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THE NATIONAL PARKS OF ALASKA

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE,

DRUG POLICY, AND HUMAN RESOURCES

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

AUGUST 14, 2006

Serial No. 109–241

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

DAN BURTON, Indiana

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

DARRELL E. ISSA, California

JON C. PORTER, Nevada

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio

BRIAN P. BILBRAY, California

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

DAVID MARIN, Staff Director

LAWRENCE HALLORAN, Deputy Staff Director

TERESA AUSTIN, Chief Clerk

PHIL BARNETT, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE, DRUG POLICY, AND HUMAN RESOURCES

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana, Chairman

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

DAN BURTON, Indiana

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

DIANE E. WATSON, California

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

EX OFFICIO

TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

J. MARC WHEAT, Staff Director

MARK PFUNDSTIEN, Professional Staff Member

KIMBERLY CRASWELL, Clerk

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on Augsut 14, 2006 ........................................................................... 1

Statement of:

Blazsak, Marcia, Regional Director, Alaska Region, National Park Service ................................................................................................................... 7

Menge, Michael, Commissioner, Alaska Department of Natural Resources; James Stratton, Regional Director for the Alaska Office, National Park Conservation Association; Dave Worrell, Communications

Director, Alaska Travel Industry Association; Rick Kenyon, publisher,

Wrangell-St. Elias News; and John Shively, vice president, Government

and Community Relations, Holland America ............................................. 38

Kenyon, Rick .............................................................................................. 78

Menge, Michael .......................................................................................... 38

Shively, John ............................................................................................. 87

Stratton, James ......................................................................................... 45

Worrell, Dave ............................................................................................. 69

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Blazsak, Marcia, Regional Director, Alaska Region, National Park Service, prepared statement of ............................................................................ 10

Kenyon, Rick, publisher, Wrangell-St. Elias News, prepared statement

of ..................................................................................................................... 81

Menge, Michael, Commissioner, Alaska Department of Natural Resources, prepared statement of .................................................................... 42

Shively, John, vice president, Government and Community Relations,

Holland America, prepared statement of .................................................... 89

Souder, Hon. Mark E., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Indiana, prepared statement of ............................................................... 5

Stratton, James, Regional Director for the Alaska Office, National Park

Conservation Association, prepared statement of ...................................... 49

Worrell, Dave, Communications Director, Alaska Travel Industry Association, prepared statement of Mr. Peck .......................................................... 71

(1)

THE NATIONAL PARKS OF ALASKA

MONDAY, AUGUST 14, 2006

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE, DRUG POLICY,

AND HUMAN RESOURCES,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Anchorage, AK.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in the Assembly Chamber Room, Loussac Public Library, 3600 Denali

Street, Anchorage, AK, Hon. Mark E. Souder (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representative Souder.

Staff present: Jim Kaiser, counsel; Mark Pfundstien, professional

staff member; and Kimberly Craswell, clerk.

Mr. SOUDER. The subcommittee will come to order. Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. This is the ninth in a series of hearings on the critical issues facing the National Park

Service. I would also like to welcome all the people who are here

today who care about the parks.

As I have said at many hearings, the national parks are a unique

contribution to the world. Many countries have national parks and

have preserved their historic sites. No other country, however, has

developed the same kind of park system, with such diversity and

breadth and distinctiveness, as our system.

The national parks of Alaska contribute a vast array of unique

sites to the National Park Service. Denali National Park, in addition to North America’s tallest mountain peak, also encompasses a

complete——

COURT REPORTER. Sir, excuse me. I apologize. If you could,

please, slow down.

Mr. SOUDER. I can’t. That’s not going to be easy. I go pretty fast.

Do you have a recorder, for recording it, other than manually.

COURT REPORTER. I’ll work with you.

Mr. SOUDER. Also encompasses a complete subarctic ecosystem.

Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, which is the U.S.’ largest national park, includes the continent’s largest assemblage of glaciers

and the greatest collection of peaks above 16,000 feet.

Lest one think that Alaska is only a spectacular national wonderland, Alaska also features historical sites detailing the settlement

of Alaska, the Klondike Gold Rush of the 19th Century, and our

nation’s fight during World War II.

Alaska’s more recent statehood and the development of the conservation movement bring us face-to-face with challenges that the

rest of the United States faced over a century or more ago. In IndiVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:54 Jul 16, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\35892.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ana, the reservation of certain lands for educational purposes and

State use was settled generations ago. In Alaska, these issues are

still being decided. The balance between conservation and the use

of vast areas of natural resources, timber, and minerals, is still

being worked out. There is no easy solution.

Within the National Park Service as a whole, other issues are

also being worked out. The balance between visitation and asset

conservation continues to be controversial; especially as park funding becomes further stretched. As operations and maintenance, for

example, demand more and more of the park service budget, the

quality of the Park Service is sure to deteriorate. In many areas,

we’ve already seen a decrease in hours of operation, the decline of

services, and the deterioration of facilities. The pressure on the

Park Service affects its ability to conserve and protect the environment, provide recreational opportunities, and educate the public.

I will introduce each of the witnesses, as we do the different panels.

Let me briefly explain what this subcommittee is, as part of the

whole. The way Congress was first designed in the Constitution

was the House was in charge of appropriations. Shortly after doing

appropriations, in the original founding republic, the oversight

committees were created, and then later on—actually, many decades later on, authorizing committees were created.

So the way that the Park Service normally works through something like this, is an authorizing committee would hold hearings on

additions to your land, whether there should be that—the appropriations committee decides how (Indiscernible) and process in the

Senate.

What hasn’t happened is, is that the Government Reform Committee, the authorizing committee, hasn’t really done many oversight hearings on the Park Service.

The subcommittee that you are appearing in front of today, and

that is here, does generally speaking, negative oversight, with some

degree of positive oversight. In other words, we get everything

from, in the Clinton administration, Whitewater, gaming, gambling

regulations, the (Indiscernible) controversies, and that type of

thing.

Each witness at this hearing has to be sworn in. We prosecute

people for perjury. Mark McGuire (Indiscernible) his testimony for

3 days, before they could serve a subpoena, so he could come and

say he didn’t want to talk about the past. That’s what our committee does.

And we look to see whether what we’ve been doing in Congress

has been implemented in the way that we intended it to be implemented. And secondarily, if there are new things the Congress

needs to do, then, if this committee—and as we work through these

original hearings on the Park Service—needless to say, every authorizing committee and every appropriations committee objects to

every hearing that the government (Indiscernible) conducts. Other

Members of Congress think it’s their areas to do it. We shouldn’t

be doing it.

On the other hand, the reason I went through the constitutional

guidelines is, we existed before the Resources Committee in the

3

role of Congress. And it’s our job to do that. But ultimately, to pass

legislation, generally speaking—we don’t do legislation.

The subcommittee that I chair is in charge of narcotics, within

the U.S. Government, and there we do authorizing legislation on

methamphetamine, for example. We’ve also conducted 8 hearings—

or 10, or however many—on methamphetamine just this year, and

we’ll be doing another one in North Carolina next week—this week.

This week? No, it’s next week. So we’ve been focusing a lot on

methamphetamine and other problems with this committee, as

well. And we do do authorizing, on the Drug Czar, to the numerous

drug laws.

But generally speaking, we’re an oversight committee. So anything we learn today has to move to another committee. Therefore,

we work with the resources committee, we work with the appropriations committee. But the most important thing we’ve learned,

from doing oversight hearings, is that the changes tend to occur in

advance by the executive branch, for the most part.

What I know and have observed is, is that when we go to parks

and ask questions—like, to use an example, the border report.

Every time I went to a border location, 4 years ago—and we did

a series on borders. Mr. Bonner, who was in charge, then, of the

combined—what’s now ICBP, would go there beforehand, because

we would go there afterwards, after (Indiscernible) start implementation of policies so that a timely——

COURT REPORTER. Sir, I’m so sorry to ask you to slow down for

me.

Mr. SOUDER. The Federal branch needs to—the Federal agencies

make some of those changes prior to us ever proposing or implementing the law. So I wanted to lay out—because this is an unusual process, in the sense we’re not in Washington, we’re doing

field hearings. I intend to get out to the parks, to try and do the

hearings in the field, as well as in Washington.

We started this process with a Washington hearing; we’ll probably end with a Washington hearing. We met multiple times with

Fran Nill and other—with Lynn Scarlett, before we left Washington, and we will continue to work through it. Met with Steve Martin multiple times about what our goals were.

We work closely with NPCA. This is a series of hearings, where

we’re looking at the challenges the Park Service is facing.

And every agency is facing huge budget challenges, and every

agency doesn’t know how to deal with their own issues, every agency doesn’t know how to deal with their health care questions, every

agency doesn’t know how to face the new homeland security challenges, with their current budgets.

The good thing about the Park Service is there’s been some increases in funding. In fact, all—better than all but a couple of

agencies. But the challenges that we face are huge, and when you

look at it—and as Congress, we can’t just be faced with, ‘‘Oh, what

happened with the Park Service,’’ and 10 years from now, say, ‘‘I

wonder why this happened,’’ without knowing what we’re voting

for, legitimately we’re having to debate here.

Does this go to education; does it go to fighting drugs; does it go

to check every piece of luggage that’s going on an airplane; does it

go to, gee, do more mass transit quality and security; does it go to

4

fight HIV; does it go to national parks? It’s a Zero Subcommittee,

in that—but we need to have the information, when we do a Zero

Subcommittee, where the dollars are going to go and whether there

are creative ways to do it.

So I thank you for coming today. This is certainly the most comprehensive series that have ever been done on the Park Service.

Each of these hearings comes out as a little book, so that there will

be a little book on Alaska.

I would hope, by the end of the year, to have the points, major

points from these. And we thank you for being willing to participate in this. I need to do a couple of procedural matters. Before we

hear testimony, we need to take care of some of the procedural

matters.

First, as of today, all members, have 5 legislative days to submit

written statements and questions for the hearing record, that any

answers to written questions provided by the witnesses also be included in the record. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Second, as to technical exhibits and documents and other materials, referred to by members of the witnesses, may be included in

the hearing record, and that all members be permitted to provide

a statement or remark. Without objection, it is so ordered.

The unusual thing about this hearing—we didn’t know until the

last minute, because I’ve been up here and staff’s been up here,

whether Mr. Cummings was going to come. But as you can see,

from me being able to conduct this hearing and read those statements, because (Indiscernible) hearing’s being conducted in a bipartisan manner.

We don’t have a single member of our subcommittee or committee or full committee, or (Indiscernible) or full committee, that’s objecting to the hearings. Otherwise, I could not conduct these hearings the way we’re doing it. They’re, in effect, noncontroversial

hearings, with the more or less (Indiscernible) support of our committee in a bipartisan way, which is relatively unusual right now

in Congress, even within each party.

So I thank you very much for coming.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Mark E. Souder follows:]

5

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Mr. SOUDER. Our first panel is composed of Ms. Marcia Blaszak,

Alaska Regional director—did I say your name, your last name,

right?

Ms. BLASZAK. Blaszak.

Mr. SOUDER. Blaszak. All right. We’ve known each other for a

long time, but I’m notoriously bad with names.

Alaska Regional Director of the National Park Service.

She’s accompanied by—let me make sure I’ve got a list of all the

superintendents here. I note Tomie Lee from Glacier National

Park, Paul Anderson from Denali, Jeff Mow from Kenai Fjords and

Joel Hard from Lake Clark.

Thank you all for being here. You’ll need to stand, and I need

to swear you in. As I mentioned, this committee is under oath. And

if you would stand and raise your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SOUDER. Let the record show that each of the witnesses responded in the affirmative.

As has been our tradition at each of these hearings, Ms. Blaszak

will give the official testimony, that presumably has been cleared

by about 15 different people, and then we’ll go to questions.

Thank you very much.

STATEMENT OF MARCIA BLAZSAK, REGIONAL DIRECTOR,

ALASKA REGION, NATIONAL PARK SERVICE

Ms. BLASZAK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning. Welcome to Alaska. We greatly appreciate the continuing support by

Congress of parks and programs in Alaska, as well as the entire

National Park System.

Your travels introduced you to the Great Land, but our parks are

as far flung as the State itself. Geographically, there are 15 units

stretched from Sitka National Historical Park in Southeast Alaska,

northwest some 1,200 miles to the headquarters of the Western

Arctic Parklands in Kotzebue. In all, we manage 54 million acres,

approximately two-thirds of the acreage in the National Park System. This includes 33 million acres of congressionally designated

wilderness, incredible natural and cultural resources. And, significantly, the parks we manage continue to function, for many Native

and rural Alaskans, as areas for homes, subsistence hunting, fishing and trapping.

This year, the region will host about 2.3 million recreational visits, more than double the number from 1986. We believe that the

principal mandates of the NPS Organic Act, to protect park units

unimpaired for future generations and to provide for the enjoyment

of parks by visitors, are being met.

In fiscal year 2005, the Alaska Region operated with a budget of

$89 million, with an additional $10.3 million for construction, $2.4

million for roads, and $1.2 million for land acquisition. At the

height of our summer operations, we employ about 1,000 people.

We also license about 400 private businesses to provide visitor

services in Alaska’s parks.

We are nearing completion of our Core Operations Evaluations.

As we examine our parks and regional operations, the process has

reinforced not only the financial realties that we face, but also unVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:54 Jul 16, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00011 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\35892.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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derscored quite important issues and accomplishments, which I

would like to highlight.

The majority of Alaska’s park units were established after other

Federal land actions, which put millions of acres into non-Federal

ownership.

As a result, the park boundaries set in the 1980 Alaska National

Interest Lands Conservation Act often incorporated non-Federal

acreage. In recognition of this and other facts, the Lands Act included unique access provisions.

There are more than 1.6 million acres of non-Federal land within

the Alaska parks. The largest amount, nearly 900,000 acres is

found in Wrangell-St. Elias.

The town of McCarthey is near the center of this park and celebrated its 100th anniversary this year. Its heyday was in the

1920’s and 1930’s, as the neighbor of Kennicott, then a rich copper

mine. The mine closed in 1938, but the towns hung on, never quite

ghost towns, always home to a handful of hearty individuals and

families.

Today, the mines are part of the national park and a key visitor

destination. The towns are reached by a State-owned road which,

along much of its route, is adjoined by State and Ahtna Native

Corp.

McCarthy is largely privately owned with an economy that has

evolved, in part, to cater to park visitors. The opportunity and challenge we face is to protect the stunning resources of the national

park and to provide the necessary access for residents and visitors,

while simultaneously ensuring that a century-old community is allowed to continue to thrive.

A second challenge in Wrangell-St. Elias is providing access

across Federal land to inholdings. As a practical matter, this access

began in many locations prior to the establishment of the park and

continues today. In almost every case, the access has never been

legally documented.

For the past 2 years, we have worked to change that situation.

Public comment ends September 2nd on the draft of a user’s guide,

which we believe will help guide both park managers and landowners through existing law, regulation and policy. The goal is to

document access routes, establish terms for their use that accommodate the owner and protect the public resources, and develop a

clear, consistent process for authorizing new uses of park lands to

reach non-Federal lands.

Visitation to the Alaska parks has increased from just over 1 million, in 1986, to 2.3 million in 2005, due largely to the growth of

cruise ship travel and add-on land tours. This has focused growth

on Sitka, Glacier Bay and Klondike Gold Rush, as well as on roadaccessible parks, particularly Denali and Kenai Fjords, and most

recently, Wrangell-St. Elias.

For the past 2 years, we’ve benefited from a partnership with the

Alaska Travel Industry Association made possible by a $750,000

statutory aid grant. This funding has made possible marketing of

lesser-known Alaska parks through a mix of direct mail, magazine

advertising, industry and media trips, press, and industry meeting

participation.

9

The State of Alaska is an important partner in the managing of

resources and our working relationship has improved over the past

several years. While we sometimes disagree with the specific application of certain laws and regulations, overall, we have far greater

areas of agreement. We’re committed to continuing to work cooperatively with the State to ensure that difficult issues regarding access, subsistence, and resource management issues are resolved.

We appreciate the commitment of the Governor’s office and his

commissioners and their staff in working cooperatively on these

legal and policy issues.

Alaska has benefited from the significant capital investments

supported by Congress: Investments made to visitor facilities responded to growth and visitation and, to a degree, helped guide

them; some $34 million in facilities opened at Denali in the past

3 years, providing visitors a high quality entrance area campus; at

Wrangell-St. Elias, NPS investments in a new visitor center along

the Richardson Highway, and Kennicott, State investments on

McCarthy Road, and private investments in the region are key to

the park and its gateway communities being sustainable visitor

destinations. We’ve also completed land acquisition and initial designs for the $17.5 million Mary Lowell Center in Seward, which

will serve as the new visitor center and headquarters for Kenai

Fjords National Park, and will house Forest Service personnel and

a city-operated meeting facility.

This summer, we signed a record of decision advancing a series

of phased developments on the south side of Denali.

COURT REPORTER. I’m sorry, ma’am.

Ms. BLASZAK. The $46 million——

COURT REPORTER. Could I ask you——

Ms. BLASZAK [continuing]. Project will——

COURT REPORTER. I need you to slow down. I’m so sorry.

Ms. BLASZAK [continuing]. Will require joint funding by the National Park Service, the State of Alaska, the Matanuska-Susitna

Borough and others. The plan includes a visitor center, trails,

campground and other facilities.

The project has the endorsement of the visitor industry in Alaska, and has been developed with the input of area residents.

Thank you for the opportunity to be here today.

