking Social and Ecological Systems: Man-agement Practices and Social Mechanismsfor Building Resilience, 1–25. Cambridge,UK: Cambridge University Press.

Berkes, F., J. Colding, and C. Folke, eds. 2003.Navigating Social-Ecological Systems: Build-ing Resilience for Complexity and Change.Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Burch, E. S., Jr. 1998. The Inupiaq Eskimo Na-tions of Northwest Alaska. Fairbanks, AK:University of Alaska Press.

Carpenter, S. R., and M. G. Turner. 2000. Haresand tortoises: Interactions of fast and slow vari-ables in ecosystems. Ecosystems, 3: 495–497.

Chapin, F. S., III, G. Peterson, F. Berkes, T. V.Callaghan, P. Angelstam, M. Apps, C. Beier,Y. Bergeron, A.-S. Crepin, T. Elmqvist, C.Folke, B. Forbes, N. Fresco, G. Juday, J.Niemela, A. Shvidenko, and G. Whiteman.2004. Resilience and vulnerability of northernregions to social and environmental change.Ambio, 33: 342–347.

Elmqvist, T., C. Folke, M. Nyström, G. Peterson,J. Bengtsson, B. Walker, and J. Norberg.2003. Response diversity, ecosystemchange, and resilience. Frontiers in Ecologyand the Environment, 1: 488–494.

Folke, C., S. Carpenter, T. Elmqvist, L. Gunderson,C. S. Holling, B. Walker, J. Bengtsson, F.Berkes, J. Colding, K. Danell, M. Falkermanr,L. Gordon, R. Kasperson, N. Kaursky, A.Kinzig, S. Levin, K.-G. Maler, F. Moberg, L.Ohlsson, P. Olsson, E. Ostrom, W. Reid, J.Rockstrom, H. Savenije, and U. Svedin. 2002.

Resilience and sustainable development:Building adaptive capacity in a world of trans-formations. Series on Science for SustainableDevelopment, No. 3, ICSU.

Gallant, A. L., E. F. Binnian, J. M. Omernik, andM. B. Shasby. 1995. Ecoregions of Alaska.U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper1567. Washington, DC: U. S. Departmentof the Interior.

Gerlach, S. C., L. Henry, and A. Turner. In press.Regional foods, food systems, security andrisk in rural Alaska. In L. Duffy, ed. Circum-polar Environmental Science: Current Issuesin Resources, Health and Policy. Fairbanks:University of Alaska Press.

Gunderson, L. H., and C. S. Holling, eds. 2002.Panarchy: Understanding Transformations inHuman and Natural Systems. Washington,DC: Island Press.

Guthrie, R. D. 2003. Rapid body size declinein Alaskan Pleistocene horses before extinc-tion. Nature 426: 169–171.

Holling, C. S. 1986. Resilience of ecosystems:Local surprise and global change. In W. C.Clark and R. E. Munn, eds. Sustainable De-velopment and the Biosphere, 292–317.Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Huntington, H. 2002. Can traditional ecologi-cal knowledge and wilderness benefit oneanother? In A. Watson, L. Alessa, and J.Sproull, eds. Wilderness in the CircumpolarNorth: Searching for Compatibility in Tra-ditional, Ecotourism, and Ecological Values,64–68. Anchorage, AK: U.S. Departmentof Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Moun-tain Research Station, Ogden, UT.

Klein, D. R. 2002. Perspectives on wildernessin the Arctic. In A. Watson, L. Alessa, and J.Sproull, eds. Wilderness in the CircumpolarNorth: Searching for Compatibility in Tra-ditional, Ecotourism, and Ecological Values,1–6. Anchorage, AK: U.S. Department ofAgriculture, Forest Service, Rocky MountainResearch Station, Ogden, UT.

Krupnik, I., and D. Jolly, eds. 2002. The Earth isFaster Now: Indigenous Observations of ArcticEnvironmental Change. Fairbanks, AK: ArcticResearch Consortium of the United States.

Langdon, S. J., ed. 1986. Contemporary Alas-kan Native Economies. Lanham, MD: Uni-versity Press of America.

Lynch, J. A., J. S. Clark, N. H. Bigelow, M. E.Edwards, and B. P. Finney. 2003. Geo-

graphical and temporal variations in firehistory in boreal ecosystems of Alaska. Jour-nal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres,108 (D1): Art. no. 8152.

Naske, C.-M., and H. E. Slotnick. 1987. Alaska:A History of the 49th State, 2nd ed. Norman:University of Oklahoma Press.

Ross, K. 2000. Environmental Conflict in Alaska.Boulder: University Press of Colorado.

Serreze, M. C., J. E. Walsh, F. S. Chapin, III, T.Osterkamp, M. Dyurgerov, V. Romanovsky,W. C. Oechel, J. Morison, T. Zhang, and R.G. Barry. 2000. Observational evidence ofrecent change in the northern high-latitudeenvironment. Climatic Change, 46: 159–207.

Thorson, R. M. 1986. The ceaseless context: Land-scapes in the making. In J. S. Aigner, R. D.Guthrie, M. L. Guthrie, R. K. Nelson, W. S.Schneider, and R. M. Thorson, eds. InteriorAlaska: A Journey through Time. Anchorage,Alaska, AK: Geographic Society,

Walker, M. 1995. Patterns and causes of arcticplant community diversity. In F. S. Chapin, III,and C. Körner, eds. Arctic and AlpineBiodiversity: Patterns, Causes and EcosystemConsequences, 3–20. Berlin, Springer-Verlag.

Watson, A., L. Alessa, and B. Glaspell. 2003.The relationship between traditional ecologi-cal knowledge, evolving cultures, and wil-derness protection in the circumpolar north.Conservation Ecology, 8: http://www.consecol.org/vol8/iss1/art2.

Zimov, S. A., V. I. Chuprynin, A. P. Oreshko, F. S.Chapin, III, J. F. Reynolds, and M. C. Chapin.1995. Steppe-tundra transition: An herbivore-driven biome shift at the end of the Pleistocene.American Naturalist, 146: 765–794.

F. STUART CHAPIN, III is professor ofecology in the Institute of Arctic Biology,University of Alaska–Fairbanks anddirector of the Resilience and AdaptationProgram. E-mail: [email protected] HENRY is a graduate student inanthropology, University of Alaska–Fairbanks and a student in the Resilienceand Adaptation Program. E-mail:[email protected]. LA’ONA DEWILDE is agraduate of the Resilience and AdaptationProgram at the University of Alaska and aresident of the Native community of Huslia.E-mail: [email protected].

Wilderness, however, is a dynamic system in whichphysical, ecological, and cultural processes interact in

ways that retain their natural essence and areresilient to perturbations.


The Big Five ThreatsIn 1980, the Alaska National Interest Lands ConservationAct (ANILCA) established 56.5 million acres (22.8 millionha) of federally designated wilderness land and 26 wildand scenic rivers in Alaska. These wilderness areas are inAlaska’s national parks, refuges, and forests. The TongassTimber Reform Act designated close to an additional300,000 acres (121,458 ha) of wilderness on the TongassNational Forest in 1990. In addition to this legally pro-tected wilderness resource, inventories suggest that over100 million additional acres (40.5 million ha) of Alaska’sfederal land qualifies for future wilderness consideration.However, there are five major threats to the wilderness re-sources of Alaska, identified by The Wilderness Society, thatare not defended against by wilderness designation.

Oil and Gas Development on Alaska’sNorth SlopePerhaps the area of Alaska most threatened from oil andgas development is our only piece of the Arctic—Alaska’snorth slope. Alaska’s north slope includes a vast block ofland bound by the spine of the Brooks Range to the south,and slopes northward to the Arctic Ocean. Federal landson the north slope encompass portions of the Arctic Na-tional Wildlife Refuge, including the coastal plain, which isnot protected under The Wilderness Act, and approximately23 million acres (9.3 million ha) of public lands in theWestern Arctic.

In a recent congressionally mandated report entitledCumulative Environmental Effects of Oil and Gas Activities onAlaska’s North Slope, the National Academy of Sciences Na-tional Research Council documented significantenvironmental and cultural effects resulting from three de-cades of oil development on Alaska’s north slope. There islittle doubt that the integrity of wilderness lands in America’s

Arctic, and subsequentlythe subsistence culturesthat depend on theselands, are threatened by oiland gas development.

Arctic National WildlifeRefugeAt 19.5 million acres (7.9million ha), the Arctic Ref-uge is the largest in thenation. It protects a fullrange of North AmericanArctic ecosystems. Incom-parably rich in wildlife diversity, the refuge supports thethree species of bear found in North America (polar, griz-zly, and black), caribou, muskoxen, moose, Dall sheep,wolves, wolverines, and about 180 bird species (USFWS2001). The coastal plain of the refuge is a summer havenfor much of this wildlife. It provides birthing grounds forthe Porcupine caribou herd, numbering approximately130,000, which travels hundreds of miles annually fromits wintering grounds to reach this unique habitat. Thecoastal plain also contains the most important onshore den-ning habitat for the Beaufort Sea polar bear population inthe United States (Amstrup and Gardner 1994).

When ANILCA was passed, the U.S. Congress doubledthe size of the originally established Arctic National WildlifeRange to 19 million acres (7.7 million ha), designating 8million acres (3.2 million ha) as wilderness, and renamedit the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. However, the coastalplain, often referred to as the biological heart of the refuge,was not included in the wilderness designations.

Developing the biological heart of the Arctic Refuge willnot only significantly impact the wilderness and wildlife

STEWARDSHIP

Alaska’s Big FiveSignificant Threats to Wilderness Resources

BY NICOLE WHITTINGTON-EVANS

Article author Nicole Whittington-Evanswith daughter, Rya, hiking in DenaliNational Park. Photo by ChrisWhittington-Evans.


values of the area, but will also under-mine the spiritual and cultural centerof an indigenous peoples—theGwich’in Athabaskan peoples ofAlaska and Canada. The Arctic Refugecoastal plain is considered a sacredplace by the Gwich’in, who refer tothemselves as the “caribou people.”They depend on the Porcupine cari-bou herd for their subsistence way oflife—their food, culture, and spiritualidentity. Invading this narrow stretchof ecologically rich habitat with oil andgas development is a direct threat tothe caribou and the Gwich’in people.

Western ArcticAmong the public lands in the west-ern Arctic is the 23.5-million-acre(9.5-million-ha) National PetroleumReserve, which contains valuable habi-tat for polar bears, caribou, andmillions of migratory birds. Made upof lakes, wetlands, coastal lagoons, riv-ers, upland foothills, and mountains,it is America’s single largest block ofundeveloped wildlands. The reservesupports the primary calving groundsfor Alaska’s largest caribou herd, theWestern Arctic caribou herd, whichtotals more than 430,000 animals. Inaddition, it contains important marinemammal habitat for beluga whales andspotted seals and habitat for anadro-mous fish and nesting peregrinefalcons. The Inupiaq and other AlaskaNatives there depend on these re-sources for their subsistence culture.

Established in 1923, the reservewas set aside as an emergency oil sup-ply for defense needs. Although thereis no question that oil and gas devel-opment will proceed in the reserve,such development should not occurprior to protection of critical wildlife,wilderness, and subsistence resources.

Current oil and gas leasing plansare the most aggressive this nation hasseen for U.S. Arctic. A recent decision

offers leases on 100% of the northwestplanning area of the reserve, and weanticipate the Teshekpuk Lake area inthe northeast planning area will beoffered next—an important wildlifeand subsistence area that historicallyhas been protected. Furthermore,there are plans for offshore oil and gasleasing across the entire arctic coast-line to the Canadian border, and thestate of Alaska just announced its in-tention to offer leases, that hadpreviously been deferred, offshore ofthe coastal plain of the Arctic Refugeand the NPRA (see Figure 1).

Logging in Alaska’sRain ForestAlaska’s old-growth, temperate rain for-est encompasses over 1,000 miles (1,613kilometers) of coastline and is one of thelargest remaining in the world. Com-posed primarily of the nearly 22 millionacres (8.9 million ha) of the Tongass andChugach National Forests, Alaska’s rainforest is a unique and globally signifi-cant natural resource.

Tongass National ForestAt nearly 17 million acres (6.9 millionha), the Tongass National Forest isAmerica’s largest national forest. An ex-traordinary collage offjords, glaciers, forestedislands, and moun-tains, the Tongassmakes up a majority ofthe Alexander Archi-pelago creating southeastAlaska. Towering grovesof Sitka spruce andwestern hemlock growto be more than 200feet tall and live as longas 1,000 years in thislush forest. Home tohealthy populations ofbrown and black bears,wolves, bald eagles,

northern goshawks, and five species ofPacific salmon, the dense old-growthforest of the Tongass provides vital fishand wildlife habitat.

More than 6 million acres (2.4 mil-lion ha) of the Tongass are protectedeither by wilderness designation or bya special congressional designationthat does not allow road building. Inaddition, inventoried roadless areascomprise more than 9 million acres(3.6 million ha) of the forest. Since the 1950s, the Tongass has ex-perienced significant levels and effectsof clear-cut logging (see Figure 2). Forexample, more than 5,000 miles(8,065 kilometers) of roads exist onthe Tongass, which have fragmentedwildlife habitat, impaired spawningstreams, and otherwise significantlydamaged ecosystem values on the for-est. The Alaska Department of Fishand Game issued a report indicatingthat two-thirds of the culverts acrossanadromous streams on the Tongassare not adequate for fish passage(ADF&G 2000).

Nevertheless, roadless area protec-tions put in place by the Roadless AreaConservation Rule (2001) were removedfrom the Tongass National Forest inDecember 2003. We anticipate the

Figure 1—Current and proposed north slope oil and gas leases on Alaska’s north slope.Courtesy of Ecotrust.


Chugach National Forest will be exemptfrom Roadless Rule protections in thenear future. Meanwhile, plans are in theworks for approximately 50 timberprojects in roadless areas of the Tongassover the next 10 years.

Recreational Off-roadVehicle Use and RS2477Right-of-WaysMotorized recreational use and RS2477Right-of-Ways pose some of the mostpervasive and growing threats to wil-derness areas in Alaska. A 1996 studyby the state of Alaska’s Department ofNatural Resources indicates that in theirsouth-central Alaska study area (a 34 mil-lion acre (13.8 million ha) area defined bythe Alaska Range on the west and north,the Richardson Highway through Valdezon the east, and inclusive of the KenaiPeninsula), 95% of the total acreage iscurrently managed as open to snow-machine access. Wilderness values,such as wildlife, solitude, scenic land-scapes, natural soundscapes, air quality,and natural odors, among others, arethreatened by motorized intrusions.Documented impacts to wildife frommotorized activities include harassment,

displacement from important habitats,disruption of feeding activities, alter-ation in habitat use, and depletion ofcritical energy supplies in individualanimals.

Motorized UseCongress created limited exceptions inANILCA to the restrictions normallyimplemented for motorized uses in con-servation system units, includingdesignated wilderness. These were im-portant exceptions necessary toaccommodate and maintain opportuni-ties for legitimate subsistence uses,which honor Alaska Natives and otherrural Alaskans and their subsistence wayof life. Specifically, ANILCA allows snowmachines, motorboats, and fixed-wingaircraft to be used in designated wilder-ness and other conservation system unitsfor traditional subsistence activities.

As outlined in the ANILCA Reportof the Senate Committee on Energy andNatural Resources, “customary and tra-ditional uses” include travel to andfrom homesites, travel to and from vil-lages, and taking resources forsubsistence purposes, such as subsis-tence and sport hunting, fishing, andberry picking (Senate Report 1980).

However, some agencies, such as theU.S. Forest Service (USFS) (2002), aswell as individuals, have interpretedtraditional uses to include recreationalactivities. Others, including The Wil-derness Society, assert that Congressnever intended to include recreationalactivities as customary and traditional.Cross-country, recreational motorizeduses in Alaska’s conservation systemunits are increasingly degrading wil-derness lands.

Chugach National ForestAlaska’s Chugach National Forest—encompassing 5.5 million acres (2.2million ha)—includes the northern-most temperate rain forest in thenation. Home to wolves, grizzly bears,sea otters, orcas, and other sensitivewildlife species, the Chugach includestidewater glaciers, towering mountainpeaks, alpine tundra, and some of therichest wild salmon spawning streamsin America. Although 99% of theChugach is classified as roadless andqualifies for wilderness designation,there is no designated wilderness onthe forest.

