This article explores President Jimmy Carter's lasting impact on Alaska through the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA). Despite initial opposition, ANILCA doubled the size of national parks and refuges, protected wilderness areas, and ensured the future of subsistence hunting and fishing. Carter's love for Alaska and his commitment to conservation are highlighted.
He was the only U.S. president to hang a map of Alaska on the wall of the Oval Office. By championing the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, he helped create millions of acres of national parks and refuges across the state. Then-President Jimmy Carter holds up a copy of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act that he signed into law in the East Room of the White House, Dec. 2, 1980. (Associated Press) They burned him in effigy in Fairbanks.
At the state fair dunk tank, they fired baseballs at pictures of him and the Ayatollah. But President Jimmy Carter shaped Alaska’s future so effectively that today, 44 years after passage of the epic conservation law that stirred pickets and protests, many Alaskans may wonder what the fuss was all about. Alaska without the national parks and ever-wild landscapes that make it a world-famous travel destination? Unimaginable. He was the only U.S. president to hang a map of Alaska on the wall of the Oval Office. Judging by what he wrote about his later trips north — often just to fish, hike and birdwatch in the wilderness — it can probably be said that he was not only the president with the biggest impact on Alaska but also the one with the deepest love for the state. The law that Carter called his greatest domestic achievement, and the source of so much controversy here, was the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, or ANILCA, which Carter signed into law on Dec. 2, 1980, as one of the last acts of his presidency. The law doubled the size of the national park and refuge systems, protected 25 wild rivers and classified 56 million acres of Alaska as wilderness. It was also the basis for federal protection of rural subsistence hunting and fishing. The lock-up law would be the ruin of Alaska — so said the dominant voices of Alaska politics and business. They fought the proposed measure for a decade, arguing that it would close off mining, oil drilling, logging and other economic opportunitie
Environment Jimmy Carter Alaska ANILCA Conservation National Parks Wilderness Protection
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