Parnell opposes Obama plan for wild lands in Alaska

JUNEAU -- Gov. Sean Parnell opposes an Obama administration effort to strengthen protection of wild lands in Alaska managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, saying it would allow the government to create more wilderness without congressional oversight.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced last month a new policy that promises special protection for public land managed by the BLM that has wilderness character. Unlike land designated official wilderness, areas classified as wild lands would not require congressional approval.

But Parnell said the policy by the U.S. Department of the Interior was an end run around 31-year-old promises that federal land managers would not slap protectionist labels on wilderness in Alaska, according to the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.

"I will not allow such disregard for Alaska and its citizens to stand unchallenged," Parnell said in a statement that followed a two-page letter and six pages of comments to Salazar.

Salazar had said the new policy addressed an eight-year absence of "comprehensive national wilderness policy." A BLM official in Alaska declined to respond to the governor's comments.

The BLM has not, in the past month, tagged any land in Alaska as wild lands. Salazar's December announcement said the same public process used in other land-use planning would apply under the new policy: the agency would consider a designation, solicit public comments, issue a draft plan and then collect more comments prior to a final decision.

The BLM said on its website that it was mindful of the balance struck by the 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, and the wild-lands policy would allow designations in Alaska "only through the BLM's comprehensive land use planning processes, which provides for robust public comment and involvement."

The policy is too new, with details still in draft form, for the Fairbanks-based Northern Alaska Environmental Center to have a formal position, but the center generally likes the policy's direction, said Pam Miller, an arctic specialist there.

She said appropriate land management for BLM property in Alaska would consider all the wilderness values associated with public land, including the value of ecosystems, recreational use and subsistence.


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