The USFS recently revised theChugach National Forest Land Man-agement Plan, in which they reducedwilderness recommendations from 1.6million acres (0.6 million ha) recom-mended in 1984 to 1.4 million acres(0.5 million ha) and opened up closeto 87% of the forest to cross-countrywinter motorized use. This area in-cludes the approximately 2 millionacre (0.8 million ha) congressionallydesignated Nellie-Juan/College FiordWilderness Study Area. Allowing thislevel of winter motorized use on theChugach, with little area fornonmotorized refugia, may prove verydamaging to wildlife, given that thewinter environment often creates thegreatest levels of stress in wildlife dueto environmental factors.

Figure 2—Clear-cut logging in the Tongass National Forest. Photo by Southeast Alaska Conservation Council.


Wrangell-St. Elias National ParkWrangell St. Elias National Park andPreserve, which at 13.2 million acres(5.3 million ha) is America’s largestnational park and contains the big-gest block of designated wildernessland (>9 million acres; 3.6 million ha)in the nation, is experiencing all-ter-rain-vehicle (ATV) use that isdamaging this scenic and ecologicaljewel. Six times the size ofYellowstone National Park, Wrangell-St. Elias is unmatched by any otherunit in the park system. It includesthe largest concentration of glaciers,the largest subpolar ice cap, and 9 ofthe 16 highest mountains in theUnited States.

Although the park is massive, muchof it is rock and ice, making thebiologically rich lower elevationscritical habitat for Dall sheep, brownand black bears, moose, mountaingoats, caribou, bison, wolves, andnesting trumpeter swans, among otherwildlife species. It is these lowerelevations that receive ATV use. In1998, the National Park System (NPS)estimated that nearly 600 miles (968kilometers) of ATV routes affectedapproximately 2 million acres (0.8million ha) of Wrangell-St. Elias Parkand Preserve.

To protect national parks, Congresshas consistently reaffirmed the coremission contained in the National ParkService Organic Act that activities

within our national parks “shall not beexercised in derogation of the valuesand purposes for which these variousareas have been established.” Clearly,this is an example of an activity that isimpairing national park values, and thePark Service must strive to properlymanage ATV use (see Figure 3).

RS2477 HighwayRight-of-Way ClaimsIn 1866, a statute was passed in part toallow highway construction for thebenefit of commerce to move fromsettlement to settlement across federallands. It stated, “The right-of-way forthe construction of highways over pub-lic lands, not reserved for public uses,is hereby granted.” In 1976, the Fed-eral Land Policy and Management Actrepealed this obsolete statute, althoughit did not invalidate claims that couldbe proven established prior to 1976.

Recently, the Department of the In-terior (DOI) has eased the approvalprocess for RS2477 claims by issuingnew “disclaimer regulations,” and hasstated that this process can be used bystates, counties, and individuals to ob-tain rights-of-way under the repealedRS2477 law. The state of Alaska has ablueprint to develop a web of hundredsof highways, roads, and even railroadsacross thousands of miles of Alaska’snational parks, refuges, forests, andother protected lands. Granting theseclaims would open federal and otherpublic lands to extensive damagecaused by off-road vehicles and otherdevelopment, and it would effectivelydisqualify these special places for wil-derness protection. These RS2477

highway right-of-way claims pose oneof the most significant threats towilderness today.

Planning Efforts withoutWilderness ReviewsThe DOI is embarking on wide-scaleplanning efforts for refuges, parks, andBureau of Land Management (BLM)lands in Alaska. Six Refuge Comprehen-sive Conservation Plans are currentlybeing revised, and DOI intends to reviseall 16 Refuge Plans by the year 2010.The refuge system in Alaska includesmore than 70 million acres (28.3 mil-lion ha) of public land with outstandingwilderness values. Moreover, a series ofbackcountry planning efforts for thePark Service and BLM lands are under-way. DOI has directed that wildernessreviews will not be considered in mostof these planning efforts, and manage-ment decisions are being made that maypreclude future wilderness designations.By refusing to complete wildernessreviews across these vast areas of publiclands, DOI has launched a silent assaulton wilderness lands.

ConclusionAlthough Alaska is a land with extraor-dinary and vast wilderness values, itis experiencing widespread and mul-tifaceted threats to its wildernessresources. Oil and gas leasing, logging,motorized uses, RS2477 highwayrights-of-way, and planning withoutwilderness reviews comprise five of themost significant threats to Alaska’sFigure 3—ATV damage on the north side of the

Nabesna road, Wrangell-St. Elias Park and Preserve.Photo by National Park Service.

Although Alaska is a land with extraordinary andvast wilderness values, it is experiencing widespreadand multifaceted threats to its wilderness resources.

Continued on page 8


STEWARDSHIP

IntroductionFor many, Alaska exemplifies thecharacteristics that make wilder-ness one of the United States’most valued natural resources.Not only does Alaska containsome of the country’s most pris-tine wilderness, it also containsmore of the National WildernessPreservation System than theLower 48 combined (Landresand Meyer 2000).

Not all of the unique wilderness qualities of Alaska aredesirable. Perhaps one negative aspect is the legal ambigu-ity and controversy associated with the Alaska NationalInterest Lands Conservation Act of 1980 (ANILCA) (Pub-lic Law 96-487). Two intertwined issues at the heart of legalcontroversies and ambiguities are subsistence and accessto Native (a citizen of the United States and a minimumone-fourth degree Alaska Indian, Inuit, Aleut, or combina-tion thereof) allotments and other wilderness inholdings(see Figure 1). The fact that more than 800,000 acres(323,886 ha) of inholdings are within Alaska’s wildernessprovides managers with an extremely challenging task: pre-serving wilderness while recognizing the importance ofthese inholdings for the subsistence lifestyles of many Na-tive Alaskans (National Park Service [NPS] 1999). Giventhe large number and size of inholdings within Alaska’sWilderness, access for subsistence purposes will inevitablybe a contentious issue. Nevertheless, through informed dis-cussion of the legal ambiguities surrounding access andsubsistence, a better understanding of the issues could lead

to fewer disputes and conflicts concerning some of ournation’s most precious wilderness.

The origins of the AlaskaNational Interest Lands Conservation ActWhen the Alaska Statehood Act (Public Law 85-508) passedin 1958, the state of Alaska was permitted to select for with-drawal 104 million acres (42.1 million ha) of public domain.Alaska proclaimed that “all right and title to any lands orother property not granted or confirmed to the State …may be held by any … Natives, or held by the U.S. in trustfor said Natives” (Public Law 85-508).

Contention arose when the state began to make selec-tions that intruded on Native settlements and huntinggrounds. This encroachment, in turn, spawned several law-suits by Natives. As a result, Congress sought to resolve theissue through the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act(ANCSA) of 1971 (Public Law 92-203), which disposed of44 million acres (17.8 million ha) and dispensed nearly $1billion to Natives. In addition to this disbursement, Nativeswere also entitled to a perpetual 2% royalty on mineral leases

Subsistence, Inholdings,and ANILCA

The Complexity of Wilderness Stewardship in Alaska

BY RANDY J. TANNER

Article author Randy J. Tanner.

Figure 1—The community of Anaktuvuk is within the boundaries of Gates of theArctic National Park and Preserve. Photo courtesy of NPS.


owned by the federal government atthe time of statehood (Zaslowsky andWatkins 1994). However, ANCSA wasconditional—Native Alaskans had toagree to absolve all land claim suitsagainst the state and agree not to fileany more.

Not only did ANCSA provide amechanism for granting Native allot-ments, it also contained a particularlyimportant provision—§17(d)(2)—which allowed for the futureestablishment of up to 80 million acres(32.4 million ha) of National InterestLands. These lands would eventuallycontain national forests, nationalparks, wildlife refuges, and designatedwilderness. The implementation ofthis provision was ANILCA.

Passed in 1980, ANILCA is a signifi-cant piece of wilderness legislation. Aftera decade of legislative debate, more than104 million acres (42.1 million ha) offederal lands in Alaska were preservedas national parks, wildlife refuges, andconservation areas, with 56.5 millionacres (22.9 million ha) designated aswilderness. At 449 pages, ANILCA is ascomplicated as it is long. Unfortunately,ANILCA has engendered a great deal ofcontroversy involving subsistence rightsand access to wilderness inholdings, andmuch of this controversy can be attrib-uted to ambiguous language foundwithin the act.

Subsistence and ANILCAOne clear purpose of ANILCA is to“preserve Wilderness resource values”(§101[a] Public Law 96-487); however,another is “to provide the opportunityfor rural residents engaged in a subsis-tence way of life to continue to do so”(§101[c[ Public Law 96-487). Subsis-tence is defined in ANILCA as

the customary and traditionaluses by rural Alaska residentsof wild renewable resources fordirect personal or family con-

sumption as food, shelter, fuel,clothing, tools, or transporta-tion; for the making and sell-ing of handicraft articles out ofnon-edible byproducts of fishand wildlife resources taken forpersonal or family consump-tion; and for customary trade.(§ 803 Public Law 96-487)

Considering the above purposes, con-flicting views about the relationshipbetween wilderness preservation andsubsistence are inevitable. For ex-ample, unlike designated wildernessin the Lower 48, snowmobile use,motorboats, and airplanes are allowedin Alaskan wilderness for subsistence,traditional activities, and travel to andfrom villages and homesites (§811[a]and §1110 Public Law 96-487).

The phrase “traditional uses,” foundwithin ANILCA’s definition of subsis-tence, has incited a conflict reflectedin a U.S. Senate report addressingANILCA. The report states that restric-tion of subsistence to customary andtraditional uses shall “in no way im-pede the use of new technology forsubsistence purposes” (Senate Report96-413). This controversy has height-ened with rapid changes in technology.For example, it is not clear whetheror not all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) arepermitted under ANILCA for subsis-tence purposes. The legislative historysuggests that the only special modesof transportation permitted within wil-derness designated under ANILCA areairplanes, snowmobiles, motorboats,and dogsleds (Senate Report 96-413).Rather than new, technologically ad-vanced modes of transportation beingpermitted, Senate Report 96-413 sug-gests that as the technology of theallowed special modes of transporta-tion advances, access via these modeswill still be permitted. In either case,the mode of transportation permittedfor subsistence purposes is a signifi-cant factor in determining acceptable

modes and routes of access to wilder-ness inholdings and Native allotmentswhen the purpose of that access is toengage in subsistence activities.

Wilderness InholdingAccess Provisions ofANILCAThere are two primary sections ofANILCA related to inholding access:§1110 and §1323 (see Table 1). Sub-section 1110(b) states that

in any case in which Stateowned or privately ownedland … is effectively sur-rounded by one or more con-servation system units … suchrights shall be given by theSecretary … to assure adequateand feasible access for eco-nomic and other purposes …subject to the reasonable regu-lations issued by the Secretaryto protect the natural andother values of such lands.

Should an inholder desire access,ANILCA stipulates that it must begranted. Although this is generallyaccepted as factual, the type of accessto be granted to the inholder is cer-tainly not guaranteed. To illustrate,suppose an inholder requests ATV ac-cess to an inholding within adesignated wilderness in Alaska. Threeissues should be considered when de-ciding whether or not this mode ofaccess should be granted:1. “Adequate” access: Could the route

be reasonably traversed by foot,dog sled, snowmobile, or airplane?If so, then either of these modesare “adequate” and ATV access maynot be appropriate (§ 1110(a) Pub-lic Law 96-487).

2. “Feasible” access: Common lawdoctrine has shown that potentialactions are considered “feasible” ifthose actions are possible andconsistent with the purposes of theAct (Friends of the Boundary Waters


Wilderness v. F. Dale Robertson 1992).3. “Economical” access: Although the

phrase “economic purposes” in§1110(b) has traditionally been in-terpreted as applying to the purposeof the access, the legislative historysuggests that economic aspects ofthe mode and route of access shouldalso be considered. Senate Report96-413 asserts that “we do not

believe that the access route whichis chosen must be, in all instances,the most economically feasible al-ternative.” For instance, can theowner afford to charter a flight tothe inholding? If so, access via air-plane may be a possibility.

Although the ambiguity of §1110has certainly imbued ANILCA with a

degree of uncertainty, §1323 is perhapsthe most infamous section concerningwilderness inholdings in Alaska, andarguably nationwide. Section 1323 isdivided into two subsections: (a) ad-dresses inholdings found withinnational forests, whereas subsection (b)addresses inholdings surrounded byBureau of Land Management (BLM)administered lands (see Table 1).

Section (a) directs the secretary ofagriculture to provide adequate accessto inholdings located within the na-tional forest system that will secure tothe owner reasonable use and enjoy-ment of the inholding. In 1981, theNinth Circuit Court for the U.S. Courtof Appeals interpreted §1323(a) toapply to the entire nationwide nationalforest system. This section has beenthe only section of ANILCA inter-preted as having nationwide scope.Following the Ninth Circuit opinion,the U.S. Forest Service adopted§1323(a) as its policy governing ac-cess to wilderness inholdingsnationwide (USFS 1990). In imple-menting this decision as policy,though, there has been a failure toacknowledge that ANILCA directsmanagers to implement a differentstatute, namely ANILCA’s §1110(b),when addressing wildernessinholdings in Alaska. Essentially, thelegislative history of §1323(a) suggeststhat the subsection is intended toapply to Alaska national forest landsas a whole, but when such a nationalforest happens to also be a designatedWilderness, §1110(b) is to be applied.

There is a parallel controversy associ-ated with §1323(b) that directs thesecretary of the interior to provide ad-equate access to “public lands managedby the Secretary under the Federal LandPolicy and Management Act of 1976”(FLPMA) (Public Law 94 -579) that willsecure to the owner the reasonable useand enjoyment of the inholding. The

“Notwithstanding any other provisions of this Act or otherlaw, in any case in which State owned or privately ownedland … is effectively surrounded by one or moreconservation system units, … the State or private ownershall be given by the Secretary such rights as may benecessary to assure adequate and feasible access foreconomic and other purposes … subject to the toreasonable regulations issued by the Secretary to protectthe natural and other values of such lands”

“(a) Notwithstanding any other provision of this Act orother law, the Secretary shall authorize and permittemporary access by the State or a private landowner to oracross any conservation system unit …(b) In providing temporary access pursuant to subsection (a),the Secretary may include such stipulations and conditionshe deems necessary to insure that the private use of publiclands is accomplished in a manner that is not inconsistentwith the purposes for which the public lands are reservedand which insures that no permanent harm will result to theresources of the unit”

“Notwithstanding any other provision of law, … the Secretary[of Agriculture] shall provide such access to nonfederallyowned land within the boundaries of the National ForestSystem as the Secretary deems adequate to secure to theowner the reasonable use and enjoyment thereof.”

“Notwithstanding any other provision of law, … theSecretary [of the Interior] shall provide such access tononfederally owned land surrounded by public landsmanaged by the Secretary under the Federal Land Policyand Management Act of 1976 (43 U.S.C. 1701-82) as theSecretary deems adequate to secure to the owner thereasonable use and enjoyment thereof.”

Table 1—Legislative Statutes about Landowner Inholdings in

Wilderness as Stated within ANILCA.

ANILCA Section Statute

§1110(b)

§1111

§1323(a)

§1323(b)


FLPMA dealt exclusively with manage-ment direction for all BLM lands, andBLM has determined that §1323(b) ofANILCA has nationwide scope (see Inte-rior Board of Land Appeals 83-356,1984). However, ANILCA clearly statesthat when the phrase “public lands” isused within ANILCA, it is defined as pub-lic lands in Alaska and suggests that§1323(b) should only be applied toinholdings within BLM-administeredlands in Alaska (§102[3] PL 96-487).There are currently no BLM-administeredWildernesses within Alaska, however.

Mitigating the competing demandsof wilderness preservation, subsis-tence, and inholding access is amongthe most fundamental challenges towilderness stewardship in Alaska. Acase study is presented here for Gatesof the Arctic Wilderness.

Gates of the ArcticWilderness: A Case StudyIn July 2002, the NPS issued an Envi-ronmental Assessment (EA) (requiredby the National Environmental PolicyAct for any significant action that pos-sibly affects the integrity of theresource) that brought to the forefrontthe intertwined nature of the contro-versies surrounding subsistence andaccess to wilderness inholdings inAlaska. The EA was in response to anapplication for temporary summeraccess, via an eight-wheeled amphibi-ous ATV, to a Native allotment locatedapproximately 10 miles within Gatesof the Arctic Wilderness. The allot-ment has been historically accessed byairplane and snowmobile. The appli-cant requested ATV access for thepurposes of repairing a tent, remov-ing trash, and subsistence. Threealternatives were considered: a no-ac-tion alternative and two alternativesthat would permit ATV access, eachalong a different route through the wil-

derness and each approximately 11 to14 miles long (NPS 2002).