I would be happy to respond to any questions you have of us.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Blaszak follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Let me, first off, a visitation question. You said a

pattern of growth is basically where cruise ships come in, say, Glacier Bay and Klondike. Have they increased substantially in the

last 2 years or have they been flat, as well?

Ms. BLASZAK. The numbers coming on cruise ships, I think it’s

been fairly stable, with a little bit of a bump in travel—in visitor

industry numbers.

Mr. SOUDER. So they’ve been fairly flat, the last few years, but

the bump occurred over a period of time, that the parks have seen.

Ms. BLASZAK. Yeah. This is what we talked about in the testimony, sir. Was the 10-year increase—or excuse me—20-year increase of 1 million visitors, in 1986, up to 2.3, in 19—or 2006—5.

Mr. SOUDER. Do you think the trends, in the last 3 years, are—

they were heading—or what is your kind of internal thinking as to

why it’s been flat?

Ms. BLASZAK. Well, I think Alaska, in general, saw, after September 11th, as so many places did, a drop in visitation. And I

think we’ve recovered back to the point we were prior to that. And

I think we’re seeing a marginal growth every year, but it hasn’t

been huge, significant growth.

Mr. SOUDER. If the cruise ship industry has been the No. 1 reason for increases in, say, Glacier Bay and Klondike, is it because,

in fact, unless you increase the number of cruise ships seen, the attendance can’t go up much.

Ms. BLASZAK. Actually, the cruise ship industry is putting larger

vessels into the mix. And we had a projection, based on information

we got from the cruise ship industry, that the potential increase

was greater than it actually became. You know, they’re positioning

ships for this market. I’m sure that others on the next panel probably, in the industry, can better address the actual occurrence of

what is going on.

But we’ve also approved, for the 2007 visitation year, an increase

of 10 percent in the cruise ships that will be authorized to access

into Glacier Bay proper. And that potentially will provide greater

access and numbers to the industry, as well as to the visitors.

Mr. SOUDER. So wouldn’t that suggest, though, that visitation at

those parks is largely contingent upon passage on cruise ships, not

because of September 11th?

Ms. BLASZAK. Yes, sir.

Mr. SOUDER. If I may ask the superintendents at Denali and

Kenai Fjords, has your attendance been relatively flat, too? And do

you attribute that to the flights?

With September 11th, we saw—is it—do you have—let me ask

this—several questions. In some parts, it’s European travel that’s

down. That could be related to flights and some September 11th

impact. But then there’s another question, whether energy prices

are part of this. Which would also, now—because we’ve seen some

recovery in flights. The question is, is energy prices really don’t

seem to be headed down for the foreseeable future, which may be

my lifetime, and if that’s the case, on what basis would you be projecting growth in your two particular parks? Then we’ll deal with

Glacier Bay and Lake Clark.

Mr. Anderson.

Mr. ANDERSON. Mr. Chairman, the visitation——

21

Mr. SOUDER. Hold your mic just a little closer.

Mr. ANDERSON. Can you hear me now?

The visitation at Denali National Park, over the past 3 or 4

years, has been relatively flat; minor increases year to year. Currently, the visitation overall to the park is about 400,000, a little

bit over 400,000.

More than 70 percent of the people that visit Denali National

Park come as a part of a cruise tour opportunity, and most of those

folks that do come to the park arrive by bus or by train.

I think we’ve seen a decrease, over the past 3 years, in the—

what we call ‘‘the independent travel,’’ the non—the traveler that’s

not associated with a cruise tour opportunity, and that’s, then,

been offset by the increase in cruise tour passengers coming to the

park.

Based on discussions with the industry and our own staff, the belief is that the visitations for Denali National Park is obviously

highly dependent on the cruise tour program right now, and will

continue to be so.

Given the numbers of people that ride the park buses—and

there’s three different bus systems that people can ride—what

we’re seeing is an increase in demand for the tour buses that are

affiliated more closely with the package tour industry and a decrease in demand for the visitor shuttle bus, which serves, in large

part, the independent travel.

Does the energy crisis have an influence? We thought that it

would, and I think it probably has. I don’t have specific numbers

for this year. But the indications last week, from the folks that I

talked with, are that there’s probably less of an impact from this

year’s energy costs than people expected. And I would project that

visitation to Alaska is likely to continue to grow into Denali, as

well, at a probably small but constant rate over the next 10 years.

Mr. SOUDER. You have similar——

Mr. MOW. Mr. Chairman, at Seward, I think we have a slightly

different dynamic there. I think what we’re seeing at the park, in

terms of our visitation—even though there have been some significant changes in the number of cruise ships coming to the community—our visitation has remained stable and/or had a small increase, actually, going on. I believe, Kenai Fjords National Park,

we see more package tours, and particularly, the independent travelers.

And again, you know, we had one of the major cruise ship companies cease to use Seward as their primary embarkation or disembarkation point, a shift over to Whittier. And the actual impact on

visitation has been—isn’t even perceptible. So——

Mr. SOUDER. Would you clarify what you just said to me, again?

You said cruise ships ‘‘switch over toward Whittier?’’

Mr. MOW. Yes. Up until recently, Princess Cruises, for example,

was using Seward as a port for embarking or disembarking passengers. And that ceased, just in—well, I think 2005 was the first

year that they stopped using Seward. And there was a lot of concern in the community that there’d be significant economic impacts

of that, and those impacts haven’t been borne out by the visitor

numbers. The impacts have come in other ways, but the actual visiVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:54 Jul 16, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00025 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\35892.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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tors taking tour boats or coming to our Exit Glacier facility, they’ve

been pretty steady or even a slight increase.

Mr. SOUDER. Would you say they’re coming off a package tour

from Whittier that would include——

Mr. MOW. You know, we don’t have a real good handle on that,

how that’s, you know, sort of—as that vacuum was created, if the

cruise ship companies themselves have made up that—to make up

for that, offering Seward.

Generally, Seward is not a port of call for the cruise ship industry. And I think that’s kind of the significant element.

I find that our influences are much greater due to things out of

Anchorage. Being so close to Anchorage, we tend to be almost the

community—Anchorage’s backyard. So we really notice—and this

year will be interesting, because the schools in Anchorage are going

back 2 weeks earlier. And I would forecast that we will see some

impact from that because, as I’ve noticed, that as soon as the

schools are back in session and the State Fair begins, things

change rapidly in Seward.

Mr. SOUDER. Has your attendance stayed fairly flat?

Mr. MOW. Excuse me?

Mr. SOUDER. Has your attendance stayed fairly flat in the last

3 years?

Mr. MOW. Yeah. Actually, we’ve had a small increase, overall.

And I think a lot of that is due to the increases we’ve seen at Exit

Glacier. We’ve made some significant improvements there that

have really just made it more readily available for visitors.

Mr. SOUDER. Would you tell me a little bit about Lake Clark

now? Do you have mostly independent travelers, that come in for

a wilderness experience? Do they (Indiscernible) come over? Explain a little bit about that.

Mr. HARD. Sure.

Mr. Chairman, Lake Clark, I think, really epitomizes what Alaska has to offer in terms of wilderness experience. We have three

different types of visitors really in the park itself: Back country expeditions, sport fishermen and bear viewing. And our visitation has

remained consistent in the park. Those folks that are looking for

those experiences haven’t, at least in my mind, been impacted too

much by the energy crisis or the September 11th crisis; you know,

post-September 11th.

Our visitation into the park by our residents’ own communities,

however, may be diminished as a result of those fuel costs. We

have five communities that have relationships, direct relationships

with the park, and they have less capacity to meet these energy

needs to get into the park probably than the external visitors, I

would say.

Mr. SOUDER. Let me, for the record—I know we can—and these

just need to be rounded off for anybody to read through this and

get a comparison. How many annual visitors would you say at

Lake Clark last—2005?

Mr. HARD. We generally average around 5,000. So very, very

small numbers when you compare them to Denali, Kenai Fjords or

Glacier Bay.

Mr. SOUDER. That’s for the year.

Mr. HARD. Yes.

23

Mr. MOW. At Kenai Fjords National Park, we’re reporting approximately 250,000 visitors annually, in 2005.

Mr. SOUDER. And Mr. Anderson.

Mr. ANDERSON. 2005, visitation at Denali was 403,000 visitors.

Mr. SOUDER. (Indiscernible) Glacier Bay.

Ms. LEE. In 2005, we had 360,000.

Mr. SOUDER. And, Ms. Blaszak, what—for Skagway, at Gold

Rush, I believe it was closer to 900,000, wasn’t it?

Ms. BLASZAK. Yeah. We’re bumping up to 900,000. That’s primarily because it’s a port of call for the majority of cruise ships.

Mr. SOUDER. What about Sitka? Is it similar?

Ms. BLASZAK. Sitka’s running at 290,000.

Mr. SOUDER. And——

Ms. BLASZAK. Much fewer of the cruise industry use it as a port

of call than the consistent stop at Skagway.

Mr. SOUDER. And would Kobuk Valley and the Bering Straits be

more similarly (Indiscernible).

Ms. BLASZAK. Yes, they would.

Mr. SOUDER. Superintendent Lee, at Glacier Bay, I think—did

you tell me—I think you said around 90 percent are cruise ships;

is that correct?

Ms. LEE. That’s correct.

Mr. SOUDER. Do the people that come to the Glacier Bay Lodge,

and come into the land and park facilities, as opposed to just doing

the experience by boat, are many of them coming in on any kind

of package, or are they more independent travelers?

Ms. LEE. They’re more independent travelers, sir. We’ve seen a

reduction in our independent travelers and in the small package

tours, the non-cruise passengers.

Mr. SOUDER. I know from past experience at Klondike that one

of the statements that I kind of heard flying to here was that many

people buy a cruise package on the ship and do the—even the historic tour, with a cruise-based guide or cruise-hired guide, rather

than the Park Service.

Do you know if that trend’s increasing, staying about the same?

What percentages there are in Skagway, out of this—the 900,000

that you say visited? That means they came through headquarters?

How many of those participated in a tour or——

Ms. BLASZAK. I believe that would be the number that are arriving at the dock in Skagway, which is adjacent to the Park Service

facilities.

And you’re familiar with our——

Mr. SOUDER. They’re not going into one of your park buildings,

because you bought a number of the old buildings. So that assumption is there’s not a fee.

Certainly—is there a fee to any of the Alaska parks?

Ms. BLASZAK. At Denali, we charge entrance fees. We have campground fees at several of the parks. And through legislation at Glacier Bay, we charge $5 per person.

Ms. LEE. Per passenger.

Ms. BLASZAK. Excuse me. Per passenger.

But we have in legislation, in ANILCA, no entrance fees in the

new parks that were established with the Lands Act.

24

Mr. SOUDER. Do you know why that was the case, other than as

a trade?

Ms. BLASZAK. I think it may have been part of the compromise.

Mr. SOUDER. I’d just say, for the record, every State would have

taken that deal, if it would have been offered. Because no park,

really very few parks in American history, have ever voluntarily

said, ‘‘The State doesn’t want the government to say, ‘Hey, why

don’t we make this a park?’ ’’ When introduced, it was a huge battle

in my home State, and there wasn’t such an agreement.

In the visitation, the reason I was kind of going through these

numbers is, because as anybody reads these hearing books, Alaska

is so dramatically different than any other State because of the

cruise ship industry impact, that what I wanted to sort through—

and I kind of touched on it there in Skagway—but I heard Superintendent Anderson suggest a little bit of this at Denali—that you

said that the cruise ship buses were increasing in their attendance,

but the Park Service bus was declining.

Mr. ANDERSON. (Nodding head.)

Mr. SOUDER. What about the lodging? That clearly I’ve stayed in

lodges owned by Princess, in my visit to Alaska; by Holland, in hotels. I’ve never been to Alaska without walking into some shop or

some hotel owner reading me the riot act about foreign firms and

their deals that they make with the stores on land. That they become subsidiaries. And it’s possible—in fact, on this particular trip

to Alaska, I got that a couple times: ‘‘The foreigners are taking over

the ships; they buy up and get the local businesses, and now we

don’t have people here in our towns, because this is all kind of a

cut deal.’’

We actually, at a couple places, heard from individuals, who were

on the cruise ships, who said, ‘‘Boy, they’re hard selling these packages, and you’re better off kind of wandering away from the dock

area a little bit.’’

I take it that’s a fairly common tension. And would you say that

the pressure is on the hotels? At Denali, in particular, hotel expansion? I believe two of the cruise lines have expanded their hotel operations there. I don’t know how the gift shops are working there.

But clearly, at the park entrance, there’s a lot of pressure.

And could you comment on that, a little bit, Mr. Anderson?

Mr. ANDERSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

To set the record straight, the Park Service concessioner,

Aramark Doyon Joint Venture, operates all the buses in the park,

and the cruise tours put their passengers on those buses. And

there’s three different opportunities in the park, on the park road:

To attend the Wilderness Tour, a 6-hour tour into the heart of the

park; the Denali Natural History Tour, a tour that focuses a lot on

cultural history as well as natural history, not quite as long; and

then the Visitor Transportation System, which is the low-cost shuttle system that takes people from the park entrance to the end of

the road, drops them off, picks them up, wherever they’d like.

Mr. SOUDER. OK. So what you’re saying is that the people buying

the package tours, that you still get a commission off of, it’s just

that they’re not doing an independent wander around the park.

25

Mr. ANDERSON. The Tundra Wilderness Tour and the Denali

Natural History Tour are most popular amongst the cruise tour

visitors to the park.

Well, and there’s some trends happening there that are quite

positive, I think. In days past, the cruise industry, tour industry,

has spent one night in the hotel outside Denali, took a short tour

or a long tour of 1 day, and then left and went on to the next destination. The major operators now have started to expand the time

that people spend at Denali, to give them a much higher quality

experience and opportunity to do more things there in the park.

And then, that’s the number of hotel rooms—to accommodate the

same level of visitation but twice the time in the park—is increasing, and we expect it to continue to increase over the next few

years.

Holland America, Princess, both have expanded their facilities

there in the park, and there’s several other facilities that are projected to be constructed in the near-term future.

Beyond those major cruise tour facilities, owned and operated by

the cruise tour companies, there are also a number of independent

facilities right outside the park, both retail operations, in lodging

and food establishments. And those are very well used and certainly competitive, if you will, in terms of product, price and quality, with all of the other corporate holdings, if you will, around

park headquarters.

And I guess, if there was something I didn’t address, I——

Mr. SOUDER. And let me say, one of the reasons is, because most

of the people, when you’re talking about people coming on cruises,

you’re talking about most of the people who come from my State

to Alaska. That part of the reason they control the hotels and the

gift shops the way they do, is not only the profit but consistency

of. There’s less variety of mattresses at Princess Lodges than there

are, I’ve experienced, at other hotels, and similarly, you know, in

other places.

The challenge in Alaska is how, then, to get unique experiences.

Because it’s kind of like, do you eat at chain restaurants or do you

eat at local restaurants? You get more variety at local restaurants.

Sometimes really good; sometimes not so good. Or is it going to become more of a ‘‘vanilla’’ experience. And that’s the challenge that

you all have. Another huge challenge that comes in here is, it’s

clear, that attendancewise, you have a lot at stake, as to how many

cruise ships there are and the capacity of the cruise ships.

I’ll ask Mr. Shively, on the next panel, whether the length of

time is longer on the cruises or if they’re spending less time on the

boat. That seems to be a key variable here.

But another thing is, what this means for visitor services, and

where your visitor centers are. And this is a huge challenge. Because if the people are basically poking into the park and coming

back to Denali, then the pressure is different for visitor services,

and the question is, how do you manage that budget?

I’ve been reading in the papers here about proposals regarding

around out—more outside the park, north of Talkeetna, and a

whole new visitor center. Does that mean you would close down

something in the park? How in the world do you manage your

budget when you see this kind of shift at Denali with the visitation

26

if they aren’t, in effect, staying in the park, when visitor services

historically have been in the park and not outside, and how do you

manage that in your staffing?

I assume that you haven’t increased FTEs over the last 5 years.

Mr. ANDERSON. We have had budget increases over the past 5

years, not every year, not consistently. The total number of employees at the park: Approximately 260; about 100 of those are permanent, the rest are seasonal.

And it is a challenge, and I don’t have all the answers about how

we deal with this changing demographic pattern, changing tourism

interest, visitor interest in Alaska.

We’re working on it, and we’re working with the Alaska Tourism

Industry Association, with the cruise ship industry, with the local

operators and private owners around the park, to help understand

better what the visitors’ needs are, what they’re likely to be, and

then how to respond, how to adjust, to meet those needs consistent

with the park mission.

And I recall part of the last question was about the tour companies and opportunities for further activities at the park, and whether or not they were consolidating activities, if you will, at the park

entrance versus spreading them out. And I don’t know much about

the fees that are being charged or collected amongst the operators

outside the park, since that’s not my jurisdiction, if you will.

I do know, though, that over the past 5 years, there’s been a considerable increase in the number of different—the variety of opportunities, recreational or experiential opportunities, provided in the

Denali area by other private operators, small operators in Healy,

McKinley Village, Denali Park Headquarters area. And I’m certain

there’s commissions to help make that happen. I’m not part of that,

part of the program. But there are certainly quite a diverse range

of experiences and a diverse range of providers, and it’s an increasingly larger number, it seems, over time.

Mr. SOUDER. Anybody who enters the park pays a concession fee

to the park; is that correct?

Mr. ANDERSON. Well, they pay an entrance fee; a member of the

public that comes into the park pays an entrance fee into the park.

Mr. SOUDER. If you take Talkeetna Air Taxi into—over the park,

they pay you a fee.

