A Fragile Beauty: an Administrative History of Kenai Fjords National Park
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Kenai Fjords National Park National Park Service U.S. Department of Interior A Fragile Beauty: A Fragile A Fragile Beauty An Administrative History of Kenai Fjords National Park An Administrative History of Kenai Fjords National Park Park National Fjords of Kenai History Administrative An by Theodore Catton Catton Cover photo: Park Ranger Doug Capra views Northwestern Glacier from the MV Serac, 2004 NPS Photo by Jim Pfeiffenberger A Fragile Beauty: An Administrative History of Kenai Fjords National Park by Theodore Catton Environmental History Workshop Missoula, Montana Kenai Fjords National Park Seward, Alaska 2010 Table of Contents Introduction 1 Landscape in Motion: Natural and Cultural Setting to 1971 1 2 The Scramble for Alaska: Establishment, 1971-1980 7 3 The Glory Park: Development and Visitor Services, 1981-1986 63 4 The Thin Green Line: Resource Management, 1981-1986 85 5 A Woman in Charge: Years of Transitions, 1987-1988 103 6 A Manmade Disaster: The Oil Spill Cleanup, 1989-1991 119 7 Boom Times: Development and Visitor Services, 1990-2004 135 8 Charting the Unknown: Resource Management, 1990-2004 175 9 Echoes of ANCSA: Land Protection, 1990-2004 209 10 Harbinger of Climate Change: Recent Developments, 2004-2009 233 Conclusion 265 Appendix A. Key Personnel 271 Appendix B. Park Employees 272 Appendix C. Visitation 277 Appendix D. Land Status 278 Appendix E. Key Management Documents 279 Bibliography 281 Index 295 List of Figures Figure 1. Kenai Fjords National Park and other National Park Service areas in Alaska 2 Figure 2. Physical geography of Kenai Fjords National Park and surrounding area 8 Figure 3. Sea lions on an offshore island just outside Kenai Fjords National Park 11 Figure 4. Seward in 1915 15 Figure 5. Jim Arness and Joe Stanton offered snowmobile tours on the Harding Icefield in 1969 and 1970 22 Figure 6. Proposed area boundaries in 1978 and earlier proposals 38 Figure 7. Small boat harbor area of Seward, 2008 75 Figure 8. M/V Commander high and dry on Pedersen Beach, August, 1987 80 Figure 9. The visitor center in 2008 83 Figure 10. Ranger Jeff Carlstrom, Addison Lake, July 1987 88 Figure 11. Mountain goats above Delight Lake 90 Figure 12. Bradley Lake Hydroelectric Project 97 Figure 13. Harding Icefield looking toward upper Holgate Glacier, September 1988 109 Figure 14. Wilderness Recommendation, 1988 115 Figure 15. New ranger residence at Exit Glacier, October 1988 116 Figure 16. Alaska ocean currents placed Kenai Fjords downstream from the oil spill in Prince William Sound 121 Figure 17. Location and extent of oiled beaches in Kenai Fjords 126 National Park Figure 18. Extent of Exxon Valdez Oil Spill in relation to East Coast 131 Figure 19. M/V Serac 142 Figure 20. Park staff, winter 1991-92 147 Figure 21. Aialik Bay Public Use Cabin in 2008 150 Figure 22. Ranger-led walk to Exit Glacier, July 2001 154 Figure 23. Exit Glacier Development Area 164 Figure 24. Black oystercatcher 188 Figure 25. Meg Hahr, ecologist, observing black oystercatchers, June, 2008 189 Figure 26. Black bear on Kenai Coast 191 Figure 27. Mike Tetreau, resource management specialist, North- Western Fjord, September 1998 194 Figure 28. Shannon Kovac, cultural resources specialist; Ian Haskins, coastal ranger; Nick Iannelli, coastal ranger, performing a site condition assessment, June 2008 204 Figure 29. Bear DNA survey crew, 2005 207 Figure 30. Land ownership as planned and soon to be effected in 2009 216 Figure 31. Pedersen Lagoon and Aialik Bay 220 Figure 32. Josephine Sather at Herring Pete’s Cove 222 Figure 33. Aerial view down Bear Glacier to Bear Lake and Gulf of Alaska, September 1988 225 Figure 34. Bear Glacier tour 226 Figure 35. Surprise Bay 229 Figure 36. Senate delegation visit to Exit Glacier, August 2005 234 Figure 37. National Park Service properties in Seward 241 Figure 38. Visitors at Exit Glacier 245 Figure 39. Water taxi and backcountry users in Aialik Bay, 2008 251 Figure 40. Pedersen Lodge Tour, August 2008 252 Figure 41. John Reed, USGS; Heather Coletti, USGS; Shelley Hall, chief of resource management; Jim Botkin, USGS, on marine bird and mammal survey, March 2008 259 List of Tables Table 1. National Parklands in Alaska 4 Table 2. SWAN Vital Signs (2008) 187 Introduction Kenai Fjords National Park was established in 1980 by the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA). Section 201(5) designated the park and stated that it would be managed for the following purposes, among others: To maintain unimpaired the scenic and environmental integrity of the Harding Icefield, its outflowing glaciers, and coastal fjords and islands in their natural state; and to protect seals, sea lions, other marine mammals, and marine and other birds and to maintain their hauling and breeding areas in their natural state, free of human activity which is disruptive to their natural processes. In a manner consistent with the foregoing, the Secretary