The concerns of wilderness advo-cates centered on the likelihood of apermanent scar across the wildernessand damage to wilderness characterthat would be incurred in an other-wise trail-less wilderness. This concernwas strengthened by a study con-ducted in Gates of the Arctic NationalPark that concluded,

Passage of but one ATVthrough some landscapes canleave an indelible imprint. …Continued use of ATVs overthe same path will result indisturbance that is irreversiblein terms of the human lifespan. Recovery in some caseswill be impossible to achieveand only a functional recov-ery can be expected for muchof the remaining trail networkwithin the park and preserveif the trails are abandoned.”(Alstrand 1988)

Accessing the inholding by airplane,snowmobile, or dogsled may be theonly legal way the inholder can carryout subsistence activities and thentransport the harvested or collected

goods back across the wilderness. TheNPS has interpreted the AnaktuvukLand Exchange of 1996 (Public Law104-333) to imply that ATVs cannotbe used for subsistence purposes withinthe vast portion of wilderness where theaccess was requested (NPS 2002). Sincetransporting the harvested and col-lected goods back to the residence inAnaktuvuk Pass is part of subsistence,transporting goods across Wildernessvia ATV may not be legally permissible.

The organization Wilderness Watchalerted other conservation groups to theaccess proposal, and, as a result, the NPSreceived several comments concerningthe potentially damaging impacts to wil-derness. Besides comments about thephysical scarring of the wilderness, sev-eral challenges were raised regarding thelack of alternatives considered and thelegal provisions for ATV access.

The NPS posited that access to theinholding was subject to §1110(b) ofANILCA. Whereas in most cases ac-cess to NPS administered wildernessinholdings is governed by §1110(b),in this instance the access requestedwas temporary and could be inter-preted as being subject to §1111 of

Figure 3—There are more than 800,000 acres of inholdings within Alaska’s designated Wilderness lands. Photocourtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.


ANILCA, which speaks directly totemporary access to wildernessinholdings. This clarification is essen-tial since §1111 is more conservativewith the nature of permitted modesand routes of access. For example,§1111 states that the secretary mayinclude stipulations to the temporaryaccess such that the access is “accom-plished in a manner that is notinconsistent with the purposes forwhich the public lands are reservedand which insures that no permanentharm will result to the resources of theunit.” Subsection 1110(b), on theother hand, makes no explicit men-tion of protecting wilderness frompermanent harm and not permittingaccess that is inconsistent with thepurposes of wilderness. The only pro-tective language found within§1110(b) is that reasonable regulationsmust be applied to protect the naturaland other values of such lands.

In the end, the NPS did not imple-ment any of these provisions. Atpresent, other solutions, such as landexchange, are being explored in lieuof granting access. Nevertheless, notall access requests will or should nec-essarily result in such solutions.Wilderness managers, advocates, andthose living in and around wildernessmust come to terms with the undeni-able truth that humans are a part ofthe wilderness landscape in Alaska.Determining the appropriate contextwithin which this relationship exists,however, remains to be determined.

ConclusionsClearly, there is no easy and straight-forward answer to inholding accessrequests that are linked to subsistenceactivities (see Figure 3). In Alaska, wil-derness and the cultural landscape areinseparable. Given this close linkage,managers have been charged with theextremely challenging task of weighing

statutory obligations of preservationwith the demands of those who dependupon the landscape and its resourcesfor their livelihood. Managing both pro-tection and use will require sharedlearning and understanding amongmanagers, surrounding communities,and wilderness advocates, as well as athorough understanding of the intentof relevant laws. In the end, what isdesired most is a harmonious coexist-ence of wilderness and cultural lifestylesfound within Alaska.

REFERENCESAlaska National Interest Lands Conservation

Act. 1980. P.L. 96–487.Alstrand, G. M. 1988. Effects of All-Terrain Ve-

hicle Use in the Vicinity of Anaktuvuk Pass,Gates of the Arctic National Park. NationalPark Service, U.S. Department of the Interior.

Federal Land Policy and Management Act.1976. P.L. 94–579.

Friends of the Boundary Waters v. F. DaleRobertson, Chief of the United States ForestService. 1992. Eighth Circuit Court. CaseNo. 91-3032, Interior Board of Land Ap-peals. 1984. Number 83-356.

Kunz, M., and K. Troxel. 1988. The AnaktuvukPass All-Terrain Vehicle Study 1986–1988:A Narrative Report of the Field Operationsand Dispersed ATV Use. Alaska RegionalOffice, National Park Service, U.S. Depart-ment of Interior.

Landres, P., and S. Meyer. 2000. National Wil-derness Preservation System Database: KeyAttributes and Trends, 1964–1999. USDAForest Service Gen. Tech. Report RMRS-GTR-18-Rev. Ed. Ogden, UT: Rocky MountainResearch Station.

Montana Wilderness Association v. United StatesForest Service, No. 80-3374, United StatesCourt of Appeals, Ninth Circuit, 655 F.2d951. February 9, 1981, argued; August 19,1981, decided.

National Park Service. 1999. Inholding data re-quested through the Freedom of Information Act.

National Park Service. 2002. EnvironmentalAssessment: All-Terrain Vehicle Access to anInholding at Agiak Lake within Gates of theArctic National Park Wilderness. Gates ofthe Arctic National Park and Preserve.

Tanner, R. 2002. Inholdings within Wilderness:Legal Foundations, Problems, and Solutions.IJW 8 (3): 9–14.

U.S. Forest Service. 1990. Forest Service Manual:Title 2300—Recreation, Wilderness, andRelated Resources, Section 2326.13. Wash-ington, DC: U.S. Forest Service.

Zaslowsky, D. and T. H. Watkins. 1994. TheseAmerican Lands: Parks, Wilderness and thePublic Lands. Washington, DC: Island Press.

RANDY TANNER is Wilderness PolicyAnalyst for Wilderness Watch, a nationalconservation organization dedicated to thewise stewardship of the U.S. designatedWilderness Areas, and a graduate studentin the Department of Conservation andSociety in the College of Forestry andConservation at the University of Montana,Missoula. E-mail: [email protected].

Users of the WSRS need to be awareof what it does not provide. First, theWSRS does not provide full text docu-ments. For example, it containsexcerpts from House Reports that arerelevant to the issues, but it does notcontain the full text of these HouseReports. Second, it does not covernonwilderness legislation such as theEndangered Species Act or the Mul-tiple Use Sustained Yield Act, althoughthese laws may affect wilderness stew-ardship. Third, much of theinformation on the WSRS, and legis-lative history information in particular,is subject to interpretation. Most im-portantly, the 1964 Wilderness Actframes all uses of the WSRS, and thiswebsite should not be used as a sub-stitute for seeking legal counsel.

The WSRS also has links to theWilderness.net Law Library that containsall U.S. wilderness laws in adownloadable format, and to the Policiesand Regulations page that contains linksto the full text documents of all U.S. fed-eral agency wilderness regulations andpolicies. Pending funding and support,and feedback on its functionality, theWSRS will be updated annually.

PETER LANDRES is a research ecologist atthe Aldo Leopold Wilderness ResearchInstitute, P.O. Box 8089, Missoula, MT59807, USA. E-mail: [email protected].

From LEOPOLD CENTER page 34


The histories of zoos and wilderness in America havebeen intertwined for 150 years. According to theWorld Zoo Conservation Strategy (WZCS) (World

Zoo Organization 1993), their evolution is unfolding inthree stages. Menageries marked the 19th century, whensimple taxonomic animal collections were exhibited to thepublic. In the 20th century, zoos became zoological parks,where single-species cages give way to multispecies diora-mas that look something like the natural homes of theiranimals. Last, the WZCS hopes that zoos continue to thefinal stage, where 21st-century conservation centers focuson the whole natural system, including interactions betweensoil, water, plants, animals, and people.

This evolution has been driven by environmental, wilder-ness, and social movements that increasingly feed the public’sdemand that zoos justify themselves. For many people, keep-ing animals like proboscis monkeys captive no longer sufficesas adequate justification for zoo existence.

Roderick Nash notes in his classic book Wilderness andthe American Mind, “Clearly it is not wilderness but peoplewho need management” (Nash 1982, p. 320). Contemporaryconservation thinking extols the necessity of understand-ing human activity at least as much as animal activity. Zoosfocus almost exclusively on wildlife, despite humanity’scentral role in habitat destruction and conservation. Zoos’systematic ignorance of the impact that human behaviorhas on environmental problems and solutions has blockedtheir continued evolution.

The blockage proves ironic, since zoos’ insistence ondisplays without people is squandering the immensepotential to promote conservation. This potential of zoos,as well as of botanical gardens and aquariums, to be con-servation centers can be counted in the thousands ofinstitutions worldwide, the billions of dollars in investment,and the more than 115 million in visitors in the UnitedStates and 600 million in the world every year—equivalent

to 10% of the total humanpopulation (World ZooOrganization 1993).

No other type of con-servation organizationcomes close to reaching somany people. With con-servation issues evermorepressing, zoos find them-selves not only trying tosave wildlife, but also try-ing to save their own kindfrom becoming lost inirrelevance.

Zoos’ Wilderness RootsIn order to better design an exhibit mimicking natural habitat,a team of biologists and designers from Woodland ParkZoo in Seattle, Washington, traveled in 1985 to Tanzaniato discover what savannah habitat really looked like. JonCharles Coe, a landscape architect specializing in zoodesign, however, did not see the terrain as the others did.

While the biologists catalogued the biophysical characterof the African savannah, Coe began analyzing aspects of wil-derness that he could re-create in an exhibit experience. “Oneaspect of wilderness in the zoo is to make people feel thatsense of anticipation and anxiety” (personal communication,Coe 1997). Whereas many exhibit designers may go no fur-ther than using rocks and plants from the place they want tore-create, Coe goes beyond. He designs unfamiliar space thatbreaks down visitors’ sense of security and brushes themwith a feeling of wilderness. By building landscapes wherepeople encounter animals, separated by invisible barriers,for a split second their survival instincts are turned on. Theyforget they are in a zoo. According to Coe, that feeling oflacking control is one important aspect of wilderness.

ZoosBehind the Wild Facade

BY JON KOHL

STEWARDSHIP

Article author Jon Kohl in a cave in Costa Rica. Photoby Marisol Mayorga.


Coe’s search for this wilderness feel-ing in zoo design may sound novel, butthe influence of wilderness on how zoosconceive themselves is hardly new. Themodern zoo, in fact, was born duringthe first wilderness movement. ThePhiladelphia Zoological Garden, whichopened in 1874, was the first animalcollection to call itself a “zoological gar-den,” an attempt to differentiate itselffrom earlier menageries. At that timeAmerican pioneers were finishing uptheir grand sweeping aside of not just

forests and grasslands, but wild animalslike bison and wild places like the GreatPlains. After the Civil War, however,many Americans grew increasingly con-cerned about the vanishing characterof wild America.

Easterners and European immi-grants left the vestiges of civilizationbehind as they marched onward intothe wilderness. In the words of Will-iam Cronon, they “gained an energy,an independence, and a creativity thatwere the sources of American democ-racy and national character. Seen thisway, wilderness became a place of re-ligious redemption and nationalrenewal, the quintessential location forexperiencing what it meant to be anAmerican” (Cronon 1995, p. 42). “Itis no accident,” Cronon continues ina piece adapted from his 1995 book,Uncommon Ground: Toward ReinventingNature, “that the movement to set asidenational parks and wilderness areasgained real momentum just as lamentsabout the vanishing frontier reachedtheir peak. To protect wilderness wasto protect the nation’s most sacredmyth of origin” (p. 42).

In 1872, protected areas likeYellowstone National Park were setaside. Inside the cities, people were al-ready building another institution thatwould preserve the concept of wilder-ness. By 1891, when the NationalZoological Park in Washington, D.C.,opened, many zoos had already beenestablished. In 1889, Congress passeda bill to establish a national zoologicalgarden as part of the Smithsonian In-stitution “for the advancement ofscience and the instruction and recre-ation of the people.” Indeed, science,education, and recreation are three ofthe four principal missions of modernzoos. The fourth, conservation, soonfollowed when Smithsonian secretaryS. P. Langley championed the idea ofthe National Zoo as “a home and a city

of refuge for the vanishing races of thecontinent” (Lefkowitz 1996).

In the 1960s, many zoos had be-come run-down, and the public did notapprove. Several bills floated in Con-gress to ban zoos, although nonepassed. Zoos came under heavy pres-sure to get their act in line. In general,the zoo community reacted to publicoutcries in two ways, according toVernon Kisling (personal communica-tion 1997), the American representativeof the Bartlett Society, an internationalassociation of zoo historians. First, thenational organization, the AmericanZoo and Aquarium Association (AZA),developed professional standards anda code of ethics for individuals and ac-creditation for zoos. Second, “theybegan a major effort at lobbying andbecame pretty good at it,” Kisling adds.

In the late 1960s, zoos started todo what they wanted to do: get rid ofbarred cages. Several forces combinedto bring wilderness to zoo design. Thewilderness movement instilled design-ers with the values, the historicalmoment provided them with the op-portunity, and animal husbandryscience (vaccinations, for example)allowed them to escape enclosures ofbathroom tiles and operating roomdecor necessary for preventing infec-tions—designers could now buildnaturalistic exhibits with plants, rocks,streams, and other animals.

Coe, an active outdoorsperson, wasonly one of several to launch the mod-ern conception of immersion exhibits,in which visitors are immersed in thenatural landscape alongside animals ofthe exhibited region. In the early 1970sat Woodland Park Zoo, Coe workedwith Grant Jones, Dennis Paulson, andarchitect David Hancocks, who was thezoo director. Hancocks wanted to cre-ate a new kind of zoo, one with exhibitsbased on bioclimatic zones, ecologicalhabitats, and animal social behavior.

Figure 1—The Khao Kheow Open Zoo aviary mixes zoo withnatural habitat. Photo by Marisol Mayorga.

Figure 2—The Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Thailand breeds cloudedleopards for increasing the genetic stock of zoo-based cloudedleopards. Photo by Karen Povey.


Together, they created the gorilla ex-hibit that is still considered one of thebest immersion exhibits ever built.

But even as designers like Coe,Jones, and others strive to include ev-ery detail necessary—each rock andleaf—to convince the visitor that, justfor a second, he or she was in the heartof Africa. The myth of wild or wilder-ness may impede the path of zoostrying to become conservation centers.

Erecting the Wild FacadeFlashing the big-eyed fuzzy face of ababy cheetah or gorilla, zoos fre-quently promote themselves as saviorsof wilderness and of animal species.The wild myth gives zoos a frame inwhich they can romanticize their mis-sions as ones that do not requirehuman considerations. Even whileother sectors of the conservation com-munity, such as the World WildlifeFund and World Conservation Union,have long since devised strategies at-tending to human social problems thatendanger wildlife, zoos lag far behind.

Hancocks (personal communication1997), former director of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, asserts thatcertain tactics, such as the wild facadein Ndoki, belie the truth about the suc-cess of zoo conservation. Promotion ofconservation successes abroad reinforcesa facade that hides zoos’ true passion:conservation driven by science and tech-nology. To become conservation centers,zoos want to carry out conservationthrough technological approaches. Inthe 1980s, zoos conceded they shouldnot be the Ark (still a very popular meta-phor for captive breeding) that carriescaptive species across a 50- or 100-yearspan necessary for the subsidence of hu-man destruction, after which, the ideagoes, new habitat for reintroductions willbe created or discovered. They now de-clare that captive breeding was just onetool for conserving wilderness. Yet tech-

nological capacity for breeding has onlybeen increasing. Zoos do not just hireveterinarians anymore—now the mod-ern zoo staff includes specialists inanimal reproductive physiology, genet-ics, molecular and small populationbiology, endocrinology, animal behavior,nutrition, and animal infectious diseases(Eisner 1991). And their technology isimpressive: in vitro fertilization, cryo-genic preservation, implantation surgery,and video microscopy (Stevens 1993).