Mr. ANDERSON. Yes, they do. Well, if they land, they pay a fee.

If they fly over the park, at this point, they don’t pay any fees. At

this point, if they don’t land, they don’t pay.

Mr. SOUDER. Any guiding that comes into the park would pay a

fee.

Mr. ANDERSON. Correct.

Mr. SOUDER. So if they touch the land, not the airspace.

Mr. ANDERSON. That’s correct.

Mr. SOUDER. Superintendent Lee, in Glacier Bay, the concessioner is struggling with how you update a Mission 66 facility. If

the attendance is dropping, what do you see happening, or what

options do we have, to keep the concessioneer offering overnight

services in Glacier Bay.

Ms. LEE. This is one of the issues that we’re struggling with

right now. And again, we’re working with the local community. We

have had a number of family tours earlier this year, thanks to

27

ATIA. We’re trying to address that now. We don’t, unfortunately,

have all the answers.

We’re hoping, of course, that some of the trends will change:

That we will start to see more independent travelers, we’ll start

seeing some of the small package tours coming back; but it seems

almost across Alaska that we’re seeing fewer and fewer of the independent travelers in most of the areas.

Mr. SOUDER. You don’t have any direct—the boats that go in on

the tours, what other concessioner fees would you get at Kenai

Fjords?

Mr. MOW. Well, Kenai Fjords, as an ANILCA park, is a very different situation than, I think, what both Glacier Bay and Denali

have. As parks, we weren’t tasked with developing our own infrastructure, within the boundaries, we used the existing communities. Plus, the jurisdiction at Kenai Fjords National Park is such

that it ends at mean high tide. So as long as the tour boats aren’t

offloading visitors onto shore, they aren’t technically entering the

park, and as a result, the tour boats offering, you know, the tours

into the fjords don’t pay us a fee. They’re not concessions.

Fortunately for us, we have a wonderful partnership agreement

with them to offer interpretive services for them. And they’ve found

it to their benefit to be able to market their tours with uniformed

park rangers to talk about the park resources. And at the same

time, they’re willing to work with us to offset those costs of providing those additional visitor services.

Mr. SOUDER. Do all the tours have guides?

Mr. MOW. That’s correct.

Mr. SOUDER. And how much——

Mr. MOW. Well, again, the number of visitors that actually set

foot in the park, along the coast, is very, very small.

Mr. SOUDER. But I mean, do all the boat tours offer park rangers?

Mr. MOW. Not quite. Probably about half of them.

Mr. SOUDER. How much do you get per passenger?

Mr. MOW. It’s not by a per-passenger charge. We sit with the

tour boat companies and negotiate out the expenses that we would

bear in providing the services that they’re asking for.

Mr. SOUDER. So basically, it covers the cost of the rangers.

Mr. MOW. That’s correct; the rangers, some of the administrative

overhead, and we pony up the cost of program oversight and administration.

Mr. SOUDER. At Glacier Bay, you have a similar (Indiscernible).

Ms. LEE. That is correct; and also, with our tour boats.

Mr. SOUDER. And what are the fees there per passenger?

Ms. LEE. The fees are $5 per passenger, by legislation. But we

also do the cost recovery, for the cost of the interpretive services

on board.

Mr. SOUDER. And is there anything similar at Denali?

Mr. ANDERSON. Yes. There is—through the NIRI Science and

Learning Center, the Alaska Natural History Institute’s operation—what we call ‘‘fee-based education’’ available to the public,

in general, but quite predominantly used by the cruise industry for

their passengers. And those fees, depending upon the offering, may

range from $40 to $70, for the given program that they take part

28

in. Those fees then are used to provide the personal services, to

hire the people that present the programs, and to support science

in the Science and Learning Center.

Mr. SOUDER. Are there other parks in Alaska that have similar

fee arrangements with the cruise ship industry already?

Ms. BLASZAK. Actually, this year, for the first time at WrangellSt. Elias, with the cruise ship industry, we’re offering interpreters

in Yakatat. And I’m trying to think. That’s the newest and most

recent. I think it’s the bulk of it in these parks.

Mr. SOUDER. And at Wrangell, most of the—Kennicott Lodge is

a traditional concessioneer; is that right?

Ms. BLASZAK. Kennicott Lodge is a private business, on lienhold,

within the park.

Mr. SOUDER. Does anybody pay concession fees then?

Ms. BLASZAK. We have a concessioner providing guided tours

through the mill building. We also have guided hunting in the

park, not specifically at the Kennicott area. But the only concession

operation at Kennicott proper is the guided mill tours.

Mr. SOUDER. And at Lake Clark, I assume all the facilities are

private. Do you pick up any kind of fees in the park?

Mr. HARD. We only have three concessions, Mr. Chairman.

They’re all sport hunting concessions. And we have about seventy

CUAs, commercial use authorizations. But they all have their own

facilities. We don’t provide any facilities. And we, perhaps, generate somewhere in the neighborhood of $30,000 annually in the

fees from all of those sources.

Mr. SOUDER. One of the clear challenges we have here is, that

anybody—like I mentioned earlier, every single agency that we

have in the Federal Government is looking at going off the cliff to

try to meet their health, pension, future obligations, and Park

Service is not unique. Individual parks are not used to feeling this

kind of pressure, so they feel unique.

But (Indiscernible) Federal Government, I mean, we’ve known

this with Social Security for a long time. Now we’re seeing it hit

Federal employees, we’re seeing it (Indiscernible), we’re seeing it

hit criminal justice, probation officers. We’re seeing it across the

board.

But GM and Ford, and our airline industry, are all teetering (Indiscernible) bill before we left. Every single major company in

America is having this challenge.

So the question is, in prioritizing where you put your increasingly challenged amount of resources, even if we succeed in getting

more dollars to the parks, the question is, where is this going to

go?

The good news about visitation is, is that this is one of these

classic tradeoffs in the Park Service: If you’re getting fees, it’s better because you’re getting more revenue; if you get more people to

the park, they can enjoy it. I mean, that was part of the original

mission. And they can spread the word about the (Indiscernible) of

the park.

On the other hand, you’re more likely to pass a resource off better if you don’t have huge increases in visitation. It stays wild. I

mean, the big challenge is about that. Is it a (Indiscernible) simplification than a joke. But half the rangers would just as soon no

29

people came, and half the rangers are disappointed if you’re not

doubling your visitation, because it depends on what part of the

area it is.

But one of the challenges is, if your visitation is flat, and if you

don’t have an additional source of revenue coming in, and the Federal Government doesn’t suddenly become an ‘‘old man,’’ so to

speak, the question is, are you going to put, at the big wilderness

parks—I assume you have challenges for biologists, for wildlife

preservation, for all sorts of unique opportunities.

One of my big things that I believe our national parks ought to

be doing is hooking up more, through the Internet education systems, math and science programs, throughout the United States.

Because not everybody has to visit the park to see the park, with

today’s advances in technology. I know the Park Service is improving, and each park is working at it, but maybe—other than people

in the region, may not get to the parks as often.

But how would we do this? Well, we see big increases at Golden

Gate—Gateway or Santa Monica, as people are staying closer to

their homes, and they’re looking at visitation figures of 14 billion

in some of these parks. It’s a different mix, to the historic park system, than what we think of the crown jewel parks, and the beautiful wild parks have flat visitation.

The challenge here is how—which I think your ‘‘Ranger On

Board’’ programs are a great way to deal with this—is how can you

come up with visitor services that are oriented toward a certain

type of visitor, around the cruise ships, that becomes self-perpetuating? In other words, the money for those visitor services are

paid for by those people who are coming in.

Because if you’re facing a declining budget and a squeezed budget, and you’re deflecting to the same people more of your resources,

the challenge is, if you’re going to build another visitor center at

Denali, how are you going to pay for it, and if—with the rangers,

without having to pull up and scatter your rangers and have them

all be doing visitation and none of the park functions? It’s a similar

challenge of, how can we keep a cruise boat not an option, in gestalts, for the Park Service? Can some of the cruise ship money be

transferred over?

Director Blaszak, have you looked at any packaging for

concessioneers? In other words, if you get something in the big

park, then you get to do something in one of the smaller parks.

Ms. BLASZAK. We actually entertained discussions on that issue,

Mr. Chairman. And we’re trying to work, I think, collaboratively,

with Aramark, specifically, to resolve their losses that they’re encountering at Glacier Bay. But we currently don’t have a mechanism to package Denali particularly with Glacier Bay. But we have

had those discussions.

Yet, you are aware, sir, that the proceeds from the franchise fees

collected at Denali, because of their contract, go to the park and

their infrastructure needs.

And none of us have enough to fulfill everything we would like

to accomplish in the parks, and to take from one to serve another,

at this point, would perhaps be more damaging to the park that

does have a viable concession operation than necessary.

30

But we have been discussing that. We haven’t reached the solution yet.

Mr. SOUDER. One of the interesting things that we’ve learned by

the parks, about the parks is, is that people are generally willing

to give money, if they think it’s going to the park. That for all the

talk about demonstration fees in the United States, as long as you

work out some kind of challenge with a focus—because if they had

to pay every time they come into the park, that’s a different ball

game. But for people coming from Indiana to Alaska, if they think

the money is going into the park, rather than to profit, there’s not

been a resistance to demonstration fees, so-called.

I mean, we need to demonstrate these things for 200 years. Are

they ever going to be made permanent?

But the fact is, we hardly have any letters, on record anywhere

in the United States, of people objecting if the money goes into the

park. They don’t see that as a tax, they see that as helping the

park. And the question is, is how to do this, so Alaskans, who are

used to having access to the land, don’t get hit the same way as

visitors who are, in effect, (Indiscernible) in their State and seem

to be willing to put money into improving parks, which they do in

almost every major park now, and even at little tiny stops on the

highway in Nebraska.

You know, people are getting more and more used to paying fees

to help cover the shortages, if they think it’s going to the park.

They don’t necessarily want to see it go to foreign aid programs,

they don’t necessarily want to see it go to programs they don’t approve of, but they’re willing to give to the park, if they think the

funds are going to be used in the park.

Now, let me touch on inholdings. As someone who years ago paid

$10 to the Pilgrims’ park on what turned out to be my land, it is

an interesting question of how to handle inholdings, because almost

every park in America negotiated and approved some type of

inholdings agreement inside the park. It’s hard for me to think of

a park that hasn’t had this challenge. But, generally speaking, they

don’t have a million acres of inholdings, because there’s only one

other park that’s that big, and that would be Yellowstone.

You said, in your testimony, that you’re working on a draft of a

guide access. Now, I don’t mean to sound this ignorant on ANILCA

or on the followups. Wasn’t this very clear, from the beginning, on

how access was going to work? It looks to me that there’s a lot of

checkerboard patterns. That sitting on the Resources Committee

and on the park subcommittee, I’ve sat on many hearings arguing

about this question. What was the thought of picking a place—if

you weren’t already living there and subsisting there—of picking a

place that didn’t have access? And wasn’t it discussed what the

tradeoffs would be, in the beginning, on the access? Or was that

something we were just going to discuss later on?

Ms. BLASZAK. You pointed to the real, I think, issue that’s been

at our fingertips for the last couple of years in Alaska, in the parks

in particular. We believe and have, I think, attempted to better articulate our understanding of Congress’ intent, when it came to accessing inholdings in the Alaska parks.

31

What we see in law, though, has not been carried out in practice

by our predecessors. There’s been, basically, a ‘‘Well, we’ll get to

that when we get to it’’ attitude.

And it’s caused, frankly, some, I think, unnecessary conflict of intent on our part and inaction on our part in the past.

We realize that we have an affirmative responsibility to recognize access that ANILCA lays out for landowners within our parks,

and are attempting to get to that, based—using existing law, policy, regulation, that takes away the unknown factor. We have a

number of inholdings that predate the park. We have a number of

new landowners, that are perhaps afraid to engage with us, for fear

that the onerous process will make it almost impossible. And we’re

trying to not be at that place.

We have a number of existing access routes that we believe we

can fairly quickly document, and we’re not looking at this as a

we’re-giving-you-permission aspect, as much as we’re looking at

it—agreeing with the landowner that he or she had—we, the Federal Government, with responsibility to ensure protection of park

resources, can agree to.

We’re making good progress. We’re having a number of meetings.

And frankly, we scrapped it, after the second version, realizing we

hadn’t really hit the mark, and decided it was more important to

engage and have dialog with the landowners that were particularly

affected by this, before we spent much in something that was not

going to work. And we’re continuing on those efforts, and I think

you will hear from members on the next panel, how they perceive

our efforts are going.

Mr. SOUDER. Let me ask, because I’ve tried to understand this,

And it’s not that I haven’t read multiple books on Alaska and on

your unusual parks. It’s not that I haven’t been to multiple hearings and conferences and heard the discussion. ‘‘Chairman Souder,

I don’t understand this.’’ That one thing is, when they were picked,

did the parks pick first, or did the State pick first?

Ms. BLASZAK. I’m not a good historian on that aspect of it.

There——

Mr. SOUDER. In other words——

Ms. BLASZAK. Well——

Mr. SOUDER [continuing]. When Wrangell-St. Elias was picked, if

you had (Indiscernible) and you owned it, and you had a cabin

there, and you were floatplaning in——

Ms. BLASZAK. Uh-huh.

Mr. SOUDER [continuing]. But when the State of Alaska picked

multiple things all over, what’s now McCarthy, was Wrangell there

first, and then the State picked, and then you filled in Wrangell

around it.

Ms. BLASZAK. My understanding—and I may have to ask one of

my friends from the State to clarify this, Mr. Chairman, is that the

Native organizations were able, through the Alaska Native Claims

Act, basic—in the early 1970’s, initially made claims. But the final

adjudication occurred, and is still occurring, quite frankly, with the

Bureau of Land Management taking the lead on actual ownership

and conveyance of those parcels that were selected. The State of

Alaska and the Native corporations all had an opportunity to select

32

acreage at the same time that the copper mines, if you will, was

being adjudicated.

Now, I’ll stop there and ask that, perhaps, Mr. Menge can respond specifically.

Mr. SOUDER. I’ll pursue that.

But it just seems that, at root, that some of the conflict here—

because at Wrangell, for example, the Native corporations are all

pretty much along the main road, such as it is. It’s the State and

the University that has hundreds of thousands of inholdings along

McCarthy Road; there are individual landowners there. But the

pressure, when you look at whether you’re going to develop a park

road, is clearly in the hundreds of thousands when you’re looking

at State agencies, and in the hundreds when you’re looking at local

individuals.

That on a map, which I just saw the day before yesterday—(Indiscernible) in the office, looking at the map—it just stands out,

and every time, it’s stood out to me. Furthermore, in talking to the

Native corporations, they’ve been more than willing to concentrate

out so they don’t go in (Indiscernible). And there obviously needs

to be some understanding. So that doesn’t mean you have a right

to get a bulldozer, like the Pilgrims did. But to have access to your

land, if you lived there all your life. That was our intent in Congress. It’s always been our intent, in inholdings, to try to work that

out, in reasonable ways, to have access to your land.

But the unusual thing about Alaska is people don’t live there

who bought the land and now want to try to get access that is an

upgraded access. Not historically. And the fact that you have the

State inside here—particularly when you look at Wrangell. But it’s

not just Wrangell. That in working—and it’s not just the Park

Service.

I went with Congressman Young, at Cordova, up into the—I

think it’s the Copper River Delta, where the Chugach chose woods,

and they wanted to cut the woods.

They banked on that income for the Chugach, and they don’t

have a way to get there. And so the question is, what prompted—

and how could there not have been a discussion of ‘‘Why would you

pick this area that you want to cut trees, if you don’t have access

to it?’’ If there wasn’t an understanding, then how could—you

know, it’s just really hard for me to understand, as a business guy,

how this type of thing would have happened. Because putting this

off till later—it’s the whole thing of what kind of access? Is it permanent access; short-term access? Is it not similar to the forest

folks’ argument, that we have for timber cutting, in forests all over

the country? Should they have to put in a wide road? Should the

wide road then be kept permanent, so people can camp on it, so

they can get to the forest fires and supposedly deteriorate, and

then be more a, ‘‘wilderness,’’ until the next time they cut timber?

It’s not like I’m not familiar with this. It’s just I’ve never seen

this massive a scale. And what’s unusual here is it’s government/

government conflict. Because if it was just the landowners, who

have been there for a long time, you could have a battle on a cabin,

in the Rocky Mountain National park, where a person was supposed to leave their cabin and now want to stay there. You could

have those kind of individual variations of landowner rights type

33

of thing. We have it in all the national parks, but the scale here

is massive.

Do you sense that you are going to resolve it? What kind of comments are you getting on this in your report?

Ms. BLASZAK. We believe we can resolve the individual landowner access issues fairly easily. I think our greater challenges are

going to be where we have mining claims within the park boundary, that are—for which we receive requests for access for—potentially permanent mining access. And how——

Mr. SOUDER. Let me ask you a question.

Ms. BLASZAK. Go ahead.

Mr. SOUDER. Are most of those mining requests people who really want to mine? I mean, that’s a value judgment. I’m not trying

to trick you into identifying individuals, but—let me phrase it this

way: I know people in my own district, who bought up railroad

rights to, in effect, leverage, because they wanted to get into development.

Ms. BLASZAK. I have to take at face value the requests that we

are working on. And there’s a——

Mr. SOUDER. Has anybody tried to open a mine in the park yet?

Ms. BLASZAK. I think we’ve had requests for mining, plans for operations. I’m not certain that (Indiscernible).