is authorized to develop access to the Harding Icefield and to allow use of mechanized equipment on the icefield for recreation.1 ANILCA designated a total of ten new national parks, preserves, and monuments, and one new historical park in Alaska. It also made additions to three out of four existing national park system units in Alaska (Fig. 1). The designation of these new areas marked the culmination of a long process of land allocation and land-use planning in Alaska that began with the Alaska Statehood Act of 1958, continued with the Alaska Native Claim Settlement Act of 1971 (ANCSA), and practically ended with ANILCA. The public land conveyances that were made during this two-decade process were breathtaking in their sweep: 103 million acres to the state of Alaska, 44 million acres to Alaska Native corporations, 43.6 million acres to the national park system, 53.8 million acres to national wildlife refuges, and 1.2 million acres included in wild and scenic rivers. One writer referred to this vast partitioning of the public domain in Alaska as “carving the last 1 Public Law 96-487, December 2, 1980, 94 Stat. 2371. melon.”2 Indeed, the passage of ANILCA had mythic significance for the whole nation. Much more than a redrawing of political lines on the map of Alaska, it represented the 49th state’s transformation from “the last frontier” to “the last wilderness.” Figure 1 Kenai Fjords National Park and other National Park Service areas in Alaska. ANILCA was intensely controversial, and as one of the ANILCA parks Kenai Fjords was established in a climate of controversy. At the time, most Alaskans opposed what they saw as an enormous “lock up” of their state’s natural resources by the federal government. Many thousands of U.S. citizens outside of Alaska saw the state’s land question differently. Dozens of national conservation groups, acting on the basis of broad grassroots support to protect wilderness values in Alaska, came together during the 1970s to form the Alaska Coalition, the strongest environmental lobby that Congress had ever seen. In 1978, when Congress stalled on the legislation, President Carter used his authority under the Antiquities Act to proclaim numerous national monuments. Two years later, Congress finally passed the Alaska lands bill over the state’s congressional delegation’s strenuous objections, an unusual break with House and especially Senate tradition, where members usually defer to one another on land issues affecting a delegation’s own state. However, the state’s two senators and one congressman and their congressional allies did manage to extract many concessions from the bill’s supporters. The result was a complicated act containing numerous compromises, exceptions, and 2 William K. Wyant, Westward in Eden: The Public Lands and the Conservation Movement (Berkeley: University of California, 1982). 2 Kenai Fjords National Park Administrative History internal contradictions. Among the law’s most distinctive provisions, it allowed for subsistence use in most national parks, sport hunting in all national preserves, and traditional forms of access in designated wilderness. Following passage of ANILCA, the National Park Service (NPS) initiated administration of Kenai Fjords National Park and the ten other new areas under conditions of great adversity. Not only were the ANILCA parks met with deep skepticism by Alaskans, they were given short shrift by the incoming Reagan administration as well. All of the ANILCA parks operated on shoestring budgets through most of the 1980s. By the end of the decade that began to change. In 1988, Kenai Fjords National Park had a miniscule staff of 16 people, which included all permanent, seasonal, part time, and volunteer personnel. Over the following decade, the staff quadrupled in size. Despite remarkable growth in the 1990s, however, Kenai Fjords along with other Alaska parks continued to operate with relatively small staffs and budgets compared to units in the national park system in the Lower 48. For example, the ratio of resource managers to park acres was far lower in Alaska parks than in any park in the Lower 48. But such comparisons were difficult to make. “Alaska national parks are different,” it was frequently said – a remark that could apply in one context to ANILCA’s subsistence or wilderness provisions and in another context to the ANILCA parks’ primitive character. Indeed, this truism was still current in 2009. Whether offered as a defense or an indictment, a boast or a jab, the statement that Alaska national parks are different speaks to an inherent tension within the National Park Service. Some people maintain that the differences introduced by ANILCA are appropriate for the political, economic, and environmental conditions found only in Alaska. In this view, ANILCA properly softened federal protections on parklands in Alaska in the same way that the Alaska Statehood Act and ANCSA had properly conveyed unprecedented amounts of land to the state government and the state’s aboriginal peoples respectively.