Zoos promote these high-tech im-ages in their research mission as well,despite captive breeding’s many prob-lems. It is, for example, veryexpensive; it can draw funds awayfrom cheaper and more effective wil-derness conservation projects; itgenerates surplus animals that mustbe disposed of; it presupposes thatreintroduction is the solution to en-dangerment when reintroductioncannot address habitat loss, a primecause of endangerment; it is biasedtoward large, charismatic mammalscherished by marketing and publicrelations departments; it draws atten-tion away from the social and policyside of conservation; and, most of all,it can boast little success—only 13%of reintroductions have succeeded(Beck 1995).

Zoos often declare that the princi-pal means of effecting conservation ofspecies and wilderness is through edu-cation. Yet looking behind the wildfacade, one can see that education isthe highest priority only insofar as itserves zoos’ interest in promoting sci-entific research. Here in the UnitedStates, for example, zoos argue thatmaking Americans more knowledge-able and conscious of biology andextinction will ultimately help to con-serve places like Ndoki. When pushedto explain a direct link between con-servation there and education here,money to fund international projects

is that link. The most famous exampleof fund-raising in the name of educa-tion is the panda renting of the late1980s and early 1990s, when zooscompeted for pandas from China. Itwas estimated that Toledo earnedabout $60 million through tourismfrom a panda rented to the Toledo Zooin 1988 (Cohn 1992). In 1990, a con-sortium of organizations, including theAZA, the World Wildlife Fund, theWorld Conservation Union, and Inter-national Union of Directors ofZoological Gardens voted for a world-wide moratorium on all panda loans.

Educational strategies such as ex-hibit graphics have been criticized onnumerous fronts. Kellert reviewed theliterature, which has shown very lim-ited results in the educationaleffectiveness of zoos (Kellert andDunlap 1989). There is little evidencethat visitors’ attitudes become morefavorable toward nature and conser-vation or that they have learned muchat all. Yet zoos claim that educationwill ultimately make citizens moreaware of environmental issues, result-ing in better conservation-relatedbehaviors.

Figure 3—The Tiger Farm in Thailand claims thatnursing newborn tigers on pigs rather than real tigersavoids their acquiring wild habits of the mother.Photo by Marisol Mayorga.


Taking Downthe Wild FacadeMany have argued that by exerting do-minion over nature, humanity hasattempted to separate itself from thenatural context. This fundamental be-lief of separation underlies the wildmyth. “Nature appreciation is a ‘fullstomach’ phenomenon, that is confined

to the rich, urban, and sophisticated.A society must become technological,urban, and crowded before a need forwild nature makes economic and in-tellectual sense,” writes Nash (1983,p. 343). Zoos are built in highlypopulated areas, far from rural real-ity. The wild myth has emerged inpart to deal with the stresses and ar-tificiality of urban life. As Nash noted,city folk derive satisfaction—intellec-tual, recreational, historical, andspiritual—when they temporarilycross that divide into wilderness.

Despite the myth’s perseverance incities, people have always lived in wil-derness. The Amazon rain forest, thelast great wilderness of tropicalAmerica, has been home to nativegroups for thousands of years, no mat-ter how uninhabited the interior mayseem to outsiders. Their agroforestrymanipulations partially account for theexistence of some communities of treesbotanists today regard as virgin wilder-ness. Many cultures also usetechnologies that do not destroy nature,and some have even been credited forincreasing biological diversity throughtheir agricultural and forest manage-ment practices (Fairhead and Leach

1996). People not only live in wilder-ness, but shape it as well.

Becoming a conservation centerrequires a redefinition of wildernessto include local perspectives and tra-ditions. Gómez-Pompa and Kaus(1992) note that most policy agendasand education curricula of conserva-tion organizations neglect ruralperceptions of the environment andtraditional systems of resource man-agement.

Many conservation organizationshave already decided that lasting con-servation involves cooperation withlocal communities, who have the rightand experience to live where they do.Once again zoos lag behind in not in-tegrating these people’s perspectives.They also do not realize that much ofwhat they advocate, in fact, is to man-age humans: posting guards, pursuingpoachers, and setting up nationalparks. If zoos would only peek aroundthe wild facade, they may find the pathto becoming conservation centers.

Evolving intoConservation CentersWhat would a conservation centerlook like? First the reader must throwout contemporary perceptions of azoo. A few conservation centers havegone into the wilderness to work withpeople. The zoo in Chiapas, Mexicomanages several large wilderness ar-eas. All have people in them. Insteadof pretending they do not exist, thezoo has engaged in teacher training,literacy programs, agricultural im-provement programs, alternatives tohunting wild game, and integratingbest practices of local communitiesinto forest protection strategies. Eachexample represents a human manage-ment tactic for conservation. TheChiapas zoo recognizes that its audi-ence is not just those who visit the zoo,

Figure 4—The Tiger Farm in Thailand sponsors anaggressive crocodile breeding project; here a newborncroc can be seen just cracking the egg. Photo byMarisol Mayorga.

Figure 5—Boy feeding giraffes at the Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Thailand. Photo by Marisol Mayorga.


but all those who will never visit a tra-ditional zoo (Kaufman 1990).

Zoos that work with people under-stand the need for specialists in otherfields. The Roger Williams Park Zoo,Providence, RI, is going through thistransition now. Anne Savage is direc-tor of research and a biologist. Yetwhen she finds herself managing thezoo’s cotton-top tamarin project inColombia, she clips on her social sci-ences badge. She worked to reducefirewood consumption by promotinga better clay stove called a binde (per-sonal communication, Savage 1997).Savage presages a time when conser-vation centers will hire anthropologistswho study traditional conservationsystems among forest-based people,sociologists interested in group func-tion, psychologists in education, andeconomists to discuss economic alter-natives to deforestation.

The WZCS clearly states that edu-cation is conservation centers’principal tool for conservation. Insteadof talking about setting up nationalparks, conservation centers could beeducators in the variety of cutting-edgeconservation techniques. They includejoint forest implementation plans,community-based conservation, highdiversity agroforestry systems, andextractive reserves. They would alsobe involved in strategies such as con-servation easements, land trusts, andecotourism.

Conservation centers could designexhibits to include people. Jon Coe’scolleague, Grant Jones, has designedan exhibit that includes a rich under-standing of the interplay betweenforest peoples, wildlife, and wilder-ness. At Woodland Park Zoo, his firmdesigned an exhibit that simulates apartly deciduous tropical forest. Thevisitor starts in the highlands of Thai-land where they encounter elephantsin the wilderness. But later in the ex-

hibit, the scene changes to a loggingcamp with small buildings and el-ephants to drag logs through theforest. The exhibit portrays the el-ephant in its various roles as wildcreature, cultural part of the landscape,and deity, all intertwined in this story.

Above all, conservation centers can-not be managed only by biologists andbusinesspeople. Conservation centersmust diversify their income, collabo-rate with other kinds of institutions,and refocus on conservation, ratherthan animal exhibition. Although theywill certainly remain involved in cap-tive breeding and exhibition, thepublic may come to regard them asserious interdisciplinary institutionsworking with people for conservationand wilderness.

REFERENCESBeck, Benjamin. 1995. Reintroduction, zoos,

conservation, and animal welfare. In BryanG. Norton, Michael Hutchins, Elizabeth F.Stevens, and Terry L. Maple, eds. Ethics onthe Ark (155–163). Washington, DC:Smithsonian Institution Press.

Coe, Jon Charles. 1997. Personal communi-cation. Coe Lee Robinson Roesch, Philadel-phia, PA.

Cohn, Jeffrey. 1992. Decisions at the Zoo: Eth-ics, politics, profit, and animal-rights con-cerns affect the process of balancingconservation goals and the public interests.Bioscience, 42(9): 654–659.

Cronon, William. 1995. The trouble withwilderness. The New York Times, 13 August,sect. 6, p. 42.

Eisner, Robin. 1991. Scientists roam the habitatas zoos alter their mission: With speciespreservation now becoming at least asimportant as entertainment, researchers inmany fields take up zoo residence. TheScientist, 5 (11): 1–3.

Fairhead, James, and Melissa Leach. 1996.Reframing Forest History: A radical reap-praisal of the roles of people and climate inwest African vegetation change. In Graham

The histories of zoos and wilderness in Americahave been intertwined for 150 years.

P. Chapman and Thackwray S. Driver, eds.Time-scales of Environmental Changes (169–195). London, UK: Routledge.

Gómez-Pompa, Arturo, and Andrea Kaus.1992. Taming the wilderness myth. Bio-science, 42(4): 271–279.

Hancocks, David. 1997. Personal communica-tion. Director, Arizona-Sonora DesertMuseum, Tucson, AZ.

Kaufman, Wallace. 1990. The zoo in the forest.Orion (Autumn) p 26–35.

Kellert, Stephen, and Julie Dunlap. 1989.Informal Learning at the Zoo: A Study ofAttitude and Knowledge Impacts. Philadel-phia, PA: Zoological Society of Philadelphia.

Kisling, Vernon. 1997. Personal communication.Zoo historian, University of Florida,Gainesville.

Lefkowitz, Helen Horowitz. 1996. The NationalZoological Park: City of refuge. In Robert J.Hoage and William A. Deiss, eds. NewWorlds, New Animals: From Menagerie toZoological Park in the Nineteenth Century(126–135). Baltimore, MD: Johns HopkinsUniversity Press.

Nash, Roderick. 1982. Wilderness and theAmerican Mind. New Haven, CT: Yale Uni-versity Press.

Savage, Anne. 1997. Personal communication.Director of Research, Roger Williams ParkZoo, Providence, RI.

Stevens, William K. 1993. Zoos find a new rolein conserving species: Expertise is combinedwith high technology. New York Times, 21September, sect. C4.

World Zoo Organization and the Captive Breed-ing Specialist Group. 1993. The World ZooConservation Strategy: The Role of the Zoosand Aquaria of the World in Global Con-servation. Chicago: Chicago ZoologicalSociety.

JON KOHL wrote a research paper on thistopic in 1997 and won the Gloria BarronWilderness Essay Contest sponsored byThe Wilderness Society and Yale School ofForestry and Environmental Studies. Jon’swritings focus on conservation,sustainability, and other environmentalissues (www.jonkohl.com). E-mail:[email protected].


The Relationship betweenQikiktagrugmiut (Kotzebue

Tribal Members) and theWestern Arctic Parklands,

Alaska, United StatesBY ALEX WHITING

SCIENCE and RESEARCH

IntroductionStadel, Taniton, and Heder(2002) suggest that educatingthe public about the diversityof values associated with wilder-ness is critical for reaching anunderstanding of how wilder-ness areas are defined, used, andmanaged in the future. Studiesof attitudes, opinions, and val-ues of visitors to wilderness andnational park areas, however,have typically focused onpeople visiting these areas forrecreation, the embodiment ofthe definition included in the

U.S. Wilderness Act is humans as visitors who do not remain.One group missing from this research are those people forwhom wilderness areas are homelands, which they rely on fortheir nutritional, spiritual, and cultural needs (Watson, Alessa,and Glaspell 2003). While there are non-Natives in this cat-egory, Native peoples with cultural ties going back generationsare the focus of this investigation.

At European contact, northwestern Alaska was composedof several Inupiaq national homelands (Burch, Jr. 2003).

The Qikiktagrugmiut were and are one of these nations(see Figure 1). The area they call home is from centralKotzebue Sound north and now includes portions of theNoatak National Preserve/Wilderness, and the CapeKrusenstern National Monument. Unlike most NativeAmericans, the Qikiktagrugmiut’s relationship with the landand associated cultural activities have remained essentiallythe same, and the Qikiktagrugmiut continue to utilize theirhomeland to meet many of their basic needs.

In 1980, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conserva-tion Act (ANILCA) was enacted as part of theimplementation of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act(ANCSA). The purpose of section d (2) of ANCSA was toset aside large areas in Alaska to be federally protected fromdevelopment and other deleterious impacts. In northwest-ern Alaska, four National Park Service (NPS)–managedNational Conservation Units were created. They includethe Noatak National Preserve, Cape Krusenstern NationalMonument, Kobuk Valley National Park, and the BeringLand Bridge National Preserve (see Figure 2). These arecollectively managed as the Western Arctic NationalParklands (WEAR) by the NPS offices located in Kotzebue,Nome, and Fairbanks. Of these units, two have official wil-derness classifications, the Noatak Wilderness and theKobuk Valley Wilderness areas.

(PEER REVIEWED)

Article author Alex Whiting. Photo by SiikauraqWhiting.


Although the designations are thesame as “traditional” parks (e.g., Park,monument, preserve), people livingin or near WEAR are allowed to usethe land in a manner representativeof historical practices, a variance fromtraditional park policy. In order tobetter articulate the values and threatstheir members associate with WEAR,the Native village of Kotzebue de-cided to explore the issue with tribalmembers.

MethodsThirty users of the park units in the 30-something age bracket, out of 77households that fall into a heavy har-vest category from the tribes’harvest-monitoring program, were in-terviewed. This group will be using theparklands for the next few decades andtheir children are likely to comprise themost active future user group. Althougharguably they have the most to lose, thisgroup has had very little participationin park public meetings. In addition,most were too young during the pas-sage of ANILCA to have played anactive role in shaping that legislation.All participants, except one, were male.Open-ended interviews were con-ducted using a predetermined set ofquestions about values, park manage-ment, and threats associated withWEAR. The author, a tribal employee,conducted all 30 interviews during Sep-tember 2003.

ResultsThe average number of years’ experi-ence on the land during theparticipants’ lifetimes was 36. The av-erage maximum time spent out on theland during any single year was 9.3months, with a few having spent theirentire lives living out on the land.From September 2002 to September2003, the average time spent on theland was 4.7 months.

Uses and ValuesAssociated with the LandWhen asked how they use the land, re-sponses included hunting, trapping,fishing, gathering firewood, and travel-ing. Some responses were morephilosophical, focusing on relaxation,enjoyment, survival, and “my way of life.”

When asked what the land meansto them, respondents provided answersthat identify a range of values not com-

monly articulated within the purposeof federally protected wilderness:

• Identity (personal and commu-nity): “[The country] defines whoI am and who we are as a people,very important to me.”

• Traditional way of life: “[This is] away of life—just the way I wasbrought up to live off the country.”

• Survival of individuals and fami-lies: “Being able to get out there

Figure 1—Illustration of Qikiktagrugmiut homelands in the western Arctic. Courtesy of Chris Young, archaeologist, WEAR.

Figure 2—Illustration of the location of Western Arctic Parklands. Courtesy of Chris Young, archaeologist, WEAR.


and show my kids how they canuse the land to provide what theyneed to survive.”

• Opportunities for personal growth:“[When in the country, I am] prac-ticing traditional arts.”

• Expression of humility: “[Spend-ing time in the country] remindsme of how weak and small we arecompared to the powers of theland and ocean.”

• Maintain mental and physicalhealth: “[Being in the country]keeps my spirit alive like a vita-min for my inner strength andspirit.” and

• Expression of independence asso-ciated with self-sufficiency: “[Thecountry provides] my own sourceof food, camping, firewood, ice,water—just living.”

Most (23) of the respondents re-ported that their land relationship hasremained largely the same over time.One commented on how his relation-ship with the land has become moreimportant to counter western influ-ences and keep the traditions of livingoff the land alive. Along these samelines, another said his relationship withthe land has become more spiritual.

Unlike traditional park visitors, his ap-preciation includes not only thegrandeur of nature that nurtures thesoul, but also the spiritual connectionto past generations for whom the landprovided the necessary nutritional andcultural elements that continue to sus-tain his family. One respondent,however, mentioned that using the landhas become more recreational for him.

When asked what land attributesprovide these values, half mentionedthe presence of wild animals for foodand fur and another half mentioned aclean, healthy country. Open spaceand no development also ranked high,and about half the respondents men-tioned freedom to travel anywhere tocarry on traditional activities. Respon-dents emphasized the importance ofbeing left alone and the desire to leavethe land the way it is.

Threats to ValuesAttached to the LandParticipants were asked to identifythreats to the values they had identi-fied for these lands. They includedagency restrictions and regulations,the NPS not understanding theQikiktagrugmiut “way of life,” mod-ern technology, global warming,

competition with NPS for landinholdings, passage of time, globaliza-tion, development pressure, trash, lackof respect by outsiders, lack of teach-ing land ethics to the young people,the NPS camping nearby when Nativepeople are on the land, airplanes, sporthunting (i.e., for trophies), and the in-creasing number of visitors.