Mr. SOUDER. Oh. So they’ve wanted to open an actual mine.

Ms. BLASZAK. Yeah. Yeah.

But back to the question at hand, Mr. Chairman. You know, I

have to respect the sincerity of the applicant, that they are sincerely interested in doing that. And frankly, it gives you—you

know, it would be beneficial to all of us to know that was their true

desire, or if they’re attempting to get a higher value for potential

mineral rights, and how we might get to a place of agreeing on the

value of the property (Indiscernible), should they actually want to

sell, and then try and buy. And those are the conversations we

need to continue to have.

Mr. SOUDER. And are the rules different in the preserve park at

Wrangell?

Ms. BLASZAK. Yes.

Mr. SOUDER. And wouldn’t that have been part of the discussion

as to whether it was a preserve or a park, in that particular area?

Ms. BLASZAK. Actually, the differences, I should clarify, sir. The

differences in preserve lands and park lands, for the sake of money,

is no different. For hunting, sport hunting is allowed on preserve

lands. There are differences, of course, in wilderness.

Mr. SOUDER. In the wilderness preserves.

Ms. BLASZAK. In Wrangell’s, yes.

Mr. SOUDER. So, in that, if there is an inholding that allowed

mining in a park, that wasn’t wilderness, that there would be usually a statement as to the risks to the park, but would or would

not be named, historically, a park of Alaska? What kind of precedence—forget a park of Alaska for a minute.

Ms. BLASZAK. We don’t have good precedent. That’s our problem.

In fact, Mr. Anderson might be able to address that. At Denali National Park, there had been mining in the Kantishna area for many

years, that through, I think, the consent of Congress, we were able

to buy out the majority of those land claims.

34

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Anderson, I note that the other thing is that—

although, Alaska, you tend to circulate a little more in Alaska. And

you’ve all worked in other places, too. And I ask the question

broader. In addition, but in Alaska—could you kind of give a little

more on Denali, and on any other experience that you know of, and

any precedents we have in the park on mining inside the park.

Mr. ANDERSON. Let me speak specifically to Denali for just a

minute. When when Mt. McKinley National Park was expanded by

4 million acres and renamed as Denali National Park and Preserve, in ANILCA, it encompassed the Kantishna Mining District,

just outside the old park boundary, as well as some other mining

claims along the boundaries also in the park.

In the early 1980’s, there was active mining activity going on

there, and some desire to increase access in mining at the time.

Based on a lawsuit, that occurred in the early 1980’s, the Park

Service did an environmental impact statement on the impact of

mining in the Kantishna area on national parks. The outcome of

that, a preferred alternative, that was signed off on, I think, in

1985, was that the Park Service would attempt to buy out all of

the mining claims in the National Park, including all of those in

Kantishna. And from that point forward, we’ve moved in that direction to purchase mining claims that were available for sale.

We have, in fact, approved plans of operations in Kantishna since

that time, but not very many. All of those have been very smallscale, individual mining activity, as opposed to big corporate, largescale mining activity. And we continue to work on that.

It’s been a very acrimonious process, over time, and with the

help of the Congress, in the late 1990’s, we were—and in cooperation with the landowners in Kantishna, mining claim owners, we

were able to acquire the majority of claims through a legislative

taking, on a willing-participant basis; so that the owners were allowed to put their land into a taking situation, if they so choose,

and then the courts made the determination on the value of the

claims.

That eliminated about 4,000 acres of mining claims. There’s less

than 1,000 acres of private lands left in Kantishna. There is no

mining activity occurring at the present time.

Mr. SOUDER. Well, in sorting out how we’re going to deal with

the inholdings question, long term—basically not in dealing with

many people who—native Alaskans, Alaska Natives, either one,

who have been on the land for a long period of time, but a lot of

which are, for lack of a better word, ‘‘absentee landowner’’ questions of inholdings, which is relatively unique; the scale. The scale

is certainly unique, but even the concept is relatively unique in

Alaska. Partly because of the timing when you did it; partly the

way the process was done.

Is it the Park Service policy that you would trade land?

Ms. BLASZAK. We would always be interested in considering an

exchange, particularly when we could consolidate acreage, to make

it less difficult for access.

And I’d also like to add, Mr. Chairman, that the number of selections that were made by the Native corporations at the time of the

compromise of ANILCA, were selected for their potential mineral

or timber value, anticipating that they would produce revenue for

35

mature elders of those Native corporations who made the selections.

Mr. SOUDER. And the challenge in the—just as an outsider coming in—and let’s plunge into another controversy.

I, for example, favor drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. I wasn’t on the Alaska Delegation. I’ve looked at it. Clearly,

there, that area was a set-aside, consolidating area for potential

drilling. It wasn’t a bunch of lots. All through, it was set aside. It

was marked on the original map what its intent was.

I’m also a mining guy. I have the No. 1 manufacturing congressional district in the United States. You can’t make things if you

can’t get things out of the ground. The question is, is where and

when and in what kind of process you do that.

That’s originally BLM land. It was Bureau of Lands and Mines.

The Forest Service was created to cut the timber, not to make it

a wilderness, and this really becomes a wilderness. In my opinion,

they should move it to the Park Service. That this, all the time,

causes nightmares in the Park Service, because everybody outside

the Park Service thinks that’s the ultimate goal of the Park Service, to turn every piece of land that they have into a wilderness.

I’m a visitation guy, too. I believe there should be wilderness

areas and visitation areas. But increasingly what we’re seeing is

the Forest Service access to places. And most parks around the

United States are becoming recreational areas, and you see the

more and more lodging at the edges, the entertainment-type things

that people like me would do, that are older and don’t hike 15

miles up a mountain. We tend to scatter around the edges of the

places (Indiscernible) in.

I’d be more of a cruise ship guy, in that sense, as I get older. Not

that I was all that great a mountain climber, when I was younger,

but would be more of a cruise ship person, who are at the edges.

But there is an orderly process, as we’re trying to move toward

it, and I see you making those steps in Alaska. But the challenges

here are just so massive, compared to what we’ve heard at the

other parks hearings, partly because it isn’t necessarily that nice,

orderly forest land abutting the park land.

Do any of you have forest land abutting the park land where the

visitation services are, visitor services? In other words, that’s the

question. That in the wild areas—you have forest land around the

back of the Kenai Fjords and elsewhere. But is the forest abutting

up, or BLM land abutting up? Do you have any kind of buffer zone

that——

Mr. MOW. Well, at Kenai Fjords, along the Exit Glacier Road, the

Chugach National Forest and the Park Service are immediately adjacent. We’ve had some differences on how we manage those lands,

particularly camping issues. But we’ve been working together,

more and more, on specific problems that come up, around certain

times of the year, to address some of those issues. But, you know,

I think you’re correct in that it’s generally rare. But, you know,

this is one example on where we do have day-to-day visitation and

visitor services occurring in——

Mr. SOUDER. And as I understand——

Mr. MOW [continuing]. The adjacent areas.

36

Mr. SOUDER [continuing]. Part of your challenge on the water is,

is that the water around Kenai Fjords is actually Fish and Wildlife;

is that correct?

Mr. MOW. Well, the offshore islands are under the jurisdiction of

the Fish and Wildlife Service, as part of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge. And so, you know, again, the tour boats,

themselves, don’t actually set foot on those lands. But, you know,

those choosable islands are the most highly visited portion of that

maritime refuge, and so it’s our park interpreters that provide the

interpretive services for those.

Mr. SOUDER. Because as you look at the maritime wildlife refuge,

it’s scattered all over the place. Up near Kobuk Valley, isn’t it also

there that the waters are basically Fish and Wildlife, but the land

and park is the Park Service.

Ms. BLASZAK. Because of the large tracts of federally managed

land in Alaska, we abut NPRA, to the north, at Noatak and Gates

of the Arctic, and BLM manages those lands. We also, in that part

area of the country, have, I think, specific national wildlife refuges

adjacent to us, and we do collaboratively provide visitor services at

the hall, at the Kobuk Visitor Center. So there’s a number of places

where we intersect.

I think at Denali, BLM—isn’t that adjacent to you, Paul, out the

Denali Highway? Maybe not directly, but——

Mr. ANDERSON. (Nodding head.)

Ms. BLASZAK. So we do have places where we intersect.

Mr. SOUDER. Well, I thank you very much for your testimony. We

may have some additional followup written questions, to get some

park-specific data, and have some further followup questions, after

the second panel here. We have to be out of the room at 1, so I

want to move to the second panel.

But I thank you for your willingness to be open today to talk

about questions that are very difficult and very important to Alaska. And I feel very awkward, as a form of presence here. And my

friend, Congressman Young, who’s an impressive advocate for Alaska—it’s really a concern of a lot of us that are asking questions

about Alaska, because he thinks they’re—it’s his State, and he

doesn’t want us to—and every time we start to probe too much, he

says, ‘‘That’s why I voted against Statehood.’’

These are huge questions, and to some degree, there is a legitimate feeling in Alaska that—in Indiana, we just cut down all our

trees, and we, quite frankly, removed the Native Americans. On

the other hand, you learn something from your experience, and you

try to balance out how to allow a State the actual economic growth

and people growth that they have every right to do, as people who

live here.

But the national presence is a tremendous—Seward’s Folly

wasn’t so much of a folly, historically, when you look at it, and it

was a benefit to the United States.

And, otherwise, quite frankly, if the U.S. Government hadn’t

come in, we’d be speaking Russian here today. So the U.S. Government has been a positive presence in Alaska, from the beginning,

and an active presence, and it’s a very difficult process to work

through.

37

And I appreciate your willingness to each have your respective

parks and all of your individual rangers to work through this. It’s

a beautiful land, and we want to preserve as much as we can and

enjoy it, as well. So thank you very much for coming today.

Ms. BLASZAK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SOUDER. If the second panel could come forward.

I presume all of you heard, in the first panel, our five witnesses

here are Mr. Menge; is that correct?

Mr. MENGE. Menge.

Mr. SOUDER. Menge, OK.

Commissioner of the Alaska Department of Natural Resources;

Mr. James Stratton, who everybody calls ‘‘Stratto.’’

Is that an official name, or is that a——

Mr. STRATTON. Nah, it’s kind of an official name.

Mr. SOUDER. Regional director of the Alaska Office, National

Parks Conservation Association. I understand he’s going to sing his

testimony today.

Ron Peck is being represented today by Dave Worrell, who’s the

communications director of the Alaska Travel Industry Association.

Thank you for coming today.

Mr. Rick Kenyon, publisher, Wrangell-St. Elias News. Thank you

for coming all the way over. I just did the drive myself.

And Mr. John Shively—good to see you again—vice president,

Government and Community Relations for Holland America. As

you’ve heard, it’s a government oversight committee.

It’s been our standard practice to swear in all our witnesses. So

if you will all stand and raise your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SOUDER. Let the record show that each of the witnesses responded in the affirmative.

That probably was our most famous hearing that we’ve done this

congressional cycle was the steroids hearings. You’re Mark

McGuire and Sammy Sosa, with the interpreter in between.

Actually, Canseco, Mark McGuire. Jim, you’re in the Mark

McGuire spot. You would need an interpreter, because Sammy

wouldn’t sit next to McGuire.

Then we had a few more. John, you’re Rafael Palmeiro. So I bid

you say, ‘‘And I did not do’’——

Mr. SHIVELY. Correct.

Mr. SOUDER. All right. ‘‘Then retest the applicant.’’

That was the most unusual hearings we’ve done. But we do it on

lots of different issues. And thank you for participating. So you can

see it’s wide ranging. And I’m looking forward to each of your testimony.

You heard the first panel. Your official statements go on the

record. That we have a flexible 5-minute rule here. You can go a

little over, but I’d like to have time to ask some questions, too.

So Mr. Menge, thank you for coming.

38

STATEMENTS OF MICHAEL MENGE, COMMISSIONER, ALASKA

DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES; JAMES STRATTON,

REGIONAL DIRECTOR FOR THE ALASKA OFFICE, NATIONAL

PARK CONSERVATION ASSOCIATION; DAVE WORRELL, COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR, ALASKA TRAVEL INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION; RICK KENYON, PUBLISHER, WRANGELL-ST. ELIAS

NEWS; AND JOHN SHIVELY, VICE PRESIDENT, GOVERNMENT

AND COMMUNITY RELATIONS, HOLLAND AMERICA

STATEMENT OF MICHAEL MENGE

Mr. MENGE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

For the record, my name is Michael Menge, Commissioner of

Alaska Department of Natural Resources. I appreciate submitting

this testimony, for the record.

I think I will just skip across some of the major areas, and then,

based upon your previous practice, it looks like it will be spirited

questions and answers. So I look forward to that.

I’m sure, as Congressman Young has pointed out to you on numerous occasions—probably many more than you really necessarily

wanted—Alaska really is unique. We were essentially frozen in

amber. During the time that the rest of the U.S. infrastructure was

being built, we were essentially up here cold.

Our transportation infrastructure system developed along the

rivers, the ocean, and there were no highways to speak of. Air travel came along about the time when the eastern and lower continental folks were coming out here to create economic well-being for

themselves. Air travel developed partly, at that time, so rather

than go through the costly and expensive process of kind of jamming roads into the wilderness, we used the airplane. So Alaska’s

infrastructure simply never developed as it had across the ‘‘Lower

48.’’ And I think, in that, lies the issues that we confront most

today.

First, let me say that we really appreciate the Park Service

today. Back in 1980, when ANILCA was first passed, it was a very

uneasy relationship. There were a lot of young, eager folks coming

in from the ‘‘Lower 48,’’ who had grown up in the traditional National Park System and brought with them a view of how the parks

worked in relationships that had been established with the neighbors. And then that relationship grew strained, and there were several incidents that we wish had never occurred.

I must say, under Director Blaszak, and the rest of the panel

here, as well, it’s a new Park Service that serves in Alaska today.

And while we may disagree on some things, we have found, particularly her staff, very amenable to sitting down and working

through the problems. And I think that’s really one of the biggest

issues we have to deal with.

As you’ve mentioned, there was probably the greatest horse-trading session in the history of mankind that occurred back when

ANILCA was being put together. And if you were there, or heard

about it, there were a lot of people with black magic markers and

huge maps rolled out on the ground. The State was trying to establish an economic basis to grow an economy. They virtually had no

existing infrastructure, industry or any structured economy, other

39

than our fishing, a little timber, and tourism was nonexistent in

those days.

Certainly, the folks that you had spoke of, in the ‘‘Lower 48,’’

who spent their lives in the conservation movement, had watched

with dismay the way resources were allocated across the ‘‘Lower

48,’’ and they realized that there was precious little of the special

places left, and they were highly motivated to protect as much of

Alaska as they could. Because you’re hard-pressed to find anywhere in this State that doesn’t deserve special recognition.

Speaking of Alaska, I admit I may come across as a little bit

overly proud. The truth of the matter is, I’ve had many opportunities to walk and visit most of State, over my years here, and every

place is very special.

And I can’t imagine the difficulty of trying to say that one area

deserves protection over another. Certainly, Glacier Bay, Denali

and Wrangell, those are extraordinarily special areas. But even the

run-of-the-mill areas in the State are just spectacular in their size

and grandeur.

There was quite a struggle dividing it up amongst the Native

corporations. Which was, as you recall, one of the most daring and

creative experiments, probably in the 20th Century, was trying to

figure out a way to break the chain of the reservations and establish an economic base.

The State was doing very much the same in its selection of lands,

and there were many, many dedicated professionals, back in D.C.,

who also had a vision for Alaska’s park system, wildlife system, forest system. So it was a unique experience.

And what emerged out of that—because you were talking about

an inholder access. There were a lot of fire system lines, but there

also was the concept we call ‘‘Title 11,’’ or ‘‘access.’’ And we literally

did simply say, ‘‘We’ll deal with that later.’’ ANILCA said the access will be granted, and that was good enough for the time. As we

sat down and started working through that, of course, that’s the

first time the challenges emerged, and challenges that we still face

today.

The largest issue that, at least during Governor Murkowski’s

term, time in office, has been in Glacier Bay and in discussions on

what’s the appropriate level of visitation. And the Governor felt

very strongly that two ships a day was appropriate, and certainly

the current administration is moving up toward that number. We

haven’t reached there yet. But I will say, for the record, that Superintendent Lee and Director Blaszak have been very helpful in

working toward those goals, and that really is the biggest issue of

the leading base.

The McCarthy issue and the access issue is one that continues

being a challenge. We really appreciate all the work that’s been

going on in that area, because it’s a tough nut to crack. Because,

as you can imagine, a road-in access is in the eye of the beholder,

and seldom does an inholder envision access the same as a Park

Service employee, and therein lies the problem.

The uneasy truce that began in the 1980’s I think has matured,

as most of us have, and as our hair has fallen out and what little

we have left is turning gray, we began to appreciate the positive

40

benefits of the Park Service and the ability to grow an economy associated with that.

Mining in the parks was a tough one. There’s probably a worldclass composite down in Glacier Bay, but even—it’s under a glacier.

And you can imagine the challenges associated with putting a mine

in the park, under a glacier in that park. So no question of the

quality and the quantity of the ore, but the ability to develop and

bring it out, that is a challenge.

You can imagine the discussions associated with that. How much

is it worth? One person would say, ‘‘Well, it’s not worth anything,

because you can never put a mine in the park,’’ and someone else,

a geologist, will stand up, red-faced, and say, ‘‘But it’s worth billions of dollar,’’ and then the fight was on.

