The Quiet World_ Saving Alaska's Wilderness Kingdom, 1879-1960 - Douglas Brinkley [269]
During Eisenhower’s second term, however, Herb and Lois Crisler were far greater celebrities than the Muries or Seaton, thanks to the Walt Disney Company’s magic. Expressing their belief in the value of keeping the Arctic Refuge undeveloped forever, the Crislers wrote to Seaton to urge saving the “only place left on the continent where great authentic wilderness can be reserved.”31 Their letter was filled with ecological buzzwords such as otherness, vanishing, and technical environment—rather pretentiously for a couple who had stolen wolf pups from a den for a Disney movie. Instead of answering the Crislers directly, Seaton had Assistant Secretary Ross Leffler write them a courtesy reply, informing them that if the Arctic NWR was created, then in all likelihood mining, hunting, and trapping would be permitted.32
If the Arctic NWR movement had an unsung hero, it was Snedden. He admired the “fair chase” ethics of the TVSA and loathed the new generation of aerial hunters and guides, whose activities were becoming a trend in the late 1950s. Using Super Cub bush planes, pilots would land in the middle of a caribou herd, and then the hunters would fire at the frightened animals. If this deplorable kind of hunting was allowed to continue unabated, the Arctic would be depopulated of game animals. “With American population—and world population—growing at an explosive rate,” Snedden warned, sounding like TR, “the natural pattern of life which existed in the area since the dawn of time . . . its game and primitive scenic beauty—could cease to exist.” With statehood pending, Snedden urged Alaskans to act “now” to “prevent the destruction and slaughter of game animals tomorrow.”33
Olaus and Mardy Murie were proud of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner for taking a pro-conservation stand. And they had another unexpected ally at U.S. Fish and Wildlife: Clarence Rhode, the aerial wolf hunter who nevertheless thought the Arctic should be a wilderness preserve. Rhode, an employee of U.S. Fish and Wildlife since 1935, had learned to respect the Arctic as a wilderness like none other. God, he believed, had made the Arctic perfect. According to Collins, Rhode had an “inside track” with Seaton on all issues concerning Alaskan lands.34
A law-and-order type, Rhode enjoyed busting salmon canneries around Bristol Bay and the Alexander Archipelago for overfishing. But animal rights activists such as Herb and Lois Crisler, who thought that wolves were cuddly dogs, left Rhode cold. Leftists, he believed, were hypocrites. “Raising a big moose crop,” he once declared, “is farming the land exactly as if [one] raised Hereford Cattle.”35
Nevertheless, Rhode had defended the integrity of Franklin Roosevelt’s Kenai National Moose Range. To Rhode, this moose range didn’t impede the economic advancement of the territory. The Bureau of U.S. Fish and Wildlife managed the range, from Rhode’s perspective, as if the Kenai moose (which had the biggest antlers of all the deer in the world) were a treasured species. That was a good thing. The Kenai Peninsula, however, was the best place to live in Alaska, and settlement there was being thwarted by the moose. When Richfield Oil Corporation of Los Angeles found petroleum in July 1957, the boomers in Anchorage turned against FDR’s moose range. Since World War II the Alaskan economy had been sagging. Now, with this discovery of oil, boomers anticipated a profitable new rush. “I have reports,” Seaton said, “that things are almost back to the gold rush days.”36
Rhode tried to prevent the Kenai Moose Range from being dismantled, and to persuade the TVSA to take up the preservationist cause. “There is much pressure in Anchorage, backed by the Chamber of Commerce and oil interests, to convince everyone oil exploration and development