When probed about land use regu-lations, half were aware of many of theregulations, while the rest had no knowl-edge of any regulations. The majority ofrespondents cited “restrictions in gen-eral” on hunting as a widespreadconcern, including the need for licens-ing, enforcement of “unnecessary” rules,and fears of closing park areas to subsis-tence hunting. A few mentioned thatthey would like to learn about regula-tions and that regulations were neededto keep out development and controlnonlocals in the parklands, but theyshould not unreasonably restrict localuse. Respondents emphasized thatQikiktagrugmiut have been brought upto use common sense in taking care ofthe land (see Figure 3).

Most of the respondents reported thatthey do not recognize boundaries, treat-ing the land as all green, brown, or white,as the season dictates. Only one said hethinks about boundaries, and that thissometimes affects his actions. Anotherrespondent admitted that he is aware ofthe boundaries, but that this does notinfluence his actions. During the discus-sion of boundaries, many respondentsstated a belief that park managers viewthe country as place-names on a map orGPS coordinates, removed from humanactivity and the intricate knowledge ofthe nuances of place. However, the re-spondents’ intergenerational and lifelongfamiliarity with the land allows for thedevelopment of detailed mental mapsof the country, organized on the basis ofa history of known places to camp,travel, harvest plants, and find animals.

Figure 3—Self-sufficiency is one value Qikiktagrugmiut realize from obtaining food in the Western Arctic wilderness. Photoby Siikauraq Whiting.


When questioned about the rela-tionship between themselves andWEAR staff, the influences respondentsreported included professional relation-ships, running into park rangers out inthe country, enforcement, and lack oftrust. When asked about improving therelationship, slightly more than halfsaid it’s good the way it is. The remain-ing suggested more involvement ofInupiaq people in management andpolicy roles, and relationship and trustbuilding with WEAR managers. Oth-ers focused on the need for rangers touse more common sense and get awayfrom a by-the-book mentality. A fewwould like to see increased enforce-ment, especially for outside hunters.At least one mentioned the need forstronger enforcement all around, in-cluding for locals.

DiscussionAlthough wilderness protection pro-vides some benefits to users, the threatof an ongoing land use relationshipbeing destroyed through dependenceon legislative, administrative, and le-gal decision making is a source ofanxiety in the Alaska Native commu-nity. ANILCA could have addressedthis, in part, by developing new parkdesignations and management regimesspecifically for protecting traditionalrelationships, with other park objec-tives being equal or subordinate. Thisapproach was proposed for theNunamiut Wildlands in what is nowGates of the Arctic National Park, butwas rejected (Norris 2002). Further-more, the predominantly nonlocal,and in many ways transient, nature ofWEAR staff makes it difficult for themto build relationships needed to estab-lish trust with local users.

The mistrust and hostilities re-vealed by many respondents in theseinterviews can, in part, be explainedby the natural reaction of a colonized

people subject to regulation by a domi-nant society. There are also historicalexamples of regulators in northwest-ern Alaska acting in ways that areinterpreted by locals as being overlyoppressive, perpetuating opinions thatenforcement efforts are unreasonable,that there is an “occupying army,” orthat the people are being babysat whileon the land—all of which were men-tioned by one or more respondents.Currently, perceptions of agency per-sonnel carry the baggage of pastinjustices, real or perceived, perpetu-ated by representatives of their kind.

Aldo Leopold explained this dy-namic, in regard to plants, like this:

It is evident that our plant bi-ases are in part traditional. Ifyour grandfather likedhickory nuts, you will like thehickory tree because your fa-ther told you to. If on theother hand, your grandfatherburned a log carrying a poi-son ivy vine and recklesslystood in the smoke, you willdislike the species no matterwith what crimson glories itwarms your eyes each fall”(Leopold 1949, p. 72).

This observation of human nature isrelevant to the discussion in that manyQikiktagrugmiut view as beneficialmuch of what the managers do in con-serving resources, controlling nonlocals,and other management activities. Yetat the same time, the history of pastconflicts feeds the flames of mistrustand animosity that still exist. Buildingon the former while reducing the latteris a major challenge for the relation-ship between the region’s landmanagers and the Qikiktagrugmiut.

ConclusionsIt must be remembered that the NPSmanagement of traditional lands occursin the midst of a landslide of threats toAlaska Natives and the future of theircultures. These threats combine to exertincredible pressure and influence over theshape of Qikiktagrugmiut society. Unfor-tunately, the Qikiktagrugmiut have littlecontrol over many, and no control oversome, of the potentially most harmful,such as global warming and contamina-tion of traditional foods.

Many respondents reported a beliefthat the long-term goal of the NPS is forthem to relate to their homelands moreas parklands, with a similar relationshipto that of any other American to nationalparklands (i.e., as visitors who do notremain). This attitude does not mean thatall managers and politicians are unsym-pathetic toward the relationship ofInupiaq to the land (e.g., the Alaska con-gressional delegation has introducedlegislation over recent years to increasethe role of Alaska Natives in managingWEAR), or that the importance of WEARto the Inupiaq of northwestern Alaskacannot play a more prominent role indeveloping long-term protection of thatland relationship (see Figure 4). It doesmean, however, that the Qikiktagrugmiuthave lost substantial control over whetherthat future relationship will resemble theone they have historically enjoyed andcontinues to define who they are now.

AcknowledgmentsThanks to the tribal members whoparticipated and the Aldo Leopold

Many Qikiktagrugmiut view as beneficial much ofwhat the managers do in conserving resources,

controlling non locals, and other management activities.

Continued on page 8



My research began on mountain lakes in 1995, incollaboration with Dr. Kathleen Matthews (U.S.Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station).

This research focused on historically fishless alpine lakes inthe John Muir Wilderness and Kings Canyon National Park ofCalifornia’s Sierra Nevada, and was designed to describe thedistribution of non-native trout, their impacts on native am-phibians, reptiles, zooplankton, and benthic macroinvertebrates,

and the extent to which native species could recover followingfish removal. This project concluded in 1997 with the surveyof more than 1,700 water bodies. Papers published based onthis comparative study have provided compelling evidencethat non-native trout dramatically alter the faunal composi-tion of alpine lakes. These impacts include the extirpation ofamphibian populations and the elimination of large-bodied,conspicuous zooplankton and benthic macro-invertebratespecies. In addition to these direct impacts caused by troutpredation, indirect impacts of these changes in faunal compo-sition include the extirpation of garter snakes from the mostheavily stocked lake basins following the elimination of theiramphibian prey by trout. Despite the magnitude of trout-in-duced changes to faunal composition, comparisons of the faunain lakes that were stocked in the past but had since reverted toa fishless condition, with lakes that were never stocked, indi-cated that the native fauna showed considerable ability torecover following trout disappearance.

In 1996, I began a research project with Dr. Orlando Sarnelle(Michigan State University) that used a replicated whole lakeexperiment in the John Muir Wilderness to describe the re-covery of alpine lake ecosystem structure and function fol-lowing the removal of non-native trout. After two years of data

Montane LakeResearch Program

BY ROLAND A. KNAPP

Editor’s note: The Excellence in Wilderness Stewardship Research Award was given to Kathleen Matthews(U.S. Forest Service Research) and Roland Knapp (UCSB, Sierra Nevada Aquatic Research Laboratory) byIJW and the U.S. Forest Service. This collabrative High Mountain Lake Project assessed the impacts of fishstocking, in part, by surveying over 2000 lakes in the John Muir Wilderness (where fish stocking continues)and the adjacent Kings Canyon National Park (where fish stocking was terminated). Dale N. Bosworth,Chief, USFS, said this on June 23, 2004 when presenting the award: “Since 1995, the US Forest ServicePacific Southwest Research Station Sierra Nevada Research Center has been involved in studying the effectsof the widespread introduction of non-native trout on the native high elevation lake fauna in the SierraNevada. The results of the studies indicated a strong negative effect of introduced trout on the distributionand abundance of the mountain yellow-legged frog, Rana muscosa, and the Pacific tree frog, Hyla regilla,and these results are published in Conservation Biology, and International Journal of Wilderness, andCopeia.” Roland Knapp summarized some of this research over the last ten years at the request of IJW.

Author and award winner Roland A. Knapp in the California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains.


collection to describe invertebrate andvertebrate species composition, algalbiomass and production, and nutrientdynamics in the seven trout-containingstudy lakes, trout populations were re-moved from four of the lakes in 1998using gill nets. Data collected from 1998through 2003 indicated that the moun-tain yellow-legged frog (Rana muscosa)increased more than 100-fold in somefish removal lakes and most benthicmacroinvertebrate and zooplankton spe-cies, characteristic of never-stockedlakes, reappeared in the fish removallakes within five years. However, R.muscosa has been unable to recolonizethose study lakes that are separated byseveral kilometers from frog sourcepopulations, and at least one species ofzooplankton has failed to recover in anyof the study lakes following fish removal.Changes in ecosystem function follow-ing trout removal were more subtle andsuggested that trout have little direct ef-fect on nutrient cycling, algal biomass,and primary productivity.

Together, these comparative andexperimental studies provided criticalevidence that the practice of introduc-ing trout into naturally fishless lakeswas causing considerable alteration ofthese high-elevation wilderness ecosys-tems. In addition, results from bothstudies suggested that these effects werelargely reversible if trout could be re-moved. But, the question remained:Did these results apply directly to lowerelevation aquatic ecosystems? To findout, between 2000 and 2002, my fieldcrews and I visited all lakes and ponds(3,000) in Yosemite National Park anddescribed the consequences of trout in-troductions to these lower-elevationsystems. Results from this study againindicated that faunal composition issubstantially changed by trout intro-ductions and that the native fauna doesrecover following trout disappearance.However, it was also found that high-

elevation lakes were more sensitive totrout impacts than were those at lowelevations. During this same period, wecompleted faunal surveys in all lakesand ponds (3,500) in Sequoia-KingsCanyon National Park.

My research team is now conduct-ing resurveys of amphibian populationsin the John Muir Wilderness, Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Park, andYosemite National Park to describepopulation trajectories and the role ofdisease in causing amphibian declines.In addition, a recently completedstudy in collaboration with Mr. TripArmstrong, a graduate student at theUniversity of California–Davis, pro-vided experimental evidence that themajority of non-native trout popula-tions in currently stocked lakes of theJohn Muir Wilderness are self-sustain-ing and will persist without any furtherstocking. Research is now beginning ona study of the effects of introduced trouton alpine-nesting birds, effects that mayresult from competition between troutand birds for shared invertebrate prey.

Over the past several years, I haveworked closely with biologists in the Na-tional Park Service and the CaliforniaDepartment of Fish and Game (CDFG) todesign and implement programs to restoresome wilderness lakes to their naturalfishless condition. In addition, studyresults have prompted the CDFG to dra-matically curtail trout stocking inwilderness areas of the Sierra Nevada.

REFERENCESKnapp, R. A., P. S. Corn, and D. E. Schindler.

2001. The introduction of nonnative fish intowilderness lakes: Good intentions, conflicting

mandates, and unintended consequences.Ecosystems, 4: 275–278.

Knapp, R. A., J. A. Garton, and O. Sarnelle.2001. The use of egg shells to infer the his-torical presence of copepods in alpine lakes.Journal of Paleolimnology, 25: 539–543.

Knapp, R. A., and K. R. Matthews. 1998. Eradi-cation of non-native fish by gill-netting froma small mountain lake in California. Resto-ration Ecology, 6: 207–213.

Knapp, R. A., and K. R. Matthews. 2000. Non-na-tive fish introductions and the decline of the moun-tain yellow-legged frog from within protectedareas. Conservation Biology, 14: 428–438.

Knapp, R. A., K. R. Matthews, and O. Sarnelle.2001. Resistance and resilience of alpinelake fauna to fish introductions. EcologicalMonographs, 71: 401–421.

Knapp, R. A., H. K. Preisler, K. R. Matthews,and R. Jellison. 2003. Developing probabi-listic models to predict amphibian site occu-pancy in a patchy landscape. EcologicalApplications, 13: 1069–1082.

Matthews, K. R., and R. A. Knapp. 1999. Astudy of high mountain lake fish stockingeffects on the U.S. Sierra Nevada wilder-ness. IJW 5: 24–26.

Matthews, K. R., R. A. Knapp, and K. L. Pope.2002. Garter snake distributions in high-el-evation aquatic ecosystems: Is there a linkwith declining amphibian populations andnonnative trout introductions? Journal ofHerpetology, 36: 16–22.

Matthews, K. R., K. L. Pope, R. A. Knapp, andH. K. Preisler. 2001. Effects of nonnative trouton Pacific treefrogs (Hyla regilla) in the Si-erra Nevada. Copeia, 101: 1130–1137.

Sarnelle, O., and R. A. Knapp. In press. Zoop-lankton recovery after fish removal: Limita-tions of the egg bank. Limnology andOceanography.

Schindler, D. E., R. A. Knapp, and P. R. Leavitt.2001. Alteration of nutrient cycles and algalproduction resulting from fish introductionsinto mountain lakes. Ecosystems, 4: 308–321.

ROLAND A. KNAPP is a research biologistwith the Sierra Nevada Aquatic ResearchLaboratory, University of California. He canbe contacted at HCR 79, Box 198, Crowleylake, CA 93546, USA. E-mail:[email protected].

Papers published based on this comparative studyhave provided compelling evidence that non-native

trout dramatically alter the faunal compositionof alpine lakes.


P E R S P E C T I V E S F R O M T H EA L D O L E O P O L D W I L D E R N E S S R E S E A R C H I N S T I T U T E


Wilderness stewardship faces increasingly complex challenges from myriad internal and ex-ternal threats to wilderness, along with increasing

demands for the use of wilderness for all manner of differ-ent purposes. Wilderness managers are looking forinformation to help them answer difficult questions, forexample, about whether competitive recreational eventsshould be allowed, if herbicides should be used to controlweeds, if non-native fish should be removed, or if fuelsaccumulated from fire suppression should be removed.

The new Wilderness Stewardship Reference System(WSRS) was designed to provide quick and easy access overthe Internet (www.wilderness.net/WSRS) to U.S. legislative,administrative, judicial, and scientific information on morethan 60 difficult wilderness stewardship issues. The pri-mary purpose of the WSRS is to provide information thatwill help managers make decisions consistent with the let-ter and spirit of the 1964 Wilderness Act, subsequentwilderness legislation, and agency policies. The WSRS ap-plies to all four U.S. federal agencies responsible formanaging wilderness and may be useful to a variety of otherpeople interested in wilderness and its stewardship.Collaboratively developed between the Leopold Instituteand the Arthur Carhart National Wilderness Training Cen-ter, the WSRS is hosted on Wilderness.net, a website thatprovides a variety of resources for wilderness stewardship.

The WSRS is organized around specific issues such asmining, access, inholdings, commercial services, and fireand provides excerpts, as appropriate, from the followingtypes of information:

• Special provisions language in wilderness legislation• Legislative history of congressional discussion before a

wilderness law was passed

• Code of Federal Regulations pursuant to wilderness leg-islation

• Agency policies on wilderness• Judicial decisions of major cases affecting wilderness

stewardship• Annotated scientific publications relevant to wilderness

stewardship.The WSRS provides easy access to this information, andshould be especially useful for people who are not familiarwith how to search for legislative, policy, and judicial infor-mation. The WSRS offers three different methods ofsearching for this information:1. One issue—the information is organized into six gen-

eral categories which are then further divided intospecific issues

2. All issues—all the types of information that are avail-able for all issues are displayed in a single, large table

3. Keyword—any word or combination of words is usedto search for all of the information that is available basedon the keyword(s).

The Wilderness StewardshipReference System

BY PETER LANDRES

Continued on page 22


EDUCATION and COMMUNICATION

To send a telegraph, Roald Amundsen, in the winterof 1904–05, traveled over a thousand miles acrossAlaska’s Brooks Range by dogsled, skis, toboggan,

and snowshoe. Amundsen’s biographer, Roland Huntford,called this trip “in itself a minor accomplishment”(Huntford, 1979, p. 110). It was only minor because it cameat the end of a four-year expedition during which a six-member team of Norwegian sailors discovered the elusive“Northwest Passage”—they found a water route from theAtlantic to the Pacific Oceans, ending several centuries ofsearch. Amundsen needed to send his telegraph to announcethe news and to let his crew’s relatives back home knowthat they were still alive.