So we still have a fair number of challenges that we have to address. But let me say that we have come to appreciate the contributions that the National Park Service can make to the State. We

recognize that these parks will never be the same as the parks in

the ‘‘Lower 48.’’ Each and every one has a special and unique character that will have to be factored into any kind of resolution. And

the only way that we will be successful, ultimately, is through the

good will of the participants on both sides.

We put together, while I served in the Senate with Senator Murkowski, now Governor, we put together some funding to put in an

ANILCA training course, which had been taken by just about everyone in the Federal Government. It helped to explain how the

process evolved, what the promises were, and whether those promises are being kept.

And I think an understanding of the history—and there was a

tremendous amount of ‘‘trust me,’’ when that legislation was

passed, and that ‘‘trust me’’ only lasts so long as the people who

drafted it remember. And once they’re done, and they’ve gone down

to The Monocle and enjoyed a few libations and congratulated

themselves, it’s left to others to carry out. And in trying to keep

those promises alive, it’s a challenge. But the ANILCA course has

gone a long way in doing that.

So I’ll stop there, Mr. Chairman, saying that it’s been a rough

road, but it’s gotten a lot better in the last 13 years. We have a

long way to go, and our success will be based strictly on the willingness of both the State and private parties and the Park Service

to work together. Because none of these issues are going to be easy,

as was testified in the McCarthy case. And I’m sure you’re aware

of the case. Those are all just real tough nuts to crack.

But there’s no clear-cut statutory authority that anoints a winner

prior to the beginning of the process. So we just have to roll up our

sleeves and dig in. And I think therein will lie the ultimate resolution.

As you said, the Park Service has evolved significantly across the

country. And we will have the cost of energy, which (Indiscernible),

will have profound effects on the systems up here, as it does with

the Congress.

I think we’d have a whole lot of fun talking about the horror stories of trying to get energy into our rural villages. It’s $8 a gallon

now and growing. And it’s a very difficult social issue to deal with.

The same pressures on those villages will also affect the future poVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:54 Jul 16, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00044 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\35892.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
41

tential growth for the parks. We’re just a long way away from any

kind of established infrastructure, and you have to have a few

bucks in your pocket to get out.

Mr. Chairman, thank you for coming up and visiting our State.

We appreciate your interest in the parks. And the Governor has

certainly made his pledge to work with all the Federal agencies.

Even if we bark at each other, from time to time, it’s a—we’ll figure it out.

So thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Menge follows:]

42

43

44

45

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. I’ve heard new roads and bridges are

expensive to build.

Mr. Stratton, I want to thank you. First off, let me state, for your

willingness, at all these hearings, to kind of do an overview of the

status of the different parks. I appreciate it.

STATEMENT OF JAMES STRATTON

Mr. STRATTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today about the national parks in

Alaska.

My name is Jim Stratton. I’m the Alaska Regional Director for

the National Parks Conservation Association; lived in Alaska for 25

years. And just prior to joining NPCA, I spent about 71⁄2 years as

the Director of Alaska State Parks, actually working, for most of

that time, for Mr. Shively, at the end of the table here.

And as the chairman already knows, I also double as a disc jockey on Saturday nights for a show called ‘‘The Arctic Cactus Hour.’’

But my day job is with NPCA, the nonpartisan National Parks

Conservation Association. We’ve been the leading voice of the

American people in protecting and enhancing our National Park

System for present and future generations.

I’ve submitted written testimony I’m going to try and summarize

here today. In addition, I did want to point out NPCA has submitted, for the record, testimony from two hearings that the Congressman intended to hold, but were unfortunately postponed, in Atlanta and Indiana Dunes. I wanted to make sure that was recognized.

Well, as was mentioned in the Park Service panel, most everything in Alaska is different, including our national parks. We have

a lot of them, we have more of them than everybody else, and it

was greatly expanded, in 1980, with the passage of the Alaska

Lands Act. And with all of those new parks, 10 new parks, in 1980,

this required an immediate infusion of staff and infrastructure to

support these parks, some of which are larger than most eastern

States. And this rapid expansion in Alaska created definite growing

pains, as the Commission mentioned, as park management strategies and policies, that worked well in the ‘‘Lower 48,’’ were found

needing improvement and modification to fit both the unique physical environment in Alaska and the unique governing language

found in ANILCA.

It’s navigating these unique challenges, to meet the intent of

Congress to provide for access and subsistence while staying true

to the Organic Act and the park protection purposes found in

ANILCA, that is the difficult situation.

In many cases, because ANILCA is still a young bill—it’s only 25

years old—the Park Service and park advocates are still trying to

determine just what Congress intended. ‘‘What is a ‘traditional activity?’ How can you access inholdings and still protect park values? How can we provide for sport and subsistence hunting and

also provide for natural and healthy wildlife populations.’’

These are not easy questions and the answers are still emerging,

and moreover, implementing this unique language, however, has

created demands on the Park Service’s limited operating budget.

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Now, when reviewing the base operating budgets of the parks in

Alaska, we find a similar trend to parks in the ‘‘Lower 48.’’ There’s

more to do with less money, and base operating budgets just aren’t

keeping track, keeping up with park needs. So as a result, park superintendents are forced to make difficult decisions about what programs and services to reduce; with the additional strain in Alaska

on the budget from those unique aspects of park management that

you only find here, made so primarily because of the size and the

remoteness of our 15 parks.

One impact that I want to talk about briefly is that on the use

of aircraft in our parks. Because of their vast size, remote nature,

and lack of road access, parks in Alaska are best accessed by aircraft. Small airplanes are standard park vehicles in Alaska, like

pickup trucks would be in the ‘‘Lower 48.’’ Airplanes are used for

ranger patrols, ferrying supplies to ranger stations, search and rescue, scientific research and monitoring, and basic transportation of

staff from one side of the park to the other.

Even Denali and Wrangell-St. Elias, which are primarily—or are

the only two natural resource parks with an appreciable road

access——

COURT REPORTER. [Requested the witness slow down.]

Mr. STRATTON. I have the same problem as the chairman, you’ll

find out—which are the two national resource parks with any appreciable road access, require aircraft to patrol and monitor the

majority of the park’s backcountry, which is not road accessible.

This is one of the big differences between Alaska’s parks and those

in the lower 48 States. Because without aircraft, all of the remote

parks, including Wrangell and St. Elias, would not benefit from the

natural and cultural resource protection provided by the park rangers.

The recent cost in aviation fuel, coupled with the overall increasing cost of maintaining aircraft, are causing the parks in Alaska to

reduce or eliminate the amount of time that they spend in the air,

and that’s not good for resources.

Now, another of ANILCA’s unique programs that has budget implications is subsistence, found in Title 8. Now, with the exception

of Katmai and Glacier Bay park lands, the original Mt. McKinley

National Park, and Kenai Fjords National Park, Congress made it

clear that residents living close to or within boundaries of park

units in Alaska would be allowed to hunt and gather subsistence

resources necessary to perpetuate a traditional rural lifestyle. At

the same time, Congress charged the Park Service to provide for

subsistence in a manner that does not diminish the purposes and

values for which the park was originally created.

Now, providing for this balance, between perpetuating park resources and providing for subsistence, does have budget implications.

The Park Service has to work with local villages to identify and

meet subsistence needs, and then they need to find out the status

of those subsistence resources: How many are being consumed and

used by the residents. This takes research and monitoring money.

Additionally, Congress also allowed for sport hunting in 19 million acres of national preserves. And though the regulating body is

different—sport hunting is regulated by the Alaska Board of Game.

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The Alaska Board of Game, ensuring that sport hunting does not

negatively impact the purposes and values for which the park was

created, such as healthy wildlife populations, has budgetary implications similar to those of subsistence.

Now, I want to say that NPCA does not see hunting as a distinct

activity that is a threat to the resources in the national parks. But

the Park Service does need to know how many animals live in their

parks and how many are being harvested annually, to ensure that

the agency is maintaining healthy and naturally occurring wildlife

populations, in accordance with ANILCA, the Organic Act and

other management guidelines.

And according to an analysis that we’ve just completed, the Park

Service lacks the necessary resources to monitor wildlife populations and harvest levels to make sure that current wildlife harvest is not adversely impacting the ability to perpetuate natural

and healthy wildlife populations.

Now, this analysis is detailed in a report that we’re just releasing

today called, ‘‘Who’s counting? How Insufficient Support For

Science Is Hindering National Park Wildlife Management in Alaska.’’ And I have a copy here that I would like to submit, for the

record.

This report demonstrates that timely and scientifically sound

population and harvest data, and the ability to analyze the information, is not always available to park managers. Now, the lack

of data is not an indication of a lack of interest on the part of the

Park Service, but rather is indicative of the funding shortfalls that

affect the entire National Park System.

Now, currently, there are two sources of harvest data that are

available to the Park Service: One, is the Reporting Data base, developed by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, where hunters send in their information; the second, is the Community Harvest Surveys, also developed by the Department of Fish and Game,

where rural residents estimate how much has been harvested in

those villages through an interview process of people going out to

the villages and sitting down with the individual hunters and finding out what that harvest has been.

Now, our new report examines both the population science and

the harvest data and looks at the challenges facing the Park Service. And we have three recommendations that we are making to the

Park Service to improve this situation. Now, clearly, each of these

recommendations will take additional resources. The quickest way

to address these problems is to provide additional funding through

park operating budgets. We think this is basic scientific data that

must be collected as part of each park’s basic park operations.

The first is: The National Park should increase support for conducting and analyzing population science in hunted species. Research is expensive, and we recognize that, but we don’t think it’s

nearly as expensive as failing to maintain healthy wildlife populations. For ecologically important and/or heavily harvested species,

park-specific plans should be completed that identify what studies

are currently provided for in park operations budgets and other

Park Service funding sources, or are provided by partner agencies

such as the University or the State of Alaska. And then, look at

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the gap, where additional wildlife population research needs to be

done.

Second: The Park Service should support regularly scheduled

Community Harvest Surveys. The available data in the reporting

data base from the State of Alaska falls short of explaining the

rural harvest activities in Alaska. The Park Service needs to make

a commitment to providing additional funds and/or other measures

to efficiently conduct Community Harvest Surveys in a timely and

in a culturally sensitive manner. Any system that is used must be

respectful of rural residents and their long-term tradition with the

land. And we think that these surveys should be done every 7 to

10 years as a baseline for the wildlife that is being consumed in

each of the 84 resident zone communities in parks and monuments

and communities in close proximity to preserves.

Our third recommendation is: That the Park Service should support a new position for a Statewide wildlife data manager, because

collecting data is only part of the process. The Park Service also

needs the expertise to incorporate the information into a Statewide

data base, analyze it, and interpret the results for park managers.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank you for bringing the committee to Alaska and focusing attention on the national treasures

of our State. Alaska has the biggest, the most remote and the

wildest national parks in our country. And when it passed

ANILCA, Congress intended these preserves to be protected as intact wilderness ecosystems, while also perpetuating the ability of

Alaska’s rural residents, including those who rely on wildlife and

other park resources for subsistence, to continue their traditional

way of life; and for visitors from the ‘‘Lower 48’’ to come out, and

come up to Alaska and learn and see and experience what our national parks have to offer.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Stratton follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. And I also have a statement from the Denali Foundation to put into the record, that we’ll put in at the end of this

panel. You refer to the statements for the Atlanta and Indiana

Dunes hearings that we were going to do. We’re going to hold this

record open a little longer, to see whether or not those—the Atlanta hearing may actually occur yet this fall, depending on how

things are going down in the park, the historic park. And some of

the documents down there, at Indiana Dunes, may actually shift up

to Michigan. But depending on what we’re going to do, we’ll put the

statements in this record, if those don’t get confirmed, because we

don’t want to lose the testimony in the parks process.

Also, because, at the very least, you and I talk so fast—one of

the things, we’ll have a little longer for this process, that when the

staff gets each of the statements back, then get them out to the individuals and do a review—because I know it’s hard to keep up

with our rapid rate. But then we can probably ask any witness that

gets a statement back to—not fundamentally change what we’ve

said, but, at least, that would help a little bit with the accuracy of

the hearing.

Now, next, we’ll move to the travel industry. Thank you for coming today.

STATEMENT OF DAVE WORRELL

Mr. WORRELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We sure do appreciate

this opportunity to participate. Ron asked me to express his regrets. He had to leave town for a family emergency. He prepared

this presentation, and I’m going to try and follow his notes a little

bit. So I will also be brief.

The first thing I wanted to cover was a little bit of just basic visitor numbers for the State of Alaska. And what’s interesting here

is, this is a 10-year look at visitation in Alaska.

Ten years ago, in 1996, we had a roughly equal number of cruise

visitors and what we call ‘‘other’’ or ‘‘independent travelers.’’ As you

can see, the cruise visitation has grown substantially over the

years, whereas the independent visitation has remained roughly

consistent.

Tourism is very important to Alaska’s economy. We provide

roughly 31,000 jobs. And that’s the State of Alaska Department of

Labor statistic. We’re a big contribution to the State of Alaska’s

economy: Roughly $1.6 billion, in direct and indirect expenditures,

for the industry; and a total sales, when you include the multiplier

effects, of $2.4 billion. We’re just behind the oil industry, tied with

the commercial fishing industry, and ahead of timber, mining and

agriculture for the State of Alaska.

All of our marketing for the State of Alaska is based on research,

and we did some research in 2002, following up on previous research.

People come to Alaska for three things; mountains, glaciers and

wildlife. You can go back to 1899, to the Harriman Expedition, and

they came to Alaska for the same reasons; mountains, glaciers and

wildlife.

44 percent of our visitors indicate that they went to Denali National Park. 76 percent of the highway travelers mentioned visiting

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national parks or scenic wonders in the State of Alaska. The national parks and park units play a vital role to tourism in Alaska.

I want to mention a few of the challenges and obstacles the tourism industry faces. Clearly, public lands access is a crucial issue

for the tourism industry. Infrastructure quality, it’s very important

for our industry to have a quality experience for visitors to partake

in. We want to improve the dispersal of visitors. It’s important for

people, to have a good experience, to get to a variety of different

locations.

And finally, we want to increase recognition of all of Alaska’s

public lands throughout the State. There is 15 park units, and people really only know of two; Denali and Glacier Bay.

So, the last couple of years, we’ve had a program, that was fund- ed by Congress, of $750,000, to market Alaska’s national parks,

particularly parks other than Denali National Park. And the object

of that program was to increase awareness of the parks, to encourage visitation to Alaska’s lesser known parks. And we believe that

was a very successful program, and it’s one we hope to use as a

model for other areas.

In closing up, we’ve got a few priorities that we’d like the committee to look at. And probably one of our biggest priorities is the

south side of Denali National Park, development at Curry Ridge.

There is a Record of Decision, signed on June 30th. Now we hope

that there—it’s a cooperative venture between the State of Alaska,

the National Park Service and local communities, and we think

this will be a great addition to spread the visitors to Denali National Park out of that core-entrance area.

We think it’s time for road improvements at Wrangell-St. Elias

National Park. And we are working with the State of Alaska and

the National Park Service in hope that happens sooner rather than

later.

And once again, we believe it’s important to expand our marketing efforts to market all of Alaska’s park lands.

And we have established a great relationship with the Park Service, over the past several years, and we certainly hope that to continue, and also, incorporate other public lands management agencies, as well.

And with that, I’ll close my testimony. Thank you.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Peck follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. And Mr. Kenyon.

STATEMENT OF RICK KENYON

Mr. KENYON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for this opportunity to

testify about the important issue of community and National Park

Service relations.

It’s apparent that you have a strong desire to see our parks become better places to visit, and that’s a desire that my wife and

I share.

Before I start, I want—could I just clarify—I know you’ve talked

a little bit about the time we have for additional testimony, by—

this hearing was not well publicized here, in Alaska, and I know

there are some that would like to submit testimony.

Mr. SOUDER. Yes. We’ll take, within reason—any written testimony will—obviously, when people—in questioning, it’s under oath

and has a different meaning——

Mr. KENYON. Sure.

Mr. SOUDER [continuing]. Than written testimony. But as long as

it’s reasonable and well thought out, I would be happy to take written testimony from anybody who presents written testimony.

Mr. KENYON. Is there—the 5 days, 10 days.

Mr. SOUDER. Generally speaking, we do have 2 weeks. But if it

takes longer than that, we’re going to leave the hearing record

open (Indiscernible).

Mr. KENYON. Thank you very much.

My name is Rick Kenyon. My wife, Bonnie and I, have lived full

time in the McCarthy area since 1977. You might imagine, I’m very

much out of my element here today. We’ve been contract weather

observers for NOAA and the FAA since 1983. We operate a bed and

breakfast near McCarthy. Since 1992, we’ve published a news magazine called the ‘‘Wrangell St. Elias News. Each spring we publish

‘‘A Visitor’s Guide to Kennicott and McCarthy,’’ which is given free

of charge to area visitors. We also pastor the McCarthy-Kennicott

Community Church. And finally, we’re both volunteer interpretive

rangers at the Park Service, staffing the McCarthy Road Information Station on Friday nights from 5 to 8 p.m.

For 26 years, we’ve watched the interaction between the rural

Alaskan communities of McCarthy and Kennicott and the Park

Service. For the majority of those years, it must be characterized

as adversarial. Fortunately, much progress has been made, during

the past 2 years, under Director Blaszak.

When Park Service historian Jeff Bleakley wrote the official administrative history of Wrangell-St. Elias, he unfortunately had to

title it, ‘‘Contested Ground.’’

