Opinion ID: 1420062
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Whether the Legislature Has Exclusive Law-Making Powers over Wildlife Management by Virtue of the State's Trustee-Like Duties under Article VIII

Text: Article VIII of the Alaska Constitution concerns the management of natural resources: SECTION 3. COMMON USE. Wherever occurring in their natural state, fish, wildlife, and waters are reserved to the people for common use. SECTION 4. SUSTAINED YIELD. Fish, forests, wildlife, grasslands, and all other replenishable resources belonging to the State shall be utilized, developed, and maintained on the sustained yield principle, subject to preferences among beneficial uses. [32] Wright argues that these clauses establish a public trust for management of the state's wildlife, with the State of Alaska as trustee and the people of Alaska as the intended beneficiaries. From this premise, Wright further claims that the state, as part of its fiduciary duty, retains exclusive law-making authority over natural resource issues. We disagree. We have frequently compared the state's duties as set forth in Article VIII to a trust-like relationship in which the state holds natural resources such as fish, wildlife, and water in trust for the benefit of all Alaskans. [33] Instead of recognizing the creation of a public trust in these clauses per se, we have noted that the common use clause was intended to engraft in our constitution certain trust principles guaranteeing access to the fish, wildlife and water resources of the state. [34] We have applied the public trust doctrine to cases involving exclusive grants of natural resources by the state. In CWC Fisheries, Inc. v. Bunker, [35] we held that a holder of a state-granted fee interest in tidelands takes the land subject to a public easement. [36] We based our holding in part on the state's public trust responsibilities with respect to tideland conveyance, [37] but did not address whether Article VIII creates a public trust per se or whether such responsibilities preclude public participation in natural resource management decisions. Furthermore, we suggested that expansion of the public trust doctrine to include all or most public uses merely because it has been applied to a particular public use would be inappropriate. [38] A few months after CWC Fisheries, we clarified in Owsichek v. State, Guide Licensing & Control Board that the purpose of the public trust doctrine was not to grant the legislature ultimate authority over natural resource management, but rather to prevent the state from giving out exclusive grants or special privilege as was so frequently the case in ancient royal tradition. [39] Hence, the State of Alaska acts as trustee over wolves and other wildlife not so much to avoid public misuse of these resources as to avoid the state's improvident use or conveyance of them. Indeed, in Owsichek, after a discussion of the holding in CWC Fisheries, we emphasized that the state's duties with respect to natural resource management under Article VIII [are] to be exercised like all other powers of government, ... and not as a prerogative for the advantage of the government as distinct from the people. [40] Wright relies on a recent case, Baxley v. State, [41] to argue that we should apply basic principles of private trust law to the trust-like relationship described in Article VIII. In Baxley, we referred to the public trust doctrine in examining the propriety of four state oil leases in the Beaufort Sea: The public trust doctrine provides that the State holds certain resources (such as wildlife, minerals, and water rights) in trust for public use and that government owes a fiduciary duty to manage such resources for the common good of the public as beneficiary. [42] Although we declined to address in Baxley whether the state had breached its fiduciary duty, we relied on another case, State v. Weiss ( Weiss I ), in noting that we should apply basic principles of trust law to public land trusts. [43] But, unlike this case, Weiss I involved the state's duty as trustee over expressly created special purpose public land grants and leases. [44] In that case we stated: Our reliance upon basic trust law principles finds ample support in the precedents of this court and the United States Supreme Court. See Lassen v. Arizona, 385 U.S. 458, 87 S.Ct. 584, 17 L.Ed.2d 515 (1967); State v. University of Alaska, 624 P.2d 807 (Alaska 1981). Both Lassen and University of Alaska involved federal grants to be used by states for school purposes. Those cases stand for the proposition that the same private trust law principles are to apply to federal land granted to the states for school purposes.  [45] We have since emphasized that the applicability of private trust law depends greatly on both the type of trust created and the intent of those creating the trust. In Weiss v. State ( Weiss II ), [46] involving the same grant lands as in Weiss I, we cautioned that reliance [on principles of private trust law] does not imply that application of such principles yields the same result regardless of the nature of the trust at issue. [47] Baxley, unlike Weiss I, did not involve an expressly created public land grant. Rather, Baxley simply relied on Weiss I to show that, if Baxley had timely raised his public trust argument in the trial court, then questions of fact and law might exist as to whether the state breached its fiduciary duty. Wright relies on dicta in Baxley to argue that private trust law should be applied wholesale to the public trust doctrine. This result, however, would be an overbroad interpretation of our holdings in Baxley and Weiss I. Moreover, application of private trust principles may be counterproductive to the goals of the trust relationship in the context of natural resources. For instance, private trusts generally require the trustee to maximize economic yield from the trust property, using reasonable care and skill. [48] But Article VIII requires that natural resources be managed for the benefit of all people, under the assumption that both development and preservation may be necessary to provide for future generations, and that income generation is not the sole purpose of the trust relationship. [49] And although trust law dictates that the acts of a trustee should be reviewed for abuse of discretion, we have held that grants of exclusive rights to harvest natural resources listed in the common use clause are subject to close scrutiny. [50] Private trust law principles also provide no guidance as to when the public's right to common use of resources can be limited through means such as licensing requirements. [51] Finally, exceptions do exist to the general principle that beneficiaries cannot dictate how to manage the trust property. For example, in some circumstances, the creator may provide for the beneficiary's participation in trust management, [52] and the beneficiary of a trust may act as trustee. [53] Other jurisdictions have held that, while general principles of trust law do provide some guidance, they do not supercede the plain language of statutory and constitutional provisions when determining the scope of the state's fiduciary duty or authority. [54] One commentator notes that general trust law should not be applied to the public trust doctrine in a way that limits or destroys the democratic process: It would be a strict violation of democratic principle for the original voters and legislators of a state to limit, through a trust, the choices of the voters and legislators of today. [55] We most recently visited the public trust doctrine in the natural resource context in Pullen v. Ulmer. [56] In that case, we decertified an initiative allowing subsistence, personal use, and sport fisheries to have preference over other fisheries with respect to the harvestable salmon surplus. [57] We concluded that salmon should be considered assets of the state for purposes of carrying out the state's trust duties with respect to wildlife. [58] Because state assets may not be appropriated by initiative pursuant to Article XI, [59] and because we viewed the preferential treatment of certain fisheries over others as an appropriation, [60] we removed the initiative from the ballot. We left open the question of whether the state's trust responsibilities under Article VIII give the legislature exclusive law-making control over wildlife management. [61] We find little support in the public trust line of cases for the proposition that the common use clause of Article VIII grants the legislature exclusive power to make laws dealing with natural resource management. Article VIII does not explicitly create a public trust; rather, we have used the analogy of a public trust to describe the nature of the state's duties with respect to wildlife and other natural resources meant for common use. Additionally, the wholesale application of private trust law principles to the trust-like relationship described in Article VIII is inappropriate and potentially antithetical to the goals of conservation and universal use. And in Pullen, the only case in which we discussed the initiative process, we declined to hold that the public trust doctrine gives the legislature exclusive law-making authority over the subject matter of Article VIII. We therefore reject Wright's argument to the contrary and decline to decertify the initiative on public trust grounds. For these reasons, we conclude that the legislature does not have exclusive law-making powers over natural resources issues merely because of the state's management role over wildlife set forth in Article VIII of the Alaska Constitution, and therefore the wolf snare issue is not clearly inapplicable to the initiative process under Article XII.