Amundsen later received more fame as the “discoverer” ofthe South Pole. So, his little jaunt across the Brooks Range andback has never been given much attention. But for students ofland-based wilderness travel, it might be educational—andfun—to examine this thousand-mile journey undertaken byone of the true masters of wilderness travel.

On October 24, 1905, Amundsen left Herschel Island,off the north coast of Canada, near the Alaska-Yukon border.With him were three others. One was Captain William Mogg,the 60-year-old commander of a whaling ship that had bro-ken down near Herschel. The others were a middle-agedEskimo couple, known as Jimmy and Kappa, who acted moreor less as guides for the first Brooks Range crossing.

Amundsen was absolutely broke, so he traveled as Cap-tain Mogg’s “guest.” This meant Mogg was in charge, andAmundsen found this challenging. He had naturally devel-oped certain ideas about wilderness travel, some of whichwere then novel but later proved sound. His ideas aboutfood and nutrition are an excellent example, and sureenough, these clashed with those of Captain Mogg.

“I had brought several things,” Amundsen later wrote,“that Captain Mogg did not see the desirability of taking.… There was [for instance], a tin of about 14 pounds of

pemmican, which I was ratherannoyed at having to send backbecause Captain Mogg wouldnot admit that pemmican wasthe best provision for sledgetrips” (Amundsen, 1927, p.213). Pemmican was a sort ofhigh-fat and protein precursorof the powerbar; it usually fea-tured dried meat, animal fat,salt, and other nutrients.

Throughout the journey, infact, Amundsen was frequentlyreminded of the contrast betweenhis own notions of nutrition andMogg’s. For one thing, Amundsen understood that food is fuel,and that we burn a lot of it on expedition, especially in coldweather. “From the beginning of my career as a sailor,” hewrote in his book on the Northwest Passage, “I had noticedthat the rations dealt out to us were much too small for a manto do any real hard work on, so I always utilized every oppor-tunity … to make up for the shortage in the days to come”(1927, p. 227). He had several such opportunities on this trip,when his foursome ran into Eskimo and Indian hunting par-ties. When this happened, he would sometimes spend wholedays “feasting on the fresh meat we purchased,” and packingmore away for the days ahead. The medium of exchange wasoften tea, for which, said Amundsen, “the Eskimos here wouldsell their immortal souls” (1927, p. 228).

Captain Mogg placed much less emphasis on food. Onone occasion the party met an Eskimo family that had justharvested 60 caribou. Recalled Amundsen: “Jimmy and Iwinked at each other behind our leader’s back, happy atthe chance of having another good meal” (1927, p. 228).

Shelter, of course, is a key element of wilderness travel.The tent for this trip consisted of a large, bowl-shaped

“A Minor Accomplishment”Roald Amundsen’s Classic Alaskan Trek

BY JIM GLOVER

Article author Jim Glover.


canvas and 18 long willow poles. Thepoles would somehow be secured tothe ground, one opposite another, thenbent over to form arches, and lashedtogether at the top. The canvas wasthen stretched over, and the shelterwas ready. It worked adequately, butAmundsen, the perfectionist, foundseveral faults with it. Compared to thesimpler system he’d used when find-ing the Passage, it took too long to setup. Also, “all the necessary lashingshad to be done with the bare hands”—a critical concern in the extremely coldtemperatures in which Amundsentraveled. What annoyed him more wasthe awkward way this tent packed upfor travel. The long poles, whenpacked on a sled, “made it look like ahedgehog, and were constantly gettingcaught in something or other on theway.” He concluded “an ordinary

three-pole triangular tent is far prefer-able” (1927, p. 221).

The tent did have a chimney holeso that a wood-burning stove couldbe installed inside, for both cookingand warmth. Being the “guest,”Amundsen was assigned the “pleasantchore of cook in the morning.” Thiswas “fortunate,” Amundsen wrote,since he seemed to be the only onewho could get up in the morning. Theheat from the wood stove “seemed toact like a narcotic” on his three com-panions (1927, p. 223).

Clothing, too, was of great interestto Amundsen. Indeed, he pioneeredthe use of Eskimo clothing technol-ogy by European wilderness travelers.While finding the Northwest Passage,he started to “go around dressed com-pletely as a [Netsilik] Eskimo”(Amundsen, 1987, p. 22). This in-

cluded two layers of caribou-furanoraks, which, he observed:

Hang loosely outside the trou-sers and the air has free ac-cess all the way up the body.Inner and outer trousers areheld up round the waist witha cord and hang free over thekamikks [boots], so that theair can circulate freely. I findit excellent, and the only wayto wear fur clothes, if one isto avoid sweating. (Huntford,1979, p. 98)

As for the traveling conditions,these varied, depending on elevation.When they first left Herschel Islandand were crossing the coastal plain, thesnow was patchy, which made dogsledding difficult. Amundsen’s sledgerunners scraped so much bare groundthat their iron coating wore throughand the wood underneath splintered.His dogs, consequently, had to workextra hard to pull their load. Also, therivers were not completely frozen yet,so they sometimes had to sloshthrough water. Other stretches weresimply icy, and in such stretches gustsof wind sometimes overturned dogs,sledges, and humans.

This was all “very tiring,” butAmundsen was overjoyed. The reason:He saw trees and rocks for the first timein two years. His first tree was a little firhanging out of a rock crevice. “At themoment I could have abandoned every-thing … and scrambled up the rock tocatch hold of that crooked stem anddraw in the scent of the fir trees and thewoods” (Amundsen, 1927, p. 224).

They were following whatAmundsen called the Herschel IslandRiver. Today it is called the Firth River.It begins in the eastern Brooks Range(the Davidson Mountains), flowsnorth and east through Canada’sAvvavik National Park, and finallydrains into the Beaufort Sea nearHerschel Island. For many centuries

Clothing, too, was of great interest to Amundsen.Indeed, he pioneered the use of Eskimo clothingtechnology by European wilderness travelers.

Figure 1—The Firth River in the Arctic Refuge. Photo courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.


it had been a route of trade betweenNative American groups on the Arcticcoast and those in the interior.

Amundsen reached the Arctic di-vide on November 3rd, ten days afterleaving Herschel Island. At this pointthey were on the eastern edge oftoday’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.A day or two earlier they had switchedfrom sleds with runners to toboggansbecause the snow in the mountainswas deeper and softer. Amundsen de-scribed the toboggan as “made like aski, twelve feet long, and six times asbroad as an ordinary ski, but with aconsiderable curve” (1927, p. 219).Just like sleds, the toboggans werepulled by dogs. Their big disadvan-tage was that they were harder to pack,being smaller and having no side rails.

The procedure now was for threepeople to break trail in the loose snow,by snowshoeing ahead. ThenAmundsen, already the best dogdriver, followed with two dog teams,each pulling a toboggan.

They soon dropped into the upperreaches of Porcupine River, which is onmodern maps. On this descent,Amundsen played the clown. He seemsto have been a serious man with a play-ful streak. Anyway, he decided totoboggan down the hill without thedogs. So he unharnessed them,jumped, on and “let her go.” But whenthe dogs saw the toboggan take off, theyran to get in front. Amundsen, dogs,and toboggan somersaulted down thehill, while Mogg nearly “split his sides”and the two Eskimos “screamed withdelight” (Amundsen, 1927, p. 233).

Once the Porcupine Valley wid-ened, the rest of the journey tocivilization was relatively easy. Moggrode the whole second half of the trip,while Amundsen glided along on skis.He had grown up skiing and was verypartial to it, but he had been unableto convince the others how efficient a

mode of travel it could be. Now hewould show them. One day, whileJimmy was breaking trail in snow-shoes, Amundsen glided effortlesslypast him. He says he called out, “Well,Jimmy, what do you think of skisnow?” and was soon a long way infront (1927, p. 234). A few years later,when he led the first-ever party to theSouth Pole, world-class skiing wouldbe a major factor in his success.

It still took until December 5 toreach Eagle, where Amundsen finallygot to send his telegraph. The day hearrived, the temperature outside was–62° F. Shortly after he sent his mes-sage, the intense cold disabled thetelegraph wires.

Amundsen spent most of the nexttwo months in Eagle, waiting for somemail to come through from Norway forhis companions so he could deliver it tothem. It finally did, and on February 3,

1906, Amundsen got back on his be-loved skis behind his dogsled andheaded north, back across the BrooksRange to Herschel Island 500 miles away.

The exceptional thing about thisreturn trip is that Amundsen found itso unexceptional. He says nothing ofit in his book on the Northwest Pas-sage except that he had some “liberalhospitality along the way” at a fewroadhouses and frontier cabins.

And yet, he seems to have made thisentire return trip, in the dead of win-ter, with very little sunlight each dayand 40- to 60-below temperatures, byhimself! At least that’s the impressionfrom his book, and from Huntford, whosays of Amundsen’s return trip, “Thesnow was better, there was no passen-ger and the journey was easier than theoutward one” (Huntford, 1979, p.113).

There may be many more detailsabout this casual winter trip of

He seems to have made this entire return trip, in thedead of winter, with very little sunlight each day and

40- to 60-below temperatures, by himself!

Figure 2—The Porcupine River in the Arctic Refuge. Photo courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.


Amundsen’s that would be of great inter-est to present-day wilderness travelers.The best source would be Amundsen’sdiary, which Huntford quotes from ex-tensively. The diary is at a library in Oslo,Norway. It is written in Norwegian (ofcourse) and, as far as I have been able totell, has never been translated into otherlanguages, including English. If it ever is,I’ll be the first in line for a copy.

For now we’ll just have to watchAmundsen in our imaginations as hemakes his return trip. I see a lone skierwith a dog team and a sack of mail,traveling for a month by himself, liv-ing on pemmican and caribou,entering the present-day Arctic Na-tional Wildlife Refuge, re-crossing theArctic Divide, perhaps tobogganingdown in what is now Ivvavik NationalPark, crossing the coastal plain, andfinally rejoining his countrymen onMarch 12, 1906. Naturally, they werehappy to see him, and especially elatedby the mail from home.

As already mentioned, Amundsenwould later, in 1911, win a dramatic racefor the South Pole with a small, fast teamof expert dog mushers and skiers(Glover, 1998). His thousand-mile jour-ney in Alaska to send a telegram was animportant piece of training for his mas-terpiece expedition. It was indeed “byitself a minor accomplishment.”

REFERENCESAmundsen, R. 1927. First Crossing of the Polar

Sea. New York: George H. Doran Co.———. 1987. The Amundsen Photographs.

Edited by Roland Huntford. New York: At-lantic Monthly Press.

Glover, J. M. 1998. Dashing through the snow:Amundsen, Scott, and their modern-daycounterparts. IJW, 4(1): 4–9.

Huntford, R. 1979. Scott and Amundsen. Lon-don: Hodder and Stoughton.

JAMES M. GLOVER is a frequent contribu-tor to IJW and an associate professor atSouthern Illinois University. He can bereached at [email protected].

contend that what Schindler previouslyrefered to as “wicked problems” shiftaccording to their level of divisiveness,intensity, pervasiveness, and complex-ity. Stakeholders are polarizeddifferently by the conflict and the lev-els at which they become emotionallyinvolved in the relevant issues. In ad-dition, these conflicts may permeate thepublic and private lives of individuals,affecting various strata of a community.

Lewicki, Gray, and Elliott assert thatintractable environmental conflicts areoften shaped and maintained by howindividuals frame an issue (i.e., how weinterpret what is going on during a con-flict and formulate ideas about the rolesof stakeholders). According to the edi-tors, frames are used to define the natureof a conflict, identify a mechanism forconflict resolution, justify actions, pro-tect oneself in case of litigation, andmobilize others to take action. MakingSense of Intractable Environmental Con-flicts focuses on three frames: (1) identityframes focus on how one views oneselfand the group to which one claims kin-ship; (2) characterization frames mirroridentity frames in that they reflect howindividuals perceive others and thegroups to which others belong; and (3)conflict management frames focus onhow individuals believe the conflictshould be resolved. The reframing of aconflict may occur when an alternateperspective is presented, but this is un-likely without external intervention.

The book is divided into subsectionsfocusing on natural resources, water,toxic pollutants, and growth-relatedmanagement. Each subsection presentstwo detailed case studies that highlightcontemporary environmental conflictsin the United States. The fourth chap-ter, which relates to the creation andsubsequent management of Voyageurs

National Park, perhaps holds the great-est interest for wilderness proponents.

The idea for a national park in north-ern Minnesota was originally proposed in1891, one month after the passage of theForest Reserve Act. Focusing onMinnesota’s northern border with Canadaand including areas surrounding CraneLake, Ash River, and Kabetogama, thispark concept was opposed by political andtimber interests. In 1925, the Minnesotaand Ontario Paper Company announcedplans to build a series of dams that woulddramatically alter water levels in the area.Conservationists opposed these plans, andconflict between factions developed. Overthe next several decades, the positions offorestry companies, politicians, wildernesspreservationists, and community membersbecame entrenched. Despite this opposi-tion, the Voyageurs National Park wascreated in 1971. Since that time, conten-tious issues, including proposing thedesignation of the Kabetogama Peninsulaas a wilderness area and restricting deerand duck hunting, have resulted in afirestorm of controversy. Lewicki, Gray, andElliott demonstrate how stakeholdersframed these issues, thereby contributingto adversarial postures.

Making Sense of Intractable Environmen-tal Conflicts provides an insightful analysisof how social conflicts develop and be-come entrenched. It is not the intentionof the editors to delve deeply into thesolutions for these conflicts, as that is leftto others. This volume provides an im-portant extension of the academicliterature by focusing on the most messyand, thus, challenging environmentalconflicts in the United States.

Reviewed by JOANNA KAFAROWSKI, adoctoral student in Natural ResourceManagement and Environmental Studies atthe University of Northern British Columbia.E-mail: [email protected].

From BOOK REVIEWS on page 48


EDUCATION and COMMUNICATION

IntroductionEducation that combines fieldwork with collaborative, ap-plied research and writing can be done anywhere. But in thewild Wrangell Mountains, enormous scale and rapid rates ofchange make the experience especially vivid. Students in theWrangell Mountains Center’s college program find themselvesin trailless terrain, both physically and for many wildernessissues, where alternatives remain unexplored and policiesare yet unresolved. This setting rewards creativity and initia-tive. It also demands respect for its challenging realities.

The educational benefits of this program include, butgo beyond, interdisciplinary study of natural history andland-use policy. Both the routes traveled and the projectsundertaken create challenges that build community withinthe program. Because they have experienced it, participantscome away knowing that cooperative living is possible inthis world. The focus on hands-on fieldwork gives them anopportunity to integrate abstract thought with personalexperiences. Through field journal entries, including draw-ing and creative writing as well as scientific observationand policy analysis, participants practice an attentivenessthat serves them well in other situations. Above all, theland itself is the teacher, inescapably demonstrating thebeauty and inevitability of natural processes and the neces-sity of adapting to them.

About half of the program occurs while backpacking.During the other half, students are based out of the center’shistoric headquarters, which was the McCarthy HardwareStore during the copper mining days of almost a centuryago, a short walk from the Kennicott Glacier. Students, whocome from campuses across the country (and sometimes

from other coun-tries), earn academiccredit through apartnership withUniversity of Cali-fornia-Santa Bar-bara Extension’sWildlands Studies.Most are under-graduates rangingin age from 19 to22, although gradu-ate students and people in their 40s have enrolled. Researchtopics are developed in partnership with National Park Ser-vice staff and with the assistance of local scientists, writers,artists, and guides.

In 2003, the program went to the Chitistone-Skolai areaof the park. Students inventoried significant attributes ofthe area, proposed interpretive themes, and described cur-rent and desired conditions and management issues for thismost-visited part of the park backcountry. With Park Ser-vice support, students replicated an earlier inventory of trailand campsite conditions. Previous studies have invento-ried and suggested criteria for evaluating backcountryconditions in the Kennicott Basin closer to McCarthy. Stu-dents and staff have also worked on a guide to the naturaland cultural history of the Wrangell Mountains. This willbe a multiyear project to which local residents and succes-sive generations of students can contribute, resulting in abook published annually in revised editions. Partial fund-ing has come through a cooperative agreement with the

The Wrangell MountainsCenter’s College Field Program

Student-Faculty Groups EngageAlaska Wilderness Issues in Rugged Terrain

BY BENJAMIN A. SHAINE

Article author Ben Shaine lecturing at Kennicott Glacier in theWrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve. Photo byWrangell Mountains Center.