In the spring of 1994, a hearing, similar to this one, was held

here in this same building. Anchorage Voice of the Times Reporter

Dennis Fradley summed the meeting up this way, ‘‘One after another, each individual told of how he or she was being mistreated

by the Park Service. They painted a picture of an agency gone

amok—a Federal bureaucracy that has become an arrogant despot,

trampling individual, property and State rights at will.’’

I wish I could tell you that things changed for the better right

after that hearing, but unfortunately, they got worse.

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Nearly 10 years later, during the summer of 2003, community relations between McCarthy and the National Park Service hit an

all-time low.

In April of that year, the Park Service suddenly and unexpectedly posted and closed a historic mining road that the communities

of McCarthy and Kennicott had used for 80 years. The Park Service suddenly said it did not exist.

After the townspeople loudly protested, the Park Service then

modified the closure. They said that any resident could use the

road for subsistence, except for the people who actually lived up the

road, because they might be using subsistence as an excuse to actually travel from their home to the nearest town, which was McCarthy.

Within a few months, armed, flak-jacketed rangers were in the

family’s yard, with a host of scientists, in an apparent attempt to

prove that the family had somehow damaged park resources by

using the road that served as their driveway.

We sent a reporter to the scene, a neighbor and a mother of five.

She was able to observe, unseen, from the family’s home.

When she returned to McCarthy, she got off the plane and burst

into uncontrollable sobbing. She said she had never believed that

her government was capable of such actions.

It is my firm belief that only prayer and the grace of God averted

bloodshed in the Wrangells.

Fortunately, the Alaska Regional Director that allowed this

atrocity is gone. The Superintendent and the Chief Ranger who engineered it are both gone.

Unfortunately, the Superintendent was rewarded with the prestigious Stephen T. Mather award shortly after this incident. There

was no question but that he was being rewarded for his attacks

against inholders at Wrangell-St. Elias. Also, unfortunately, the

Chief Ranger’s assistant was promoted to the current Chief Ranger

position at Wrangell-St. Elias.

Alaska’s current National Park Service management has made

moves in the right direction. Director Blaszak appointed the very

capable Jed Davis as Superintendent at Wrangell-St. Elias. Great

strides toward understanding and cooperation between the Park

Service were made under Jed’s leadership. Much progress was

made toward healing the wounds. Sadly, cancer claimed Jed’s life

this last spring. It is hoped that the next superintendent will display Jed’s commitment to working fairly and honestly with the

communities in the park. Sadly, some of the gains made have already eroded under interim management.

There’s much to say concerning access to inholdings, particularly

the use of the National Environmental Policy Act, which has been,

in the past, used to deny access to inholdings. However, time is

short, and these things are covered in my written testimony.

The May 8th edition of the Anchorage Daily News published an

Op-Ed by McCarthy resident and business owner Neil Darish, who

pleads for understanding of the importance of rural communities

within Alaska’s national parks.

Yesterday, Sunday’s New York Times reviewed Dan O’Neill’s

book, ‘‘A Land Gone Lonesome.’’ This noted Alaskan historian describes how the Park Service eliminates people from Alaska’s vast

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parks. New personal stories cease to be created and tradition dies.

All of this is completely unnecessary. Even at the height of human

occupancy of these areas, 100 years ago in the gold rush, only tiny

parts of these parks were ever occupied.

And I have a copy of the book I’d like to give to you, Mr. Chairman, if I could.

We urge the committee—excuse me.

Nature and thriving pre-existing communities are not mutually

exclusive concepts. Around the world, administrators of protected

areas have proven this. In Ohio, Cuyahoga Valley National Park

Superintendent John Debo has begun to implement these better

management concepts.

We urge the committee to look at our situation here in Alaska’s

parks, and we are confident that you will see that a break from

past aggressive practices against park landowners and communities will deliver far better value for the government budget while

maintaining resource protection and enhancing visitor enjoyment.

We have appreciated the unprecedented outreach from Director

Blaszak and her deputy, Vic Knox these past months, and we see

commitment and leadership that can, indeed, put the ‘‘service’’ back

in the National Park Service. It will, however, not be easy.

My desire—and I believe that Marcia and Vic share that desire—

is that instead of ‘‘contested ground,’’ residents and park managers

will find ‘‘common ground’’ and learn to work together. I believe

that all Americans will benefit from this effort.

Thank you.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you for your willingness to testify today.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Kenyon follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Our last panelist is Mr. Shively. Thank you for

coming today.

Mr. SHIVELY. Yes, sir.

STATEMENT OF JOHN SHIVELY

Mr. SHIVELY. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for having

me.

I will say, for the record, I never have used steroids, nor do I intend to. So let’s get that out of the way first.

The other thing I’ll say is, going last is great, because

everybody’s already said everything you wanted to say, pretty

much. And I think that there’s a lot that’s been said here today

that I certainly support but will not repeat for you.

I’ve been in Alaska over 40 years. Among other things, I have

served as—in the same position that Mr. Menge currently holds.

Also, I spent a fair amount of time in Washington, DC, working for

a Native corporation during the D2 debates. So I do have some experience there.

What I want to talk to you about a little bit today is sort of how

the cruise industry interacts with the national parks. And particularly, for Holland America Line, which I represent, how important

the park system is to us and to our program, and also, to our

guests. Therefore people that come to Alaska on Holland America

lines can visit a whole host of national parks. Of course, Denali and

Glacier Bay are the two that people most often think about, but

Kenai Fjords, Gates of the Arctic, the Klondike National Historic

Park in Skagway, and the Klondike National Historic Park in Seattle, Wrangell-St. Elias, the Sitka National Historic Park, Kenai—

and would also have people that can see the Yukon-Charley National Preserve, the Kenai National Wildlife Preserve and Misty

Fjords National Monument. Not that you’d probably do it all in one

trip, but all of those are possible.

We have spent a fair amount of time trying to work with the

park system, particularly in places where there’s a large impact, to

develop interpretive programs, so our guests have a better understanding of the national parks and what they’re about. And we continue to grow that program.

This year alone, we started a new program in Seattle, with the

Klondike National Historic Park, where we have rangers coming on

board during the day, while the ship is loading. So the passengers

can get an idea about the Klondike park, what role Seattle played,

and how that all fits together, before they even take off.

Also, we added an interpreter, in Wrangell-St. Elias National

Park, for those ships that visit Hubbard Glacier. I think you had

an opportunity last week to see the interpreter program that has

been developed on our ships in Glacier Bay, something that we’re

particularly proud of.

We think that our working relationship in Glacier Bay, I think,

stands as a model for what can be done between what some people

refer to as the ‘‘industrial side of tourism’’ and the national parks.

And of course, our impacts on Denali have also been talked about.

I think a couple things, just briefly.

Access will always be an issue. There’s certainly been a debate

in Glacier Bay about how many cruise ships. And our experience

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with the Park Service is that they have given, certainly recently,

a thoughtful consideration to that. They are moving slowly to look

at how that might be increased. There are some people, I think, in

this that believe that there probably can be unlimited traffic there,

and we don’t believe that would be good for the park or, as a matter of fact, even good for us. But we think the process that’s been

set out there is an excellent one.

Certainly, access to Denali, as the number of people that visit

Denali grows, will continue to be an issue.

We also support the south side development. And as an Alaskan,

I’m somewhat embarrassed at how long it has taken to get even

as far as we’ve gotten today. There have been numerous studies on

that. It’s certainly something that I think most people, that look

closely at it, would agree should take place.

Education is important. I was talking to Nancy Sears this morning. And as part of what’s being done now in Seattle, at Klondike

National Park, they’re asking people that are going to Glacier Bay

if they know it’s a National Park. And actually, she says it’s only

averaging about 5 percent. I mean, they know they’re going to see

glaciers, but they don’t know it’s a park. I think after they’ve been

there, they know it’s a park.

And I think that’s something that’s an important part of what

our industry does; it brings people to these places that may not understand how many parks we have in Alaska and what those parks

stand for. So that’s a very important part of what we do.

I think something else that’s very important, is that a study that

was done several years ago by ATIA, showed that 27 percent of the

people that returned to Alaska first came on a cruise. So we can’t

show the whole State, particularly in the short time allotted that

our guests are with us, but we can give people a taste of what’s

here, and they can come back. And that’s when they can see some

of the parks that are very difficult to get to, or some of the ones

that are easy to get to, that they missed the first time.

We recognize that the Park Service faces funding challenges. As

you’ve mentioned, I think, all of government does these days.

We’re pleased that you’re holding these hearings. We think that

it gives an opportunity for people to talk about specific problems

here. We think that we have a very good working relationship with

the Park Service. It’s something that has not always been a relationship where we agree on everything, but I think we’ve been able

to work together, to work most of our problems out, and we look

forward to making that a better relationship as time goes on.

And we really appreciate the opportunity you’ve given us to testify. Thank you very much.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Shively follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. And I appreciate the opportunity to go on board, in

Glacier Bay, to see how most people see it aboard a ship, (Indiscernible) too, unfortunately, because I wasn’t real high. And also,

the next day, was able to go out with the rangers on some of their

business and see it from a little boat perspective and, as well as,

(Indiscernible) a third (Indiscernible) the actual environmental

code. And it’s real interesting because, depending on how you look

at the park, it looks different, just as it does in the Wrangells,

when you’re seeing it from the air or on the ground, or trying to

drive the road.

Each park has multiple visitations. I think part of the reason—

as someone who’s visited here a number of times—that people are

confused is, is that, generally speaking, if we had anything—I

mean, I have to say, for the record, I’d rather have glaciers retreating than advancing, because Indiana used to all be under glaciers,

and I wouldn’t be here. At the same time, if we had any sign of

anything like a glacier in the State of Indiana, it would certainly

be a national park. And people are used to seeing these dramatic

features be under a park item.

When you come into Alaska, some are national parks, whether

it’s at Kenai, with Exit, or other similar State parks. Multiple ones

are State parks that I visited. Mendenhall is Forest Service.

What’s Tracy Arm?

Mr. STRATTON. Forest Service.

Mr. SOUDER. Forest Service.

You approach it from so many different ways, as a visitor, it’s

very confusing, as to what’s a national park, what’s a State park,

what’s Forest Service, what’s a hoot, in a sense, other than you

know it’s pretty dramatic.

There are multiple ways to start this. But, Mr. Menge, let me

start with you in this, probably. Well, to a number of you.

I’d like to talk about Glacier Bay a little bit. That’s where I just

was. One of the debates is how to get more, kind of, land visitors

there, or a way that some people would stay at the park, in addition to staying through a ship.

This is just my personal opinion. I wouldn’t put a lot of big boats

in the park part of the cove. It’s already tight, and it’s (Indiscernible) in the park. But advocates that study this—they’re already

having problem with their dock. Is there any possibility that something can be worked out with their dock, either for a marine ferry

or other landings there? I know one thing that restricts it is, is you

have to fly over from Juneau. Right? Any thoughts on it?

I know that there’s some discussions going on. And don’t disclose

anything you can’t disclose, but maybe you can submit it after

you’ve worked some of these things through.

I know this has been of particular interest to Senator Murkowski—Governor.

Mr. MENGE. Yes. They have been following this, and I think he’s

shared his views with the Park Service for many years now related

to this.

Alaska has a never-ending series of trying to find a way to accomplish a task. Certainly, there are discussions on their two State

ferries (Indiscernible) trips. The residents of this State have used

part of the cove to—as a marine facility out on the Stavis side.

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There is nothing specific that’s being worked out, yet we’re constantly working.

I think the Governor’s initiative, with Superintendent Lee, to

bring the State ferries into Glacier Bay, that was new this year.

And there are a couple of earlier sailings and a couple of late

sailings. So that was an attempt to try to make it more affordable

to get in and out of there.

We’re always looking for new and better initiatives, but it’s just

so expensive. It’s expensive to get to Juneau, and then it’s expensive to get to the Stavis. If you want to get into the backcountry,

then it’s expense upon expense upon expense. So that’s going to be

our biggest challenge.

I think you pointed out earlier, the cost of energy is making that

difficult climb even more difficult. But we don’t give up. And as

long as the Park Service is willing to work with us, we have no

shortage of entrepreneurs with good ideas. And we will continue to

discuss those whenever they emerge, to see if any of them make

sense and are compatible with the Park Service.

Mr. SOUDER. Is there a physical reason why the Stavis dock and

harbor area is not able to take boats?

Mr. STRATTON. No, not that I’m aware of. It’s been a long time

since I’ve been there. So Tomie Lee probably has a much better answer to that question than I do. I do know that it’s a challenge,

given the marine approach there, too, to provide those services. But

since she is a resident, I would certainly defer to her.

Mr. SOUDER. Do you know any physical reason why that port—

geological reasons? Is it less protected? Do storms hit it harder?

Why that would be—not work, as opposed to boat (Indiscernible).

Ms. LEE. The dock has been there for decades, and it has outlived its useful life. And I believe that there is—well, I know that

there is a Memorandum of Agreement that’s been signed, between

the State and city of Gustavus and the National Park Service, to

look for funding and to replace the dock there at its present location.

Mr. SOUDER. It’s not a dock question—it’s a dock question, not

a depth-of-water——

Ms. LEE. That’s correct.

There are some issues with that particular location. There is a

long fetch, with the westerlies, when they’re blowing. However,

those are things that have been there long before the dock, the

original dock was put in. And it’s managed to function there for,

as I say, a number of decades; over 40 years. And so we don’t believe that there’s the issue why the dock cannot be built there. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be working with the State and the City to put

one in, sir.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you.

Mr. Shively probably would be best for this question.

Earlier, on Denali, I was sooner going to ask, by the way, one

followup question. I wanted to ask, for Denali, that we get into this

climbing, because—if we can get data on the climbing, pressures

that climbing puts on the park, and where that’s heading—I got

distracted, and I wanted to ask that. Clearly, people are staying

longer around Denali. Does that mean people are taking longer

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cruises, they’re staying on the land more, that they’re staying in

Anchorage less? What is exactly happening?

Mr. SHIVELY. Basically, an Alaska cruise is a 7-day cruise. And

there are basically two different, sort of, itineraries: One, leaves either Seattle or Vancouver and just makes a round trip and goes

back to where the people started; the other is, leave Vancouver, go

through Southeast Alaska, and come across the gulf, and the passengers disembark at either Whittier or Seward, and then new passengers get on and go the other direction.

Most of the land tour business comes from cross-gulf sailings, for

the major lines. And now I’ve forgotten the question.

Mr. SOUDER. Why would people be staying overnight——

Mr. SHIVELY. Oh, I’m sorry; it——

Mr. SOUDER [continuing]. At Denali?

Mr. SHIVELY [continuing]. Was the light.

Well, what’s happened is, as a marketing tool, I think first Princess, and now we’ve followed—I’m not sure about Royal Caribbean—have gone to a 2-night Denali.

It probably, may mean a longer cruise tour, that’s one option; it

also may mean less time in a place like Anchorage, or it may mean

not going to Fairbanks. I think there are a variety of different

things that happen as a result of the two nights in Denali.

Mr. SOUDER. Is the travel industry looking at this to figure out

what kind of shift is occurring? Obviously, the Fairbanks Chamber

and the Anchorage Chamber are not interested in promoting people

not going to their towns and going up to Denali longer.

And one of the debates here is, from the Federal Government’s

standpoint, if we’re going to invest dollars, our dollars shouldn’t be

dollars that are shifting resources within the State.

The question is, is there an issue—are people staying longer in

Alaska? Is it the man that’s coming up, or citizens around the

United States, to come in and say, ‘‘Look, we want our tax dollars

mutually shared for things in Alaska’’? That’s one of the——

Mr. WORRELL. Over the years, the average length of stay has increased. I think over the last decade, we’ve basically increased the

length of stay for about a day, a day and a half.

You know, about 60 percent of the folks who come to Alaska take

part in a cruise, and of those about 30 percent do a land tour. So,

you know, you’re looking at a large number of people who do that

circular trip up and down Southeast Alaska, and then roughly 30

percent do the cross-gulf and then participate in land tours.

Now, some of those are provided by the tour companies, and

other folks do something independently, whether it be taking a day

to fish the Kenai River or any number of different options.

Mr. SOUDER. Alaska is such a huge challenge to outsiders. And

since I’m an outsider, I can say this. I know, in Alaska, this would

be heresy, but—even if we drill in ANWR, which is hardly a done

deal, that oil revenue’s going to decline. Your figures on what’s

going to come from visitors is going to increase, presumably, and

continue to increase, and your amount from oil is likely to decrease.

That if you continue to give the oil revenue to the citizens of Alaska constantly, as opposed to having a fleeting source that wasn’t

reinvested.

94

If we had done that with our rail lands, for example, in Indiana,

I mean, instead of putting them into the universities, had given all

as rebates, we would be in a real pickle right now. And then the

rest of the taxpayers in the United States are only going to do so

much of bailing out, of Alaska not taking charge of some of their

own responsibilities here.

And that’s what I say with that is, I know we get resources out

of Alaska, but we got resources out of Texas, and we got resources

out of Oklahoma, and we got resources out of Indiana. And that

now what we see is many of our young people moving out west and

moving to other States because they have more wilderness areas,

more areas to hike, and we’re paying for much of that.

Now, there—so visitor services, the travel industry, which is obviously of huge benefit to Alaska, and is basically people coming

from my State and other States to Alaska, it’s a favorable type of

thing. It seems that fishing is obviously—I presume, you—there’s

two types of fishing. When you said fishing is a—other than oil, is

a huge industry for tourism, is the commercial fishing, presumably,

is declining.

Mr. WORRELL. Well, basically, tourism and commercial fishing

are basically tied, in terms of economic impacts to the State.

