• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 3055 0

how abundant Alaskan wildlife was, compared with the depleted wildlife of Oregon; how superior their air quality was to that of smoggy California; and how many more vodka-clear lakes Alaska had, compared with those in Minnesota. “Fortunately, we came into statehood with our natural resources relatively intact and we have the chance to profit by the mistakes made by other states,” the first newsletter read. “Whether we choose to learn by the mistakes of others, or to learn by making them over again ourselves was up to the individual citizens as well as our representatives in government and the professionals in public service. In most other fields of endeavor, mistakes may cost time or money, but they can be corrected. With wilderness and with wildlife resources, you don’t get a second chance. When they are gone, they are gone.”12

Nobody ever sold the idea of saving 8.9 million acres with quite the gusto of Ginny Wood circa 1959–1960. Whether she was writing in the ACS newsletter or testifying before a congressional committee, Wood insisted that saving the Arctic Refuge was in the tradition of Daniel Boone. Both Hunter and Wood knew the right buzzwords to use for Alaska: individual and wilderness. The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, established in 1903, set the tone with its motto: “Independent in All Things . . . Neutral in None.” The ACS appealed to Alaska’s chauvinistic sense of being the last frontier. Harking back to the days of 1898, when the Klondike gold rush transformed Alaska into a boom land, Wood claimed that the descendants of the early pioneers now had a sacred preservationist obligation to uphold the traditions:

We Alaskans must reconcile our pioneering philosophy and move on to the realization that the wild country that lies now in Alaska is all there is left under our flag. Those who see the wildlife range as a threat to their individual rights refuse to face the fact that unless we preserve some of our wild land and wild animals now, the Alaska of the tundra expanses, silent forests, and nameless peaks inhabited only by caribou, moose, bear, sheep, wolf, and other wilderness creatures can become a myth found only in books, movies, and small boys’ imaginations as the Wild West is now. And I regret as much as anyone that the frontier, by its very definition, can only be a transitory thing. The wilderness that we have conquered and squandered in our conquest of new lands has produced the traditions of the pioneer that we want to think still prevail: freedom, opportunity, adventure, and resourceful, rugged individuals. These qualities can still be nurtured in generations of the future if we are farsighted and wise enough to set aside this wild country immediately and spare it from the exploitations of a few for the lasting benefit of the many.13

There was another factor in the debate of 1960 over the Arctic NWR. In Alaska—with a population of only 250,000—politics were personal. For more than a decade Wood and Hunter had done neighborly favors for people living in Nome, Cold Bay, and all points between. Few Alaskans trusted the federal government much—with the notable exception of the armed forces. Wood and Hunter’s notion of having the U.S. Department of the Interior control the 8.9 million acres of Arctic Alaska wasn’t something the average citizen of Juneau, Anchorage, or Fairbanks would automatically approve of. But doing a favor for Ginny Wood or Celia Hunter—that was a different matter entirely. Cashing in all their chips, recruiting friends to join the ACS, Wood and Hunter started circulating the pro–Arctic NWR newsletter all around Alaska.

Another obvious step for ACS was lobbying in tandem with Alaska’s premier conservationist groups—the Alaska Sportsman’s Council, Tanana Valley Sportsmen’s Association, Fairbanks Garden Club, and others—to keep the movement for the Arctic NWR going. There was power in unity. Everything was so hurried for the ACS during the first months of scurrying to line up allies during 1960 that there wasn’t a minute to be bored. The next step for the “Arctic Forever” cause involved