Park Service, which, it is hoped, will besupplemented with foundation grants.

Administratively, the biggest chal-lenge is maintaining the staff such aprogram requires. For safety as wellas academics, in the field a student-staff ratio of 4:1 is preferred. It takesat least a year of experience in the placeto prepare even a skilled person for ateaching position. Priority is placed onretaining staff, who often stay with theprogram for many years in varyingroles. As a result, the staff consists of acombination of core faculty, who livetogether throughout the program, andguests, including those doing residen-cies at the center, along with localscientists, artists, guides, and parkstaff, who participate for shorter peri-ods, often on a volunteer basis.

The year 2004 marks the center’s22nd annual summer season. All of theCenter’s programs share features de-veloped in the college course:emphasis on hands-on experiencewith the place, community living, andempowering participants to take anactive role in public life.

The Program StructureThe first part of the program is a struc-tured introduction to the place, to livingand travel skills, and to an array of aca-demic disciplines. We introduce naturalhistory journaling techniques with staffpresentations, field exercises, and en-suing discussions. Using their journalsas a primary tool, students develop theirabilities in drawing, essay writing, po-etry (especially the short forms of haikuand renga), Grinnell entries, and thehypothesis-testing scientific experi-mental method.

Days are devoted to studying topicssuch as ecological succession, rockidentification, plate tectonics, and parkhistory. These sessions are done onshort walks from our McCarthy head-quarters and on an initial backcountrytrip to a base camp, usually one or twodays’ walk up the glacier from town.Teams of students are each assigned aquestion to study through observationsduring this trip and to report on to thegroup. Such questions might include,for example, “What evidence do wefind on the land of previous glacial ad-vances and what was their extent?” Wealso focus on hiking and camping skills.For some students, this trip is their firsttime camping, and likely none of themhas dealt with terrain like the WrangellMountains before.

During the second part of the pro-gram, the students conduct fieldresearch. The itinerary for a two- tothree-week wilderness trip is set to meetspecific data-gathering and observationneeds. We divide into backpackinggroups of six to eight students and twostaff, which may rendezvous near an

airstrip in the backcountry for resup-ply, academic discussion, storytelling,and an opportunity to meet with guestfaculty and park staff.

We return to McCarthy for a weekof project completion. Students firstwrite up drafts, then give an oral pre-sentation before an audience thatincludes center resident fellows, parkstaff, and local scientists. Using com-ments received in the presentation,students and faculty then togethermake revisions and create the finalreport, including text and illustrations,laid out and ready for printing. Thelearning curve during this period canbe near-vertical; a student who startsthe evening never having seen an ex-ecutive summary may have writtenone for publication by midnight.

This schedule is intense. Over twomonths, students have only a coupleof unscheduled days. We are stilllearning how to conduct the programso everyone, students and staff, stayswithin their comfort limits and main-tains a sense of spaciousness in theirlives. Each year, we do better.

The choice of project is critical. Al-though we have often had students doindividual or small team projects, wefind that they are most motivated whenthey work together as a group on a topicthat is important to a large audience.Over time, we have discovered that thebest topics call for extensive field work,are amenable to being broken downinto tasks doable by subgroups of twoto four, are simple enough to be com-pleted with quality by inexperiencedstudents in a few weeks, involve learn-ing new skills, and have the potentialto make an original contribution. In theWrangell Mountains, there are manyoptions that meet these criteria.

The program reflects a set of under-lying principles that guide our agenda:

• Embodiment: Learning involves allthe senses in direct contact with the

Figure 1—Both the routes traveled and the projects undertakencreate challenges that build community within the program.Photo by Wrangell Mountains Center.

The land itself is the teacher, inescapably demonstratingthe beauty and inevitability of natural processes

and the necessity of adapting to them.


place. Concepts provided by aca-demic disciplines help enable thisexperience but are incomplete with-out it. Practical skills, includingkeeping warm in the rain, fordingstreams, and route finding, are alsoimportant. We learn through ourmuscles as well as our minds.

• Community: We explicitly value com-munity living, including the joys ofcooking, cleaning, and the dailymaintenance required to live com-fortably away from the support ofmodern utilities and urban infra-structure. While living and learningcommunities can exist on a collegecampus, the challenges of theWrangell Mountains make it a muchmore intense experience, affectinghow the members of the group ex-perience not only their humanrelationships, but the place itself.

• Collaboration: We undertake projectsthat call for the efforts and talents ofpeople working together toward acommon objective. In this way, weprepare participants for civic and pro-fessional involvement with complexenvironmental and public policy is-sues, for working in interdisciplinaryteams, and for functioning well withpeople of diverse viewpoints.

• Cooperation: The emphasis on coop-eration, empathy, and compassionextends throughout the program,from mutual assistance in writing andrewriting report drafts to helping eachother move through the country.When stronger participants reach ahigh pass, they are encouraged todrop their packs, go back down, andtake loads from people still headingup from below. Slower hikers are en-couraged to do their best, while seeingthe yielding of their loads positively,as a gift to the group.

• Discipline: Taking on demandingprojects in an unforgiving wilder-ness land makes it necessary to do

things well. For our seminars, wepick a limited number of readings,mostly from primary sources,which exemplify scholarly rigorand lucid presentation. Becausethey write for an outside audiencethat cares about the product, par-ticipants are motivated to achievequality, even if it means editing 10sloppy pages down to 1 tight para-graph. Camping in grizzly countryand fording bridgeless glacial riv-ers makes an equivalent demand.

• Engagement: In both researchprojects and wilderness living, ourpractices demonstrate that indi-vidual and collective actions canmake a difference in the outcomeof events. Going into topics andplaces where few have tread before,our students discover that not onlyare they capable of taking care ofthemselves, but that they can makeoriginal, creative contributions thataffect the future of a place they careabout. Our intent is to empowerthem personally and as citizens totake responsibility for their actions.Doing so as an academic program,we approach policy questions in thespirit of inquiry, rather than as par-ticipants in political battles. Whilerecognizing the importance ofadversarial politics, we show thatthere are many ways to participatein public and community life.

• Joy: All of the above, done in themagnificence of the WrangellMountains, is cause for celebration.Our groups carry banjos into thewilds and sing while walking withDall sheep and mountain goatsthrough sun, rain, and mosquitoes.

While recognizing the value of soli-tude and leisure in the wilds, weacknowledge that our program doesnot provide much opportunity for it.However, our graduates can comeaway with skills and experiences that

enable them to venture to similarplaces on their own, with the freedomto choose their agenda.

The Challenge of theWrangell MountainsTogether with the adjacent parks thatcomprise a World Heritage Site extend-ing through parts of Canada and downto Glacier Bay, Wrangell-St. Elias NationalPark and Preserve is the continent’s pre-eminent example of a dynamic naturallandscape. Far from equilibrium, itslandforms and their biota often undergochange visible in the span of a humanlifetime, or even a single season.Glaciers melt, rivers change course,mountains slide. Change over longertime periods is starkly visible in con-torted rock layers exposed in mountaincliffs. As the Grand Canyon is knownfor its monumental static geology, theWrangell Mountains similarly demon-strate a land in transformation.

The protected area’s size—13 millionacres (5.3 million ha) in Wrangell-St.Elias and 24 million overall, includ-ing the contiguous areas of the World

Figure 2—The focus on hands-on fieldwork givesstudents an opportunity to integrate abstract thoughtwith personal experiences. Photo by WrangellMountains Center.


Heritage Site—enables maintenance ofnatural habitat, species populations,and predator-prey relationships notpossible in smaller parklands. Wilder-ness can be experienced on a scale notavailable elsewhere. Most overlandtravel is cross-country without trails;rivers and ridges are often impassableobstacles. Grizzly bears, rather thanpeople, are often the top predators.

Paradoxically, the Wrangell Mountainsare also a place where people not onlyvisit, but live. Unlike most parks in thelower states, Wrangell-St. Elias has hu-man residents with the experiences andperspectives that come from knowing aplace as home. That home encompassesnot only private lands within park bound-aries, but the public lands as well. Wholesmall towns, such as McCarthy, are withinpark boundaries. Predating the park, theycontinue to grow and change. Other pri-vate holdings, outside Park Service

jurisdiction, most originally patented asmining claims, are scattered throughoutthe public lands.

Even in the backcountry of thenation’s most rugged and largest desig-nated wilderness, access is easier thanin much smaller parks elsewhere. Parkrules provide for motorized access. Airtaxis land anywhere physically possiblein the park, dropping visitors off at re-mote sites. Snow machines andmotorboats are currently unregulated.

Two decades after Congress desig-nated the park, many complexitiesarising from this paradox remain un-resolved. The Park Service is just nowmaking tentative steps toward its firstbackcountry plan. It has embarked onits first interpretive plan, which explic-itly recognizes ongoing humanresidence along with natural and wil-derness values. With a small staffresponsible for management of an area

the size of Switzerland, the agency isbut one player among many, includ-ing the state of Alaska, Native-ownedcorporations, and private individuals,who participate in defining its future.

Similar to the legal and regulatory situ-ation, the expectations, images, andunderstandings people have about thepark remain fluid and subject to change.Accessible sources of information are few,especially given the huge size and diver-sity of the area. As a result, a vision thatwould provide a foundation for the di-rection of park management remainsrelatively unformed. Over time, under-standing of park values and purposes willbecome clearer. Meanwhile, there is greatopportunity to influence the ways thatthe park is perceived and, thus, how it istreated. These conditions provide thecontext for our field program. The op-portunities are as great as the challenges.

Quite a few alumni have returnedto the Wrangell Mountains in subse-quent years. Some have returned tocomplete fieldwork for undergraduateand graduate theses in landscape ar-chitecture, anthropology, and naturalsciences. Others have moved to Alaskaafter finishing college. Some have es-tablished homes in the McCarthy area,worked as backcountry guides, orjoined our staff. Whether or not theyreturn to the Alaska wilderness, par-ticipants leave the Wrangell Mountainsseeing their own home place in a dif-ferent light. We hope they return hometo discover that the natural wildnessso obvious in the Wrangell Mountainsin reality exists everywhere, even if ob-scured by civilization’s overlay.

BEN SHAINE is on the board of theWrangell Mountains Center, an institute foreducation, research, and the arts inMcCarthy, Alaska, and teaches with itsUniversity of California–Santa BarbaraWildlands Studies college program. E-mail:[email protected]. Website:www.wrangells.org.

We are pleased to announce that Con-servation International (CI) will be alead sponsor of the IJW, joining theexisting group of distinguished NGOsand government agencies that under-write the Journal financially or in-kind.

Founded in 1987, CI has offices inmore than 40 countries on four conti-nents. CI applies innovations in science,economics, policy, and community par-ticipation to protect the Earth’s richestregions of plant and animal diversity inthe hot spots, high-biodiversity wilder-ness areas, and key marine ecosystems.

CI has a long-standing commitmentto wilderness conservation, in particu-lar in the high-biodiversity wildernessareas. As evidenced by its leadershipin a number of large-scale wildernessprotection initiatives in Amazonia,New Guinea, and Congo, not to men-tion a comprehensive survey of theplanet’s wilderness areas (“Wilderness:

Earth’s Last Wild Places”—see articlein IJW’s August 2003 issue, and bookreview by John Shultis, IJW, April,2004), CI’s commitment to wildernessconservation continues to grow.

“CI is very pleased to be part of theIJW and its constituency,” said Dr.Russell Mittermeier, CI’s president.“The organizations responsible for thishigh-quality and timely journal are keyplayers in an active and critically im-portant wildlands debate ininternational conservation.”

IJW readers will learn more of CI inthe coming year, with a one-pagereport in each issue on CI’s wildernessand wilderness-related activities andperspectives. IJW’s all-volunteer edito-rial staff gives its sincere thanks toCI and all of IJW’s sponsors, whosesupport keeps the IJW in productionwith the best possible content anddistribution.

Conservation International Joins IJW Sponsors


IntroductionWhile the United States of America celebrates 40 years ofits Wilderness Act during 2004, South Africa is currentlycelebrating 30 years of its first wilderness proclamation inthe uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park World Heritage Site(UDP WHS).

Proclamation of wilderness in South Africa was mod-eled after the United States of America’s Wilderness Act of1964. The South African Department of Forestry managedthe majority of the catchment areas in the Drakensbergmountains of the KwaZulu-Natal province. During the1970s, Secretary Ackerman for the Department of Forestryencouraged the designation of wilderness areas in SouthAfrica. Since most of the land managed by the Departmentof Forestry still retained much of its original character, hewas determined to ensure the long-term protection of thesewild areas for the benefit of all South Africans.

The National Forests Act (No. 84 of 1998) protects stateforests, forest nature reserves, and wilderness areas and theplant and animal life contained therein. In addition, the actallows for management programs to be established in or-der to prevent soil erosion and fire, maintain the naturalgenetic and species diversity, and control plants and ani-mals that are harmful to a particular area. The act providesfor the control and reasonable access to state forests for thepurposes of recreation, education, culture, or spiritual ful-fillment. Also, people are prohibited from damaging stateforests or contributing to the threat of fire. Forest officersare empowered to arrest any person who has contravenedthis act and may seize such person’s property.

During 1973, the first three wilderness areas were pro-claimed in South Africa under the provisions of the NationalForests Act. The first two wilderness areas to be proclaimedwere Mdedelelo (27,000 ha; 66,690 acres) and Mkhomazi(48,000 ha; 118,560 acres) (Government Notice 791 of 1973)in the UDP WHS. Next came the proclamation of the Cedarbergwilderness in the mountains of the Western Cape province.

The uKhahlamba Drakensberg ParkWorld Heritage SiteThe uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park is an inland mountainrange in southeastern Africa (see Figure 1) that received WorldHeritage status in 1999 for both its natural and cultural val-ues. The UDP WHS comprises 12 component protected areas(referred to as reserves), totaling 242,813 ha (599,748 acres)

INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES

South Africa’suKhahlamba Drakensberg ParkWorld Heritage Site Celebrates

30 Years of WildernessBY SONJA KRÜGER and JOHN CROWSON

Article co-authors (from l to r) Sonja Krüger and John Crowson. Photo by Henry Hibbet.


that is state owned. The land is managedby a provincial conservation body,Ezemvelo KwaZulu-Natal Wildlife, whichis also the proposed management author-ity of the World Heritage Site. The UDPWHS also forms part of the Maloti-Drakensberg Transfrontier Conservationand Development Area, and shares its bor-ders with three provinces of South Africaand an international border with Lesotho.

The mean annual temperature of theDrakensberg is about 16oC (61°F), andthe annual precipitation totals vary be-tween about 1,000 mm (40 inches) inthe foothills to 1,800 mm (72 inches)at the escarpment. Precipitation occurspredominantly (70%) in the summermonths (November to March). Snow-falls, with an average frequency of abouteight days of snowfall per year, occurin winter, predominantly at high eleva-tions. With altitudes varying from1,280 meters (4,200 feet) to nearly3,500 meters (11,483 feet), a range of2,200 meters (7,218 feet), theDrakensberg has a great variation in itstopography, with summit plateaux andpeaks, vast basalt and sandstone cliffs,deep valleys, and intervening spurs.

The UDP WHS is the largest pro-tected area established on the Great

The habitat within the UDP WHSranges in diversity from the high-alti-tude mountain peaks and summitplateaux with their diverse vegetationcommunities and unique alpine tun-dra (fynbos types), to steep slopes inmidaltitude areas supporting a widevariety of grassland, fynbos scrubland,and woodland vegetation communi-ties, to lower lying areas in river valleysthat contain various grassland and for-est vegetation communities. Foundwithin these habitats is a remarkablerichness of plant and animal species.

The UDP WHS is located within theDrakensberg Alpine Region, a centerof plant diversity and endemism. Atotal of 2,153 species of plants havebeen recorded for the UDP WHS withan endemism percentage of 29.5%,and 109 listed threatened species perRed Data List category (Hilton-Taylor1996: Walter and Gillett 1998).