Mr. SOUDER. Canneries, as a traditional business, is that declining?

Mr. WORRELL. You know, I’m not a fish expert. I will——

Mr. SOUDER. (Indiscernible)——

Mr. WORRELL [continuing]. Tell you that——

Mr. SOUDER [continuing]. Stated that commercial fishing, as opposed to people coming up to Alaska to fish, is increasing.

Mr. WORRELL. Prices are down for commercial catches of salmon.

So presumably, that means something. I’m not a fish expert.

Mr. SOUDER. Do any of you know anything—Mr. Menge.

Mr. MENGE. Mr. Chairman, I can say that commercial fishing is

increasing, and it’s been through the development of additional

fisheries, and also, a huge amount of effort is now being put into

upgrading the quality of the fish. We’re competing with the farmraised salmon around the world. So we’re shifting into a valueadded market because of the Alaska’s clean waters and seas. So it

has increased slightly over the last 3 years, as commercial fishing

has been developed.

And sport fishing——

Mr. SOUDER. Sport fishing (Indiscernible).

Mr. MENGE. Sport fishing is certainly at a steady pace, as well.

And of course, you can imagine the conflicts between those two.

So, you know, we’re working that out.

But because of the new processes and the new additional fisheries, like the bottom fisheries, we have seen an increase.

Mr. SOUDER. As you look at where Alaska’s going to get it’s

sources of revenue, that you’re going to have marginal increases in

fisheries.

Mr. MENGE. That’s correct. Marginal increases of the fisheries

and in forestry.

Mr. SOUDER. In timbering, you’re not going to get a big——

Mr. MENGE. No, it’s not going to be significant. Of the——

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Mr. SOUDER. Oil, there’s not going to be increases. Hopefully, it

can sustain, as one declines.

Mr. MENGE. We would hope to be able to lower the decline in oil.

But one of our huge efforts right now is—I’ve focused, almost all

of my life, over the last 3 years on getting the gas line built. Because the North Slope has 35 trillion cubic feet of reserves and

probably an additional 250 trillion cubic feet in mineral resources.

So getting a gas line built is consuming almost all of our waking

time over the last 3 years.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you.

I think it’s fairly safe to assume that there would be people who

would be upset if you tried to mine in Glacier Bay National Park.

But beyond that, in mining, is that—how does that factor into——

Mr. MENGE. Mining, of course—yes, mining is a huge part of

Alaska, always has been, and I hope always will be.

In the past 3 years, we’ve brought the Pogo Mine into production.

We have just completed the permitting and are under construction

of another mine, the Kennington Mine, down in Southeast Alaska.

And just yesterday, Friday, I signed Alaska State permits for the

Rock Creek Mine in Nome.

So mining is always going to be a big part of the State. It makes

a significant contribution to the local economy. It does not provide

for a large inflow of cash to the State treasury. So the real benefits

from mining are going to be secondary to (Indiscernible) associated

with mining in the region.

But we’re faced here with—the biggest challenge we face here is

no infrastructure. Each of these mines that’s brought on has to be

so robust as to essentially be able to provide the fuel that it needs

to generate its own electricity and fly the commodities out. So you

can imagine the challenges associated with that.

So if we had roads, other than from our mining infrastructure,

it would be significant enlargement to a huge mineral base.

Mr. SOUDER. In your opinion, when you look at the inholdings in

the—do State parks have inholdings, too; I presume.

Mr. MENGE. Certainly.

Mr. SOUDER. When you had all these maps out, with the magic

markers, and since we have both you and Mr. Shively, and Mr.

Stratton—were all—presumably, had magic markers that day, or

were around people who did, in a variety of positions. I don’t know

who was with senators or Governors, or where, but at different

times. Let me ask this question first.

Are most of the inholdings, where mining requests come, or are

likely to be mined, are they individual native Alaskans or Alaska

Natives, who were looking at smaller development of their own

land, or were these speculative corporate purchases? And then,

without even getting into the secondary question, of should an individual have a right to sell his land for a profit to the larger corporation.

Mr. MENGE. I would start this out, but since I was always the

pretty one and John was the smart one, he was involved a lot more

in the actual process with the ANILCA lands. I was just a young

geologist looking to find oil in the ground.

Most of the inholding issues, or significant inholding issues, were

prior existing rights. They were mining claims filed in the 1872

96

Mining Law and had been carried through to a patent. So that represented a huge bulk of the inholdings.

I would say that a large majority of those inholdings are related

to the smaller placer mining operations. Everyone recognized the

challenge, even with a small placer mine. And while the mineralization, under the national parks, is staggering in it’s proportion, I think most of the larger companies recognize that, under the

best of the circumstances, it takes 10 to 15 years to permit of a

mine. If you were to try to permit a large world-class mine in a

park, a national park, you would find the challenges far more

daunting.

So I think that, by virtue of the heighth of the hurdle, people

should move toward State land and toward Native lands. Not that

the mineral content is less on Federal land, but it’s just that the

challenges associated with permitting a mine is daunting.

And John, I’d ask you to fill in the blanks there, a little bit.

Mr. SHIVELY. Mr. Chairman, I mean, clearly, in the late 1970’s,

when ANILCA was being debated, people realized there were a variety of inholdings.

And you asked earlier, you know, sort of what was the order of

things. And of course, the Statehood Act was passed first, and so

the State started selecting lands certainly before ANILCA. Then,

the Alaska Native Land Claims Settlement Act came along, which

gave the Natives the right to the title of about 44 million acres.

They were able to—basically, they had to stop the State selections,

as a result of a land freeze. Then they actually, then, sort of came

ahead of the State.

But also, as part of the Claims Act, there was the provision that

the Secretary was to withdraw up to 80 million acres. He actually

withdrew considerably more for consideration of what eventually

became ANILCA. So those sort of came third in time.

But the State, actually, I think, just kept getting pushed aside.

I mean, what they had, they had. But they couldn’t get any more

until the Natives had resolved their issues. And the parks, once the

boundaries were established, if it was still Federal land, it was

going to remain Federal land.

My impression is, although I must say I’ve never really looked

at it, specifically, that the vast majority of the mining claims were

individual placer miners, not large corporate stakings.

Mr. SOUDER. And if there was anywhere that the State thought

that major mines could be developed, with reasonable access, would

the State have claimed those areas? Like, I assume, the oil companies were speaking up early on, in ANWR, that would have led to

a destination in that, that says, ‘‘potential future oil development.’’

Was that done for any other kind of mineral?

Mr. SHIVELY. Well, I don’t want to get into a huge debate here

about who wanted what.

I think that certainly people that were interested in the parks

and the wildlife refuges, and the other conservation system units,

looked at where they thought there was mineralization, tried to put

some of those places into the conservation system units, and in

other places, tried to block access out.

And if you look, particularly at the Gates of the Arctic boot, I

think you can see there was a mining area near Shungnak and

97

Kobuk, on the upper Kobuk River. And clearly, that was designed

to make difficult mining—getting access to the ore out difficult. It

was a whole part of the debate.

On the other hand, the Red Dog Mine was originally part of one

of Secretary Morton’s withdrawals. That was a result of work done

by the mining industry and by NANA, part of what I did, that area

was eventually removed from what became a preserve and did become a mine and access issues. Those access granted by Congress

across the Krusenstern National Monument.

But I think, clearly, there were people in the conservation movement that would have just as soon not seen any more mining. And

then the other side people, the mining industry and the circuits at

the State, tried to protect some of those opportunities. And ANWR,

of course, is the one that’s the most famous.

Mr. SOUDER. I have a couple other subjects, before we go back

to Wrangell and before I get into the wildlife.

Mr. Stratton, I wanted to ask you, from NPCA’s perspective,

you’ve been State parks director. You’ve clearly worked with

NPCA. Well, this was an interesting—that is a very helpful discussion. Because it wasn’t just that the State said, ‘‘Where are the

best potential mines that we might develop future revenue,’’ it’s

also that—you’re suggesting that the—those with environmental

interests were also doing the same thing, trying to claim the same

land, to keep the mining from occurring.

How does—given that you’re an Alaskan, given the kind of mixed

picture of how the economy in Alaska has been developing, how

does the NPCA look at, one, the inholdings question; two, where

mining can be done in Alaska? How do some of these things work

through? Because that’s undergirding and vague. If that wasn’t

there, the whole debate would be a whole lot easier.

Mr. STRATTON. I look at the national parks in Alaska as a resource that, as the world gets smaller and as the world gets more

populated and resources get used up in other parts of the world,

our national parks are going to become scarcer and scarcer as a

representative of what the planet used to be like. And the value of

those areas, to people who want to experience that kind of, you

know, wildlife, glaciers and mountains, the reason that people come

to Alaska, Alaska is going to have a corner on the market, if you

will, on those kinds of resources.

So I see our national parks as a savings account for future economic opportunities, and they’re only going to get more valuable,

as we go out in time, as those kinds of lands in the rest of the

world disappear.

Now, recognizing there are valid existing rights within some of

these parks—and I think ANILCA made it clear that the owners

of those rights had access opportunities—then it becomes a discussion, if you will, facilitated by the Park Service, between the owner

of the inholding and the American people to say, ‘‘How can we provide that access in a way that meets the needs of the inholder and

still protects the purposes for which the park was created?’’ And as

you can well imagine, that sometimes is a very lively debate.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Kenyon, let me ask one other question before

you—on that. Maybe Mr. Shively.

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Wrangell is really unusual, because there’s 500,000 or 700,000

State acres of inholdings inside of the national park preserve, and

like 200,000, I believe, are University of Alaska, much of it concentrated along the McCarthy Road. Which, in my opinion, after

ANWR’s over with, Wrangell’s going to be the big debate. Because

there are several dynamics here that suggest that Wrangell and

Glacier Bay are too big a basis to expand the tourism industry. The

question is how do you expand the tourism industry. That the travel association listed south park and—are you talking about the

road to McCarthy? Is that the road you were speaking of.

That Wrangell is the biggest collection of wilderness in the

United States, inholdings are going to be as big as the next biggest

park. But that what’s unusual about it, most of the inholdings

aren’t individuals, they’re the State. So what does the State have,

as kind of its intention of picking that? Was it pre the park? Was

it attempting to develop the road? What was the thought, do you

know?

Mr. SHIVELY. Mr. Chairman, I’ve never looked at it. It had to be

pre the park, because if they didn’t have the title, at the time the

park was established, they weren’t going to get it. So I’m positive

that’s where it was. And——

Mr. SOUDER. So much of it’s so close to that road, there had to

be some kind of original——

Mr. SHIVELY. Well, my——

Mr. SOUDER [continuing]. Thought. Unless it was a huge mine,

why would you have picked hundreds of thousands of acres along

that road?

Mr. SHIVELY. My guess is it was for the mining potential. I’m——

Mr. SOUDER. Do you know, Mr. Menge?

Mr. MENGE. Yes. Recognize that we were working off of almost

a blank piece of paper, as related to preserves, and particularly,

hardrock. We knew about Prudhoe. We had some ideas about Bristol Bay and natural gas. So we had a little bit of a handle there.

On the hardrock, we were looking at historic mining districts,

and certainly, McCarthy was one of those. And I mentioned earlier,

infrastructure. That the world-class mine, that’s 300 miles of road,

is not worth a whole lot.

So the combination of the road and the historical mining district

was well in the front of their minds when they made that selection.

Mr. SOUDER. OK. Now I’ll move to Mr. Kenyon.

It seems to me there’s two kinds of questions as relating to

inholdings: How do the individual longer-time people, like yourself,

feel about, all of a sudden, developing that road, and potentially developing all along that road.

Mr. KENYON. Well, the inholders in the park are like human

beings everywhere. They don’t agree. There’s a lot of division about

whether the road should be developed, whether the park should be

developed, and there’s no consensus.

Mr. SOUDER. In the cases that you were talking about—and let

me move to a couple in particular. In the access question, from

your perspective, and the people who have been there and have

land in the park, how would you propose to accommodate the access question to your property? Any way you want to do it, do it?

If it’s only been historic, then it stays historic? (Indiscernible).

99

Mr. KENYON. Well, most—and I don’t know the percentage. But

I’m going to say 90 percent-plus of the cases established—I mean,

the access was established long ago. In most cases, prior to the

park, and so there’s been ongoing use. It’s really almost a nobrainer. I mean, it’s just there; it’s been used; it’s not causing damage to park resources.

And I think Marcia’s doing a good, good job here of trying to put

that in a document. That certainly the inholder shouldn’t be using

six different routes to his house, but the one that he’s been using

for 20 years shouldn’t be contested all that much.

Mr. SOUDER. And I’d never been to this road area until, I think

it was—this is Monday, so it must have been Sunday, coming back.

From Tok, we—I drove into that area—that’s including a couple of

bed and breakfasts—before you get to the park. It’s the only place

in the country where I’ve ever seen park this side or this side. Once

you get down on the other side of the road, parks on both sides.

So I presume it’s preserve on both sides. So it’s a very unusual

junction. As you go on the road a little bit, there’s a camp that’s

disappeared. Is that one of the camps that you were talking about?

You suggested written testimony.

Mr. KENYON. Uh-huh.

Mr. SOUDER. That there were some benefits, if you were at the

edge of the park. I presume, the ones that we’ve talked, got

squeezed or something, were down the road a little farther.

Mr. KENYON. Right.

Down the road a little farther were a number of small businesses, ‘‘mom-and-pop businesses,’’ we call them, and most of those

are gone. A few still struggle on, but there are very few.

Mr. SOUDER. It was hard for me to sort out, from your written

testimony, what you felt that the prevalent reasons—it just

wasn’t—obviously, you didn’t feel it was enough traffic. You felt

some condition changed with the Park Service. Was it a question

of (Indiscernible).

Mr. KENYON. Well, that’s 150 miles from where I live, and I’m

not that familiar, so I based that on what people up there told me.

Mr. SOUDER. When you say you’re going to get some—I heard a

little bit of that, even in the brief time I was there. When you said

you were going to let a few people know, if you could see if somebody can present that, and then I’ll also try to get a counter. And

this would be good, because once the subject gets raised in a hearing, it’s good to, kind of, play it out a little bit. Because, here, we’re

not trying to have a confrontation, we’re trying to allow good discussion on very, very difficult issues.

And what was, kind of, your reaction to some of Mr. Stratton’s

comments about the wildlife, difficulty in the management? How do

you feel? I mean, that’s a specific proposal to increase the number

of National Park Service people who are monitoring total animals,

so——

Mr. KENYON. This was the first I’d heard of it. I was, frankly,

quite surprised. In the Wrangell-St. Elias park—it’s basically unit,

what, 13, I guess.

On the whole 13 million acres, there’s less than 30 moose taken

a year. There’s, what, 300 killed here, in the Mat-Su Valley, acciVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:54 Jul 16, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00103 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\35892.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
100

dentally by cars. And I would think that the State would provide,

certainly, adequate harvest reports.

I guess, I just didn’t understand. It’s a confusing issue to me.

Mr. SOUDER. Then, Mr. Stratton, could you elaborate? How much

of that do you think is actually in some of the big parks, and just

that we don’t know what’s in the big parks?

I have to admit that, A, I’ve been here for 2 weeks, moving

around the State, and I think I’ve gone 2,500 miles, and some of

that in Canada, and over to Haines and Skagway. A lot of it in

Canada. In the other business here, I have to confess, that I have

seen lots of moose but I haven’t seen moose in the parks.

How do you respond to the fact that the—here, to the challenge

of the moose in the Mat-Su Valley? Does that make it more important that we protect the moose in the park, because we’re not going

to be able to do anything about the Mat-Su Valley?

Mr. STRATTON. Well, our concern that we’ve raised in our moose

counting report is that we don’t know. We’ve done some investigation into what is reported to the State of Alaska, you know, by

hunters, and then, in some of the parks, we correlated that, then,

to the amount that was reported in the same park through the

community harvest surveys, where people actually go into the communities and ask people, ‘‘How was hunting last year?’’ And we

found a huge discrepancy. In some parks, as little as 3 percent of

what the community harvest surveys told us was being taken was

reported through the State of Alaska.

That just set off alarm bells to us. We’re not saying that there

is a problem. What we’re saying is that we don’t have enough funding in the Park Service to do the adequate data collection in order

to make sure that we don’t ever have a problem. Because Congress

made it very clear that you can do subsistence activities in most

of the parks, you can do sport hunting in national preserves, but

at the same time, it also said you have to protect the wildlife populations. And so that is a balancing act.

If you’re going to be doing that balancing act, it would seem to

me that you would want to have the best data available, to make

sure that the scales didn’t go too far one way or too far the other.

And what we saw, in just, you know, kind of scratching the surface

on this, was that the Park Service needs more information, to

make sure that they don’t get out of balance.

So all our report is calling for is an increase in support. We think

funding is the easiest way to do it. But I know, in discussions with

Marcia, that she’s looking at some other, more creative ways to get

at that problem.

We just think that data needs to be brought forth and given to

the park superintendents, in a way that they can understand it, so

that they know what’s going on in the parks so that we don’t have

a problem down the road.

Mr. SOUDER. I spent the last couple years working on the Southwest border (Indiscernible).

Mr. Menge, do you have any comments on that or——

Mr. MENGE. No, I don’t. You know, a good geologist shouldn’t.

Other than the fact that moose tastes pretty good with braised potatoes, I don’t really know a lot more. It’s probably never a good

101

idea to opine before a congressional committee on something you

don’t know a thing about.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you for that honesty. Many people don’t feel

that way. Usually, they’re not in a committee, where they’re under

oath, either, there’s no question that if—well, let me ask. The most

fascinating difference—and one of my friends in Congress and I got

to chatting. I don’t think he was sold on what I told him, and that

is: History may not repeat itself, but often it rhymes. And in our

national parks here, it appears there’s a lot of rhyming.

