Page 63 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide 2017 - Alaska

THE HIST OR Y OF ALASK A  61

access to the land for subsistence purposes.
City and town dwellers, however, who are
constitutionally entitled to the same access
to fish, water, and wildlife, also want to be
permitted to exercise their rights. After more
than three decades, the dispute continues.
The 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill (see p121)
in Valdez Arm cost the company billions
of dollars and damaged both the delicate
ecology of Prince William Sound and
the public opinion of Alaska’s oil industry.
Although Alaska faces the dual challenges
Workers cleaning oil-covered rocks after the Exxon Valdez spill of falling oil prices and decreasing produc-
tion, fossil fuels continue to finance state
their lands. The Act transferred 68,750 government and supply a diminishing
sq miles (178,000 sq km) of land to portion of US markets. Debates about
12 newly established and potentially opening the remote Arctic National Wildlife
profit-making Native Corporations, which Refuge to oil drilling and building natural
roughly coincided with tribal and sub- gas pipelines currently enjoy considerably
tribal boundaries. Alaska Natives were less fervor than in the heyday. Fortunately, a
made shareholders in their respective diversifying economy has lessened Alaska’s
corporations and were given substantial reliance on primary natural resources in
control over the assets. This arrangement favor of tourism and service industries.
effectively avoided the Reservation system
used in the Lower 48 and nullified any
claims to Native sovereignty.
In 1980, President Jimmy Carter
signed the Alaska National Interest Lands
Conservation Act (ANILCA), which set
aside 162,500 sq miles (420,870 sq km)
as protected wilder ness. As a result, a host
of national parks were created, including
Wrangell-St. Elias, Kenai Fjords, Gates of
the Arctic, and Katmai. Unfortunately, inter-
pretation of other facets of ANILCA have
since created rifts between urban residents
and rural Alaska Natives, who do not consider
their homeland to be “wilderness.” Many of Aialik Bay in Kenai Fjords National Park, which was created in
them feel that they should have priority 1980 under ANILCA

2004 10,000 sq 2007 Climate scientists call
miles (26,300 sq km) global warming “unequivocal” 2014 A bill is signed
1997 Japanese freighter of Alaska burn in the and point to dramatic changes declaring the state’s
runs aground and spills worst wildfire season in the Arctic that threaten 20 indigenous languages
fuel at Unalaska since statehood Alaska’s wildest places as official languages
1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020
1994 Due to high 2010 Alaska population
cost projections, voters reaches 710,000
reverse capital move 2006 Mount Augustine
initiative; Juneau erupts, with pyroclastic 2009 Eruption of Mount Redoubt spreads
remains the capital flows and plumes of ash ash over southcentral Alaska

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