Recently Alaska Dispatch News published an essay by John Schandelmeier regarding BLM's opening of the Paxson Closed Area to subsistence hunting. John and I have spent countless wasteful hours over the past two decades disagreeing on almost everything conceivable. On this issue, however, we could not possibly be more in agreement.
From the simultaneously high-handed, devious -- skulking -- methodology Glennallen BLM used in playing map switcheroo, to the foisting off on different functionaries to represent to Paxsonites and the rest of the public the arguments BLM is using in its attempt to justify the unjustifiable, John's depiction of BLM's actions as "heavy handed" is precisely the case. The following enumerates the reasons this decision should immediately and irrevocably be reversed.
1. Biological
Paxson straddles the boundary between the tundra and the boreal forest and, lying along the southern flank of the Alaska Range, suffers from a dearth of the time necessary since deglaciation in order to have built up a soil horizon sufficient enough to provide suitable animal browse.
The one significant exception to this is along the meanders of the Gulkana River north of Paxson Lake -- precisely the region that, for close to six decades, has been encompassed by the Paxson Closed Area. The relative fertility of this land provides critical sanctuary for moose. Our own land, for example, lying directly adjacent to the Closed Area, sheltered 17 moose last winter. Hundreds more use the Closed Area both as an autumnal fattening site as well as a wintering zone.
The meandering river also is a keystone in the greater Copper River watershed as a sockeye salmon spawning zone. According to biologists, some 40 percent of all Copper River Reds are spawned in these upper reaches of the Gulkana -- far more than any other location. Any opening of the Closed Area will prove irresistible to float hunters, but the portion of the Gulkana that is in the Closed Area has a shallow, shifting river bottom that not only hosts some 50 million sockeye eggs, but is unavoidably disturbed by every boat passing through it - leading to the destruction of hundreds of thousands or millions of these eggs. In addition, as others have written, the spawned-out salmon are a magnet for the region's grizzlies in their attempts to lay on for the winter.
2. Moral
For decades, the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities has operated a sand and gravel depot within the Closed Area. The salt contained therein has become an ever-present salt lick for moose, bear and, when in the area, caribou. At times more than a dozen animals consistently are using it. They are extremely accustomed to DOT and other locals motoring in and out of that locale, so much so that one can come close to petting these animals.
Inasmuch as the salt is not placed there with the explicit motive of baiting game, a backwoods lawyer can claim that it is not an illegal bait station. However, de facto it is exactly that, and already this season several fine sportsmen have taken advantage of the complacency built up over generations of moose.
The northern section of the Closed Area contains some 40 km of trails that I have maintained over the past two decades for the benefit of community members as snowmachine and cross-country ski trails, as well as for summer hiking use. In this, I have spent hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars of my own funds with never any request for compensation. I performed this as a civic function, secure in the belief that I never was abetting any endangerment to the sheltering animals, in that they were in a Closed Area. BLM's action means that all hunting in this area is made that much simpler a process because of the existence of these trails.
3. Historical
The Paxson Closed Area pre-dates the carving out of Federal Subsistence Zones, pre-dates ANCSA, pre-dates ANILCA, pre-dates TAPS, it pre-dates STATEHOOD. After six decades of existence, there is no one who ever "traditionally and customarily" hunted in the Area. BLM action does not restore that which has been lost; rather, it subverts what has been traditional to create that which never existed.
4. Safety
Paxson residents use this land for day to day activities. One portion of the land hosts the Prince William Sound Aquaculture Corporation's Gulkana Fish Hatchery living quarters; this sits less than one hundred yards from the aforementioned salt lick. The trails in the northern portion are ones we use twice a day, every day, for walking our dogs -- again, secure in the belief that we were in lands closed to hunting. Tourists to the area likewise have used these lands with the explicit understanding that, unlike any other portion of the Denali Highway, this was an area in which they could explore without concern for their safety from hunters. Finally, the Closed Area encompasses the Paxson airstrip. The FAA, and 100 percent of every aviator who ever lived, take an understandably dim view of hunting on and around an active runway.
5. Economic
The community of Paxson has undergone catastrophic economic decline since its heyday in the 1960s and the 1970s.
The opening of the Parks Highway signaled Paxson's end as the gateway to Mt. McKinley (now, of course, Denali) National Park; and while this created an economic boon to the villages between Wasilla and Fairbanks, no such compensatory actions were afforded along the Richardson/Denali Highway corridors.
Irrespective of the Richardson Highway's position as the oldest road in mainland Alaska, the state has spurned efforts dating back at least as far as 1982 to create an intertie along that corridor, thus depriving communities such as Paxson the advantages of grid power.
The state's utility regulatory body, now the RCA, did grant to the Paxson Lodge license to sell electricity throughout the Paxson region; it would not, however, regulate the prices charged. As lodge operators took advantage of this free-for-all monopoly, raising rates to as much as a worldwide high of $4.15 per kWh -- at the same time as residents have had no recourse to price equalization -- then every household and business involved abandoned the utility, such that each one of us runs our own generators, as inefficient and problematic as that is. That action, albeit self-inflicted, spelled the final doom to the lodge, now shuttered. But with its demise, the community's decline has hastened.
At present, then, the sole viable economic entities in Paxson are the aforementioned seasonal hatchery, and tourist accommodations. And the one single reason for visitors to use Paxson more than as a stopover between Denali and Kennicott/McCarthy or Fairbanks and Valdez, has been to take advantage of the non-consumptive enjoyment of the Paxson Reserve (aka the Closed Area). Our business alone has reams of testimonies over the past two decades of how floating down the Gulkana or hiking to Mud Lake exceeded visitors' experiences in all of the rest of their Alaska trips. Were BLM to persist in their perverse recent decision, it would likely prove the final blow to this, one of the very oldest non-native communities in the state.
6. Legal
In my discussion recently with BLM Land Manager Dennis Teitzel, he averred that BLM's position is that unencumbered BLM land (that is, not subject to state or Native selection) "is eligible for inclusion in the Federal Subsistence program." Now, I am not an attorney. However, in the English language, "eligible" does not mean "mandatory." For me, then, there is absolutely nothing inevitable about this unfortunate decision and as such, in light of each of the points given above, there should be no impediments to its immediate, and permanent, reversal.
Naturalist Audubon L. Bakewell IV is a 20-year resident of Paxson, and owner of Denali Highway Cabins & Paxson Alpine Tours.
The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)alaskadispatch.com.