But this is the only State where people have said that of the national park visitors, the bulk are coming through the cruise ship

industry. Either they’re coming directly in, like up Glacier Bay or

they’re coming indirectly, through Denali or Skagway. So this is

just kind of a unique wrinkle in this.

Where do you see the best place is for the cruise ship industry?

Getting bigger boats and more in Glacier Bay, is one. Where else

do you see the extension?

Mr. SHIVELY. Well, I think we’re always looking for new opportunities. I mean, we clearly, I think, see that the Wrangell-St. Elias

park has some spectacular scenery. It’s a great place. It has lots

of land. Our sister company, Princess, has put up a lodge in Copper

Center, to sort of start that. And so that’s clearly a place.

We, this year, started a tour along the Kenai Peninsula, that we

haven’t had before, that does include the Kenai Fjords park, because a lot of the passengers that do get off in Seward don’t go to

Kenai Fjords.

I think, probably, for us, going—we do take people to Prudhoe

Bay, so we do go up through Gates of the Arctic. There’s probably

some opportunity for expansion there, not a lot. And clearly we

think that, you know, there’s opportunity in the two big ones, too;

Denali and Glacier Bay.

Mr. SOUDER. It’s always dangerous to ask a question you have

no clue what the answer is. How do you interact with the Native

corporations? I mean, clearly, like any other business—some people

fault this, but it’s any other business.

If you have a basic rate, ‘‘Here’s the cheapest cabin, here’s the

basic food,’’ and then you want to upgrade your cabin. But if you

want to do some of the extras, those are extra. And you want a (Indiscernible) quality, because of a bad experience; it wasn’t exactly

on the cruise, even if it wasn’t (Indiscernible). If you contract with

somebody who delivers a bad product, they’re going to complain

about the whole cruise, not about the person who delivered the bad

product to you. That’s your business challenge.

Do you work with the Native corporations, on some of their lodging, on these things? Or more particularly, for example, I was told,

when we were going to go up—it was recommended to me strongly

that I go up and see Kotzebue, and then over to Nome; that the

Native corporation there had a package, that it was cheaper to get

the package than it was to get the air flight and then the hotel.

Do you work with Native corporations on the packages like that?

And do you see any kind of packages, or do you see yourself, at

some point, getting an air wing (Indiscernible)?

Mr. SHIVELY. What was that, the last—I didn’t get the last—I’m

sorry.

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Mr. SOUDER. Do you have an air wing, or do you see yourself

purchasing an air wing, like the hotel business, that board or move

people to the proper points in Alaska? Are you going to have an

airwing?

Mr. SHIVELY. No, I don’t see us producing an airwing. And actually, I don’t think we would really like, all that much, to be in the

hotel business. One of the reasons we aren’t is that we found that

it was very hard to find people that had enough capital, that would

risk putting up the kind of facilities we need for hotels, for what,

years ago, was about a 31⁄2 month business and now is 4 to 5. And

that’s why we’re in this business. And the same with the rail cars.

Now, to answer the original question. We interact with Native

organizations and corporations in a number of ways. We have a relationship with the Alaska Native Heritage Center here, where

they place Native artists on our ships. We also have a relationship

with the Hoonah tribe, through the Native Corp., where, as you

saw the other day, we have a Native interpreter in Glacier Bay. We

do the same thing for our ships that go into Hubbard Glacier, with

the tribe in Yakatat. And other lines use local Native people.

A number of the people we do business with, for shore tours, are

Native organizations; Saxman, Goldbelt, Huna Totem. Of course,

Huna Totem has developed their own venue in Hoonah. And while

Caribbean started there, and actually came to an agreement with

them about usage, we started sending a ship there this year.

In terms of going further north, we do sell the Kotzebue-Nome

trip, as an option, as you—I think I may have mentioned to you

last week, I did work for NANA, for a number of years. We had

a relationship with the cruise industry for some time.

I think the problem for the Arctic Tour now is the expense, combined with the fact that there are a lot of alternatives now, in

Southcentral Alaska, that didn’t exist 10 or 15 years ago, when the

Arctic Tour was more popular.

Mr. SOUDER. Because one of the challenges is, is that there’s a

slow rise in visitation to Alaska. To a degree, it’s disbursed. One

of the fundamental questions is, ‘‘Where are the wildest areas of

Alaska going to be.’’

And if you move into the wildest areas, with larger operations,

much like Wrangell maybe, the next big question, do you develop

that road? Do you develop all the way along the road? Do you

change the nature of McCarthy.

You’re not really going to threaten the whole park. But you’re in

the, kind of the core center of the accessible part of the park—other

than the air—and you change that experience. And how much

should you change it? Similar questions on Glacier Bay. Those are

kind of in the range. If it was disbursed more, you wouldn’t have

as much pressure on those areas; on the other hand, it would be

more disbursed. What kind of a tiered structure.

Because there’s always going to be a percentage of the visitors—

not only is it one of the unique places of the world left that isn’t

overdeveloped, but it is increasingly rare in Alaska. And there are

going to be visitors that want to experience it, without hearing an

airplane, without hearing other types of things. Backcountry people, who are part of your visitation group, you know, often your

103

younger group, who then will come back for an older experience

later on.

In fact, a number of them may be introduced through a cruise,

and then come back and want to get out into the wilder places.

There’s interaction. That if you cutoff all your wildest places, then

you’re not going to—it’s kind of the symbol that draws the next and

that draws to the areas closest.

Let me ask a question about Curry Ridge. That clearly the National Park Service has multiple visitor centers. And as I’m sure

the NPCA research has come up with, well, the challenge in all the

parks around the country in—there’s only some money—there isn’t

any money to staff that.

The cruise industry has been very creative in how to deal with

the ships, with the—Skagway, now.

Is that something that, as part of a package, if the Federal Government—because the problem here is—the Alaska Delegation is

tremendously—Senator Stevens and Murkowski and Congressman

Young do more proportionately for getting dollars to Alaska and arguing for Alaska than any other delegation in the country. They’re

just very effective. I wish we were even marginally that effective

in Indiana.

There’s everything from employability to—took us over to

being—that—been in a long time, to being very subtle in their

questioning of other members, that whole thing is very aggressive.

But they may be able to get a visitor center. But they’re not likely

to get a plus out of your community resources.

So that the challenge comes is, do you think that there are options here, that if something was developed, that, in effect, the interpretation of the visiting center or managing of the visiting center—because—because, generally speaking, the concessioneer part

of the visitor center is contracted out. There might be a little bit

for food. There might be—the Alaska History Association manages

a bookstore, so it’s not like what we worked through at Gettysburg,

where, in fact, the park was able to pay, to some degree, because

they managed to work out higher concession fees with it. It’s a very

deep kind of concept.

If it’s very important to the travel industry, particularly the

cruise industry, to get something developed, do you think that

something might be worked out in that manner? Is that something

even worth pursuing? Or have you talked about it.

Mr. SHIVELY. Mr. Chairman, I’m not sure we’ve actually talked

about it. But certainly, we’ve tried to work on developing and helping pay for interpretive programs. So I certainly think we’d be

more than willing to sit down with the Park Service and discuss

that. I mean, we’re——

Mr. SOUDER. Because you’ve run an agency. You know the difficulty. It often isn’t building something, it’s manning it.

Mr. SHIVELY. Building is the fun; operation is the problem.

Mr. SOUDER. Do you have any thoughts on that, Mr. Menge, on

Curry Ridge?

Mr. MENGE. I do. I——

Mr. SOUDER. I did, by the way, get a chance to see—I think it

was the Anchorage paper 1 day, in the time I was here, pages on

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the history of this. It’s just amazing how long this has been debated.

Mr. MENGE. Mr. Chairman, we——

Mr. SOUDER. Not to say you’ve experienced it at all.

Mr. MENGE. The challenge we face here is, ‘‘If you build it, they

will come.’’ It requires a large, very large cash infusion.

I think Mr. Shively talked about the capital investment in those

hotels. Those are spectacular hotels, but they would never have

been built without corporate backing and the vision of that company to do it.

The same thing with visitor centers. We’re not going to be able

to develop the clientele to support a visitor center until a visitor

center is there. And we are painfully aware, particularly in running the State parks, the challenges with maintenance.

Most of—I have a State legislator that—coming up all the time,

volunteering or offering to build legislation to acquire more land,

to acquire another facility. But I go back to those same legislators

a year later and try to defend a maintenance budget, and it’s a different story.

So those of us who are charged with actually running the facilities must keep in the front of our mind the maintenance. That’s

why we hope that any of these facilities would come with an operational plan associated with it and could talk about how it would

be managed and manned and financed after. They are critically important to—to draw the—provide the opportunity. So those are

the—that’s the challenge we face.

Mr. SOUDER. Mount St. Helens is an area where they have seven

visitor centers, and now none of them have enough to really support—some are private; some are State; some are Forest. And

how—how to coordinate something like that, and have a (Indiscernible) development process and then go through the parks. You

know, the—the—around the country, there’s always this tension

between when you develop a new area, what’s going to happen to

the people at the old area, too, and their—their residents and facilities.

Mr. Stratton, let me ask you this question. I appreciate you

bringing out and releasing the wildlife report today. Clearly, Alaska is unique, in the sense of—we have reintroduced wolves into

Yellowstone, and we have some grizzly bears in a few places that—

but you have a whole ecosystem here, including wildlife, as a—as

a critical component.

As the country—and I think one of the—as we look toward the

100th birthday of the park system, which is part of what’s behind,

I think, this, ‘‘Where should the National Park System go?’’ The

Mission 66, was having visitor services supporting it. Where are we

going? How are we going to sustain the Park Service for the future.

This is actually the 90th birthday. It’s my understanding the

Park Service is wisely going to and soon announce that next year

we’ll be celebrating the 90th and putting some proposals on the

table, of which I’m thrilled. It’s one of the biproducts of all the

work here.

Secretary Kempthorne is taking the bull by the horns and is

hopefully about to announce a proposal that will start them on a

process toward the 100 years, here in the 90th. That as we look at

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this, understanding that we have this unbelievable resource of

science, of wildlife, of fish, of all the earth, in addition to cultural

resources in the Park Service, that ideally could be interrelated

with education. I very much appreciate that.

But beyond the wildlife, what would you say, from your perspective, are the two other biggest challenges you think we’re going to

face when we look at Alaska? As—because this is—is it 60 percent

of the Federal funding in Alaska.

Mr. STRATTON. Two-thirds.

Mr. SOUDER. Two-thirds.

And I think I understood, from Fish and Wildlife, it’s about 70

percent of the Fish and Wildlife.

So as we move this debate beyond the better data on this wildlife, what do you think the other two biggest challenges are going

to be?

Mr. STRATTON. Well, I think the other biggest challenge, it revolves around the larger access discussions, and access to

inholdings, whether they’re driveways to people who live in

Wrangell-St. Elias, which NPCA has been supportive of resolving

that as quickly as we can, following the Park Service, in support

of the folks out along the McCarthy Road.

But the big question with access, to us, is access to places that

don’t have access right now. There’s still pieces of private property

in places where there is no road built to it, or where someone

might want to do that in the future. I think that is a big discussion

that we need to have down the road.

I think the opportunity to acquire inholdings, from willing sellers, is an opportunity that we need to take advantage of more in

Alaska. There are people, who own land inside national parks, who

will be very willing to sell to the National Park Service, because

they recognize that, you know, giving their land to the National

Park Service protects it, you know, into a larger protected area.

But as we all know, you know, Federal funds, through the Land

and Water Conservation Fund, haven’t been appropriated at quite

the level they’ve been accumulating in that fund. And I’m not sure

how you get your arms around the fact that, you know, you’ve got

some authorization, in the Land and Water Conservation Fund, to

use primarily offshore, Outer Continental Shelf oil and gas moneys

to do those kinds of inholding acquisitions, but the money seems

to be going someplace else rather than to help WCS.

Because that number has been coming down, you know, year

after year, both for acquisitions of inholdings in national systems,

but also the land and water, that money that comes into the State

of Alaska, which when I was Director of State Parks, we used for

some of our, you know, inholding acquisition opportunities there,

again, from willing sellers.

So I think, you know, trying to figure out how you can bring

more, you know, private money, you know, more outside interest in

helping to—you know, to partner with what little Federal money

there is, to try and take care of some of those inholding concerns.

Because the easiest way to not have a fight over how you get an

access to an inholding is to have the government acquire it, and

then that discussion goes away.

Mr. SOUDER. I thank you all. I took us right up to 1.

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I may have a couple additional questions that I didn’t—dealt

fully, on the inholding question, Mr. Kenyon. And if you could do

some more talking to other people regarding that.

My own—my own position is, the Federal Government’s been appalling, in the sense of willing—willing to buy land. They restrict

the use of land and tell people they can’t do this, they can’t do that,

and when they say, ‘‘OK, we’ll sell it to you,’’ they go, ‘‘Well, we

wouldn’t have any money.’’

That has been—do you want to comment on that, Mr. Kenyon?

Mr. KENYON. Well, yes, I would like to give you our latest issue

of our news, which has the story of the Orange Hill property, in

Wrangell-St. Elias, and how the owner, Mr. McGregor, has been

trying to work with the Park Service for 20 years to get bought out,

and he’s been unsuccessful. So that’s included in here.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. We’ll make sure we have that.

Mr. KENYON. I would say, however, one of—one of the fears, I

guess, of the little—little guy in the parks, is that he’d be coerced

into becoming a willing seller, by unreasonable access regulations,

by other things that diminish his, either property value or his ability to sustain a lifestyle in the park. Also, I read in Mr. Stratton’s

written report that he would like the Federal Government to buy

700,000 acres more in the park. And that, frankly, is very, very

frightening to the little guy in the park. Most of that land, by the

way, it’s my understanding—and Marcia would correct me, maybe,

but—I think there’s like 600,000 acres that are Native corporation

land, and the remainder—I don’t think there’s a whole lot of State

land left.

Is there, Mr. Menge?

Mr. MENGE. I haven’t looked at it.

Mr. KENYON. I don’t believe there’s very much State land left in

the Wrangell-St. Elias.

Mr. SOUDER. (Indiscernible).

Mr. KENYON. Pardon?

Mr. SOUDER. Other than—other than the Native lands, the State

is still the largest. But that could be a little dated.

Mr. KENYON. Perhaps. But it’s certainly less than a couple hundred-thousand acres. I know 12,000 just went to the University.

Mr. SOUDER. But we’ll get that—my figures would have been

State and would account for the University.

I know a couple years ago that when there was 1.2 million acres,

nearly 800,000 of that was State and University, together. The Native lands were, I think, 200,000 to 250,000, and then the smaller

percentage, because they’re smaller lots, were the individual.

Natives—is it Alaska Natives, as opposed to native Alaskans; is

that right? And that—that most of the native Alaskans, historic

peoples, are along the main road, which are much easier to deal

with than the pockmarked-type internal.

And how to work these questions out to—that—that—I think

that there is a sincere desire, in Congress and in the Park Service,

to try to work out things with—with—generally speaking, with—

with the isolated inholders. And that we have those all over our

parks in the United States.

And when you start to mine, which is a more complicated question, how to do that, and what laws are going to apply, becomes

107

difficult. How big and what type of access is clearly worked

through. But those—I think, it’s the sense of Congress is to try to

work those out.

Absentee speculative landholders is another question, And how

to work it out with the Native peoples, and can you consolidate

those around a couple areas and leave the rest wild, with these few

pockets, I think is where we’re headed.

But this is—this is a huge question that we’ve got to work

through.

Mr. KENYON. Well, we’ve been looking into it recently because of

the access question. And again, I could be wrong, but I think that

those isolated parcels that you refer to are very few and far between in the Wrangells.

Mr. SOUDER. OK. We’ll get that, specifically, for the record.

Well, thank you very much for your testimony today. It’s been

very informative. As we move through these hearings, as we move

to the end—and, in fact, this may be the last hearing, other than

the Washington hearing later this fall, that then we’ll move into

the next cycle of Congress. That—it’s been very helpful.

Clearly, we know that the Park Service is strapped for money,

that the—that we have visitation demands here. There aren’t as

many Homeland Security demands, but in many other areas of the

country, the Homeland Security demands are putting additional

pressure on the ability even to keep up roads, a clear demand, is

a huge challenge upon many of our supports (Indiscernible). Kind

of the biggest example I found in Park Service is Glacier National

Park; how to handle sewage systems in the Park Service. That

Alaska had different challenges. It’s been very helpful to get the information today.

I strongly believe that there’s a reason national—a reason park

rangers are the highest rated profession. Not only are they good

people, not only are the people on vacation when they see park

rangers, but the people really value national parks. There’s not a

poll taken where this doesn’t rank up with what people want us

to focus on, and they want us to be able to both use them and pass

them to the future generations.

I also know that I have never met anybody from my district, and

many friends and so on, who visited Alaska—usually through a

cruise ship—ever come back and say that they had a bad experience. That they really love the State. And how to build on that preserve, the natural beauty, to have people see what—at least, a form

of the wild, it’s like—it’s a tremendous opportunity. And hopefully,

we can continue to do that.

Thank you for participating and trying to work through both the

particular details in Alaska that are different and putting it into

context, as the biggest part of the National Park Service, ‘‘Where

am I heading in the future?’’

With that, the subcommittee stands adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 1:10 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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