The UDP WHS is considered to be oneof the eight major centers of herpetofaunadiversity in southern Africa (Branch 1998)and contains four local endemics and 40South African endemic species. A total of296 bird species have been recorded forthe UDP WHS (Johnson, personal com-munication, 2004) of which 43 are southernAfrican endemics, and 32 species are en-demic to South Africa. Some 18 speciesrecorded for the UDP WHS are listed in theSouth African Red Data List as threatenedspecies, such as the endangered beardedvulture, Gypaetus barbatus (see Figure 2).There are 48 species of mammals occur-ring in the UDP WHS. Although theinvertebrate fauna are poorly known, stud-ies that have been undertaken on severaltaxa have found Paleogenic insects uniqueto South Africa and particularly to theDrakensberg mountain region, as well asmany species endemic to the region.

Cultural ValuesIn addition to its natural values, theUDP WHS is globally significant from

Escarpment of the southern African sub-continent (KZN NCS 2000). Thisescarpment formation, which includesthe Drakensberg Escarpment compo-nent, is intimately linked to thegeomorphic history of the subcontinentand the fragmentation of the Gondwanasupercontinent. The Great Escarpmentreaches its greatest and most spectacu-lar expression in the DrakensbergMountains that lie within the UDP WHSand contain landscapes and features ofexceptional natural beauty. The geomor-phological processes by which they wereformed are of universal importance.

Biological ValuesAlso of outstanding universal impor-tance are the mountain and wetlandecosystems (the UDP WHS was pro-claimed a Ramsar Site in 1997) with theirfull complement of plants and animals,including many endemic and interna-tionally recognized threatened species.The UDP WHS is an outstanding ex-ample of one of the few high mountaingrassland areas within the African Grass-land Biome sufficiently large enough forthe existing and original ecological andbiological processes to operate withoutinterference (KZN NCS 2000).

Figure 1—The location of the uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park World Heritage Site within KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.


a cultural perspective, in particular therock art painted by the San hunter-gath-erers who have inhabited the area fromabout 8,000 years ago (KZN NCS2000). The uniqueness of the San rockart is evidenced by the diverse subjectmatter, the minute detail portrayed, theart techniques, and the animation andvariety of positions depicted, as well asthe remarkable state of preservation.The number of sites is estimated at 600,and the number of individual imagesin those sites probably exceeds 35,000.

Numerous historic sites, living cul-tural sites, and sites of archaeologicalimportance are located within the UDPWHS. These sites include old gravesites, painted shelters, and various ar-tifacts. The Drakensberg region ranksas one of the most important archaeo-logical areas in southern Africa.Archaeological sites from the Early,Middle, and Late Stone Ages and theLate Iron Age are present, indicatingthat the period of human occupationin this mountainous region possiblyextends over the last million years.

Recreational ValuesThere are 15 entrance gates to the UDPWHS, where members of the publicenter either as day or overnight visitors.Overnight visitors can use campingfacilities, or camp in caves, and moun-tain and other huts. The UDP WHScan accommodate approximately2,000 persons per night.

World Heritage SiteWilderness ResourceAlmost the entire area of the UDPWHS is in unmodified, near-pristinecondition. The UDP WHS, althoughused by humans for a long time, hasnever been occupied by significantlylarge human settlements, nor has thearea been subjected to significant hu-man-induced land disturbances.

It is estimated that the total area ofthe UDP WHS transformed by bothalien plant infestation andinfrastructural development is ap-proximately 1.4% of the area (3,452ha; 8,526 acres). The natural ecologi-cal and geomorphological processesfunction with little or no significantdetrimental interference from humanactivities. Where there have been im-pacts, the UDP WHS managementapproach is to restore such areas totheir former status (EzemveloKwaZulu-Natal Wildlife 2003).

Apart from the 30-year-oldMdedelelo and Mkhomazi wildernessareas, the UDP WHS also contains theMzimkulu, 28,340 ha (70,000 acres)(1979) and Mlambonja, 6,270 ha(15,487 acres) (1989) wilderness ar-eas (see Figure 3). In addition, theMkhomazi wilderness area was ex-tended by another 8,155 ha (20,143acres) in 1989. The proclaimed wil-derness areas comprise 48.5% of theUDP WHS and were one of the pri-mary factors contributing to the WorldHeritage Site designation.

The focus and vision of the UDP WHSmanagement team is wilderness; valuingand managing existing areas to a higherstate, and identifying candidate wilder-ness areas within the Maloti-DrakensbergTransfrontier Conservation area. A com-prehensive management plan has beendrafted for the effective management andsustainable utilization of the wildernessareas in the UDP WHS. The management

Figure 2—The Bearded Vulture, Gypaetus barbatus,an endangered species whose breeding range islimited to the Drakensberg escarpment in SouthAfrica. Photo by S. Krüger.

Figure 3—The location of the four proclaimed wilderness areaswithin the uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park World Heritage Site.

policy for the UDP WHS wilderness ar-eas is to “leave no trace” so as to retainthe wild character of these areas by pro-hibiting all forms of human-madedevelopments. Although people may gainaccess by foot, recreational opportunitieswithin wilderness areas are managed toallow for an experience of solitude withinan intrinsically unaltered natural environ-ment, and, thus, to provide opportunitiesfor inspiration, enrichment, self-reliance,and physical adventure.

Thirty years of WildernessThe wilderness philosophy is one of thepillars of Ezemvelo KwaZulu-NatalWildlife’s corporate identity, embracinga deep respect for the natural world, re-storing it as far as possible to what itonce was, and preserving it in as wholeand natural a state as possible. For thepast 30 years, the UDP WHS wildernessareas have been managed according tostringent wilderness principles in an at-tempt to preserve wilderness for futuregenerations to visit, and to ensure thatthere will always be places where people


wilderness area in the Cathedral PeakReserve (see Figure 5). This section ofthe wilderness area encompasses theDidima Special Conservation Area, anarea set aside to conserve the wealthand diversity of the San rock art.

ConclusionUDP WHS wilderness managers facemany challenges, the most obvious ofwhich is defending a philosophy that islittle understood in the country as awhole. Other threats to the wildernessinclude deproclamation, invasive andalien plants and animals, arson fires, re-duced budgets, and law enforcementissues such as poaching, illegal huntingwith dogs, cross-border drug trafficking,and cattle rustling. These challengesmust be met and the threats managedto ensure that the UDP WHS’s naturaland cultural values and the wildernessresource are managed for the benefit ofcurrent and future generations.

REFERENCESBranch, N. R. 1998. Field Guide to the Snakes

and Other Reptiles of Southern Africa. CapeTown, South Africa: Struik Publishers.

Ezemvelo KwaZulu-Natal Wildlife. 2003. TheuKhahlamba Drakensberg Park World Heri-tage Site Draft Wilderness Management Plan.Pietermaritzburg, South Africa: EKZNW.

Hilton-Taylor, C. 1996. Red Data List of South-ern African Plants. South Africa: NationalBotanical Institute, Pretoria. Strelitzia 4.

KwaZulu-Natal Nature Conservation Service.2000. Nomination Proposal for theDrakensberg Park. Pietermaritzburg, SouthAfrica: KZN NCS.

Walter, K. S., and H. J. Gillett. 1998. 1997 IUCNRed Data List of Threatened Plants. Gland,Switzerland: The World Conservation Union.

SONJA KRÜGER is employed by EzemveloKwaZulu-Natal Wildlife as the regionalecologist for the UDP WHS. E-mail:[email protected]. JOHNCROWSON is employed by EzemveloKwaZulu-Natal Wildlife as the Conserva-tion Manager for the southern section(comprising six reserves) of the UDP WHS.E-mail: [email protected].

will be able to absorb wilderness first-hand and be changed by it.

The Mkhomazi WildernessThe Mkhomazi Wilderness is part ofand managed by four major reserveswithin the UDP WHS: Mkhomazi,Lotheni, Cobham, and Vergelegen. Incelebration of the 30 years of nation-ally proclaimed wilderness, thesouthern Drakensberg managementteam visited a plant fossil site in theMkhomazi wilderness in the VergelegenReserve (see Figure 4). These plant fos-sils are 60 million years old andrepresent South Africa’s best site forplant fossils in the Molteno Formation.

Several commemorative activitiesare planned throughout 2004 aimed atincreasing wilderness awareness among

the youth that live in communitiesnearby the UDP WHS wilderness ar-eas. The primary event celebrating 30years of the Mkhomazi wilderness willtake place in September 2004, coincid-ing with the celebrations of TheWilderness Act in the United States.Various celebrity speakers will bepresent, and educational materials inthe form of wilderness pamphlets, post-ers, and T-shirts will be available.

The Mdedelelo WildernessThe Mdedelelo Wilderness is managedby the Cathedral Peak and Monk’sCowl Reserves within the UDP WHS.Participants of the Mountain ProtectedAreas Workshop of the World ParksCongress 2004 undertook a com-memorative walk to the Mdedelelo

Figure 4—Members of the southern Drakensberg management team looking at a plant fossil site (left) in the Mkhomaziwilderness area (right). Photo by S. Krüeger.

Figure 5—Participants of the Mountain Protected Areas Workshop of the World Parks Congress standing in frontof the Mdedelelo wilderness area. Photo by S. Krüger.


Submit announcements and short news articles to STEVE HOLLENHORST, IJW Wilderness Digest editor. E-mail: [email protected].

Announcementsand Wilderness Calendar

COMPILED BY STEVE HOLLENHORST

WILDERNESS DIGEST

NationalWilderness ConferenceThe National Wilderness Conference,scheduled for October 10–13, 2004,will celebrate the 40th anniversary ofThe Wilderness Act. To be held in NewYork’s Adirondack Park at the Fort Wil-liam Henry Resort and ConferenceCenter located on scenic Lake George,this historic conference will focus onthe history, present-day realities, andfuture of the U.S. National WildernessPreservation System. The venue is lo-cated one hour’s drive from the AlbanyInternational Airport and just a shortdistance from some historic, scenic, andhighly accessible Wilderness locationswithin the “Forever Wild” AdirondackForest Preserve. The first day of theconference is dedicated to field trips,with the next three days dedicated tospeakers, panelists, and workshopsaddressing a diversity of perspectiveson the value and meaning of wilder-ness, the challenges and opportunitieswilderness faces today, and the futureof America’s National Wilderness Pres-ervation System. The event is organizedby national and Adirondack regionalorganizations, including the Associa-tion for the Protection of theAdirondacks, State University of NewYork College of Environmental Scienceand Forestry, Friends of the Clearwater,

the IJW, The Wilderness Society, Natu-ral Resources Defense Council, theSierra Club, and Wilderness Watch.This is the Save the Date announcementfor this conference. Mark your calen-dar and join us! For more information,check out the website at www.Wilderness40th.org.

TWA 40th AnniversaryCelebration ActivitiesThe U.S. Wilderness Act was signedinto law by President Lyndon B.Johnson on September 3, 1964. As the40th anniversary approaches, manyorganizations and communities aroundthe world are organizing commemora-tive events and activities. Learn aboutthe activities and events associated withthe celebrations in the United States athttp://www.wilderness.net.

The 8th WorldWilderness CongressAnchorage, Alaska, will be the venuefor the 8th World Wilderness Congress(WWC). Situated between boreal for-ests and the Arctic interior, Anchoragealso serves as gateway to the RussianFar East and associated 8th WWCevents in Kamchatka. Organized by TheWILD Foundation (USA), and hostedby many Alaskan and international or-

ganizations, the theme for the 2005Congress is Wilderness, Wildlands, andPeople—A Partnership for the Planet.Within the conference there will be asymposium on Science and Steward-ship to Protect and Sustain WildernessValues. The symposium will be struc-tured to enhance international andintercultural communication and willintegrate poster presentations into oralpresentation sessions to increase one-on-one dialogue. The symposiumcoordinators are seeking presenters forboth oral presentations and for a “panelof posters” for each topic. They also in-vite proposals for chairing sessions onthe above topics. The symposiumthemes include (1) Living with Nature:The Human/Wilderness Connection;(2) Northern Wilderness Issues; (3) Eco-nomics and Wilderness; (4) The Role ofWilderness in Terrestrial, Marine, andFreshwater Biodiversity Protection, and;(5) Stewardship of Existing Wilderness.Abstracts (500 words or less, via fax, e-mail, or regular mail) or interest inchairing sessions should be sent to thesymposium cochairs: Alan Watson([email protected]), Aldo Leopold Wil-derness Research Institute, Box 8089,Missoula, MT 59807, USA; phone 406-542-4197, fax: 406-542-4196; andLiese Dean ([email protected]), SawtoothNational Recreation Area, USDA Forest


Service, HC64 Box 9900, Stanley, ID83278, USA; phone 208-774-3017, fax:208-774-3003. For information on thepreliminary announcement, registrationmaterial, and sponsorship information,visit http://www.8wwc.org/.

2003 NationalWilderness AwardRecipients AnnouncedU.S. Forest Service chief DaleBosworth recently announced the in-dividuals and groups who arerecipients of the 2003 National Wil-derness Awards. The awards honorindividuals and groups for excellencein wilderness stewardship, education,and research, and leadership in use oftraditional skills and minimum tools.The awards and recipients are

• Aldo Leopold Award for OverallWilderness Stewardship Program:Sylvester Creek Dam RemovalTeam, St. Ignace Ranger District,Hiawatha National Forest—In rec-ognition of their outstanding effortsin removal of the Sylvester CreekDam, site restoration, and protec-tion of the Delirium Wilderness.

• Bob Marshall Award for Championof Wilderness Stewardship, Indi-vidual Award: Rebecca Oreskes,Androscoggin Ranger District, White

Mountain National Forest—In rec-ognition of her outstandingleadership in wilderness stewardshipas the former chair of the NationalWilderness Advisory Group, serviceon the editorial board of IJW, andwork with diverse groups and indi-viduals to assure preservation of thewilderness resource. Group Award:National Wilderness AdvisoryGroup—In recognition of their out-standing efforts to frame up a visionfor the Forest Service’s wildernessprogram for the next 10 years.

• Wilderness Education LeadershipAward: Wilderness Kayak RangerInterpretive Program, Ketchikan andMisty Fiords Ranger District,Tongass National Forest—In recog-nition of their outstanding efforts indeveloping a unique and innovativewilderness educational programover the years, which has served asa role model for others to follow.

• Traditional Skills and Minimum ToolLeadership Award: Ian Barlow, ElkCity Ranger District, Nez Perce Na-tional Forest, and Steve Romero,Northern Region Regional Office,with assistance from Elizabeth Ballardand Terri Anderson, Bitterroot Na-tional Forest; Hydrometrics, Inc.,Helena, Montana; Montana Conser-vation Corps, Missoula Division; and

David Jones, Consulting Engineer—For their demonstration of traditionalskills and innovative use of minimumtools and techniques to breach thehigh hazard Canyon Lake Dam in theSelway-Bitterroot Wilderness to facili-tate needed repairs.

• Excellence in Wilderness Steward-ship Research Award: Roland Knapp(University of California Santa Bar-bara, Sierra Nevada Aquatic ResearchLaboratory) and Kathleen Matthews(U.S. Forest Service Research) con-ducted the High Mountain LakeProject where the impacts of fishstocking were assessed by surveyingover 2000 lakes in the John MuirWilderness (where fish stocking con-tinues) and the adjacent KingsCanyon National Park (where fishstocking was terminated).

• Line Officer Wilderness LeadershipAward: Deb Mucklow, Spotted BearRanger District, Flathead NationalForest—in recognition of her out-standing leadership in wildernessstewardship. This includes servingas leader of the Bob Marshall Wil-derness Complex Managers Group,demonstrating leadership in pro-moting Wildland Fire Use toenhance wilderness values, andbuilding positive and productiverelations with external partners.

Book ReviewsMaking Sense of IntractableEnvironmental Conflicts:Concepts and Cases.Edited by R. J. Lewicki, B. Gray, and M.Elliott, 2003. Island Press, Washington,DC, and Covelo, CA. 469 pages.$27.50 (paperback).

From damming the Hetch Hetchy Val-ley, to overvisitation in Banff National

Park, to the reintroduction of the graywolf in Yellowstone and oil develop-ment in the Arctic National WildlifeRefuge, conflict is a ubiquitous aspectof wilderness preservation and resourcemanagement. Although some disputesare resolved relatively painlessly, manysituations are increasingly bitter andprolonged, with precious resources

wasted on political wrangling. In thisvolume, editors Lewicki, Gray, andElliott grapple with “intractable” envi-ronmental conflicts—those messy,seemingly irreconcilable problems thatare “riddled with long-standing ten-sions that defy resolution.” The editors

Continued on page 38

international journal of wilderness, vol 10 no 2, aug 2004

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