LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Reference: Wrangell-St. Elias Story: Park Service vs. Private Property

The Washington Post article on the standoff between the Pilgrim Family and the National Park Service was interesting and illustrates one example of the campaign tactics used by the National Park Service against private inholders. Since the establishment of the Wrangell-St. Elias Park (WRST) in 1980 under the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA), the NPS has been gradually implementing a long range campaign against inholders, and have taken their Congressional Charter to mean that the Park will be there forever, time is on their side, and they will outlast the transient resistance of inholders to their goal of total control.

In order to understand how wrong the NPS is in their efforts to disenfranchise the private inholders, one must understand that the inholdings were well established long before this area was declared a national park under ANILCA. Since the creation of WRST, the NPS has been waging a long-term, stealth war against private inholders with the goal of eliminating the possibility of resource development and private enterprise inside the park boundaries. Most small inholdings are mining claims established under the Mining Law of 1870. The NPS has an annual program using high-priced third party consultants to invalidate these mining claims and confiscate the land.

A fraud on a grand scale has been perpetrated by the NPS on Ahtna, Inc., one of Alaska’s Regional Native Corporations established under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) in 1971. This corporation made land selections authorized under ANCSA prior to ANILCA. Most of their land selections were based on historical use areas within their region, and many were targeted toward known mineral resource occurrences which would provide future economic development opportunities to this very poor region.

ANILCA then created WRST in 1980, and enclosed about 1 million acres of Ahtna land selections, many of which whose title had already been conveyed to Ahtna. Since ANILCA, the NPS has systematically blocked access and stymied Ahtna’s attempts to a access, assess, and develop their land which is within park boundaries. Although the NPS will state that there are rules for mining in the park, the hurdles to overcome are so great as to make it impossible for Ahtna to attract private mining company capital to invest inside park boundaries. The NPS has reached out in recent years to work with Ahtna is some minor ways such as contracting the building of the new park headquarters to an Ahtna subsidiary, but they did so in a non-generous manner so that Ahtna profited little, if at all, from the enterprise.

The entire experience of ANILCA has resulting in a “taking” of Ahtna's resources and economic opportunities by the actions of the National Park Service. In a similar way, but on a smaller scale, the NPS has used its muscle to control and limit access and expropriate legitimate mining claims of private holders who had the misfortune of finding themselves within the ANILCA boundaries.

This is a scandal of the first order in what we call “the land of the free,” and would justify Congressional action to right the wrongs perpetrated in the name of ANILCA by the NPS against private property owners.

Very truly yours,

Wesley P. Nason

Editor:

You don’t see much in the popular press about Doug Fredrick, his wife Judy, or of the multiple tragedies they have been forced to endure over the past year.

Doug had the great misfortune to own a piece of property that later became surrounded by National Park Service, and had the audacity to want to enjoy access to his land. He owns Sportsman Paradise; a small fishing resort enjoyed by serious sports fisherman and not so serious cribbage players. The lodge basks in the Alaskan hospitality of the 50’s and 60’s - where a man’s
word stood on its own and where the land was fiercely guarded by lovers of the Great Outdoors, which Doug certainly is.

This fabulous Alaskan retreat is the home of both Doug and Judy. It was also home to his daughter, but the Fredrick family lost her when she was on her way back to “Paradise” in the family truck, in order for Doug to drive into Anchorage and answer a charge filed against him by the NPS, and the vehicle crashed...her boy friend was also killed. The charge? His placing
wooden pallets over damaged portions of a trail, after attending a meeting wherein the National Park Service hid their intent to close down these trails under the pretext of finding a solution to repair the trail. The NPS said they had no funds to bring about the needed upkeep of these trails.

Doug provided a solution. But Doug was not the only person involved, yet he stands alone...solely accused. Why was he singled out?

More important, at what price Paradise? His family heritage is being ripped away from him and his wife. The costs for running the lodge, legal bills, traveling back and forth to Anchorage for any number of legal meetings and court proceedings, unjust fines leveled at him, the tragic loss of his daughter, the loss of business due to lack of access...at what price Paradise?

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness...in one way or another, all of these have been stolen from Doug and Judy Fredrick, and I submit to all persons willing to take an honest look at the history of this case, as well as the glaring historic evidence of the NPS’s acting out against innocent people...what is happening against Doug and Judy is not reasonable by any stretch of the imagination.

We are content to ignore the battles around us as long as they do not cross into our personal territories, our lives...we do not want to expend the effort to cry “FOUL!” when we are not the subjects. Nazi Germany had the same mind set... “oh, it is not I being brutalized and destroyed.” The heartbreak of this significant repeated “time gone by” is that it is also today...

The truth, it is not I being brutalized and destroyed...but to whom will I turn when it is decided that “the group” I belong to is next? By then, it is quite possible you will all be gone...swallowed up by someone’s twisted idea that they need more land in “their” National Park.

Some of you will say I am over dramatizing...to you I say, “If you call, I pray others will not do what you are doing...nothing.”

So...at what price “Paradise?” Ask Doug and Judy.

A True Friend of the Land,

P Dennis Newsom

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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

(continued from page 34)

Editor:

I am writing about the situation at “Sportsmens’ Paradise” in Alaska.

I am a former outfitter, sportsman, lover of nature and environmental protector. I am a 69 year old Canadian, living in northern Saskatchewan, an area of our shared continent that has some 100,000 lakes of pristine beauty and the massive Churchill River chain that is one of our continent’s remaining unpolluted source of fresh water.

I have witnessed the destruction of many fine “sportsmens’ paradise(s)” here by industry, by mining, and, indeed, by park development that developed roads which ultimately led to roads to resources. If you look at a map of northern Saskatchewan, you will see the Prince Albert National Park that now rises to some 30,000 people on a summer weekday. It has some 200 permanent employees there in winter.

Another 100 miles north, you will see Lac La Ronge, once a fishing paradise with 25-100 pound Lake Trout, 7 pound Walleye and 20-30 pound Northerns. The paved road to that location was designed to provide for the lumber industry—to cut the forest down for a 1000 ton mill in Prince Albert.

You might look up the story of Grey Owl, an Englishman named Archie Delaney, who, in the 1930’s lived in the National Park mentioned, even before it was made a Park. He wrote extensively of the importance of being in tune with nature.

These fishing and hunting areas have been transformed and the animals, the fish, the birds, the flora and the fauna---their existence is in severe jeopardy. This is called “progress!”

I read about the gross treatment of Doug and Judy Frederick in Alaska. I have every right to comment as we are all citizens of this continent, indeed this earth. I see the governments establishing parks without consideration to all the implications. Your government, for example, is talking of the massive development of oil resources, within and without your parks. When they are done with that, what will you do with the mess, the new Valdez?

The Outfitters like the Fredericks, are the true conservationists and for the National Park Service to be initiating such aggressive action against them is not only inhumane, it is downright fraudulent—a means to hide their own agenda.

Wherever this situation may lead, the Parks people are surely confiscating the Frederick’s livelihood. They cannot do this, surely, without compensation. This entire exercise smells of bureaucratic bungling, surely.

Not only are we looking at the rape of nature, we are witnessing the rape of ideology as practiced by the Fredericks.

Shame on the National Parks Service.

Rodney G. Thomson

678-21st Street East

PRINCE ALBERT, Saskatchewan

S6V 1M7

Phone 306 763-3350