Thank you, Jimmy Carter

I’m feeling thankful, once again, for Jimmy Carter.

As many Alaskans will recall — some with disgust, others with immense gratitude — on Dec. 1, 1978, America’s 39th president used the nation’s Antiquities Act to place 56 million acres of Alaska’s lands and waters into national monuments. Carter’s bold and unprecedented action — which at the time many Alaskans considered a despicable crime against the state and its residents — ultimately led to the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, or ANILCA. Sometimes more simply called the Alaska Lands Act, this law placed more than 100 million acres of Alaska in federally protected “conservation units,” much of it designated as wilderness.

My purpose here is not to give a history lesson, but to express my continued gratitude to Carter and the many other political leaders — both Republican and Democrat — and activists across the country, including here in Alaska, for this monumental act of preservation.

I tend to think most about Carter’s historic and farsighted action whenever I’m disgusted by the regressive, “old school” frontier politics of our state government, particularly in the areas of wildlife and wildland management. Of course that means I think about him pretty darn often.

While I’m saying thanks, I should mention that I’m also deeply grateful to the visionary Alaskan activists and state leaders — again, of both major political parties — who, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, laid the groundwork for Alaska’s unmatched system of state parks. It’s hard to imagine anything comparable happening in these polarized times, especially with so many Alaskan politicians apparently unable to grasp the bigger picture — and greater good — that lies beyond their own self interests.

I’ve been thinking about such matters since the Alaska Legislature earlier this month approved two Dunleavy appointees to the Board of Game, both with strong ties to the big-game guiding industry, which already holds undue sway, and one of them with a checkered past and pugnacious personality that strongly suggests he’s the wrong person for this particular job.

What has bothered me the most about Dunleavy’s appointments, and the Legislature’s approval of them, is that both our governor and the majority of legislators continue to ignore the state statute that established the board. As I noted in an earlier column (“One small step toward fixing Alaska’s rigged system of wildlife management”), this law makes it clear that the governor shall appoint each member on the basis of several factors, one of them being “a view to providing diversity of interest and points of view in the membership.”

This mandate couldn’t be more plain and simple to understand — and enact. And yet both a series of governors — all those since Tony Knowles’ term ended in 2002 — and Legislatures have consistently ignored this law.

I’m not sure why they so blatantly disregard their duties in this area. Is it because they consider themselves above the law? Or perhaps it’s because past experience has shown they can get away with ignoring this statute. Or that it’s “no big deal” because the Board of Game “only” manages wildlife and politicians have more important matters to consider.

Even some of the more progressive members of the Legislature routinely ignore this law, as do legislators whose constituents — rural Native residents — would benefit from a more balanced game board. In essence they’re voting against their own best interests, or at least the interests of the people they represent.

As I’ve written previously, this state of affairs is both discouraging and maddening.

Still, not all is hopeless. Far from it, in fact.

When our elected state officials fail to do their duty and instead act as enablers of our state’s rigged and corrupt system of wildlife management, I take solace in the knowledge that much of Alaska is governed by a saner and more humane, more holistic, and more ethical set of principles and rules than the one overseen by the Board of Game.

The federal system isn’t perfect, but I much prefer its emphasis on the health of entire ecosystems rather than the favored-species approach taken by the state, one that demonizes and persecutes predators to benefit the “game” species that hunters — many of them urban “sport” hunters — want in unnatural abundance for their own selfish reasons.

For this other, healthier way of overseeing wildlands and wildlife, I thank all the people — including the many residents — who’ve worked to create and preserve Alaska’s federal system of parks, refuges, forests, and other national “conservation units.” Most of all, I thank Jimmy Carter.

Anchorage nature writer and wildlife/wilderness advocate Bill Sherwonit is a widely published essayist and the author of more than a dozen books, including “Living with Wildness: An Alaskan Odyssey” and “Animal Stories: Encounters with Alaska’s Wildlife.”

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