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State, feds in opposition over ANILCA BLM director says NPR-A will be evaluated for wilderness character; Gov. Parnell writes to Salazar defending existing designations Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
It wasn’t a face-to-face standoff, but it might as well have been.
Bob Abbey, the national director of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, was in Anchorage in early December as BLM’s new Alaska state director, Bud Cribley, was formally installed.
Abbey spoke at the the Resource Development Council, where he faced an audience with numerous tough — albeit polite — questions about BLM’s intentions for the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, which the agency manages, and where it has a new management plan under way, a replacement for existing plans for separate areas.
Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell, meanwhile, wrote to Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar in November, objecting to “how certain agencies within the Department of the Interior are interpreting the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act.”
“Actions taken by these agencies could upset the delicate balance of interests achieved by ANILCA, detrimentally impacting many Alaskans and reopening bitter, decades-old debates regarding land management,” the governor said.
Abbey told RDC at a Dec. 2 breakfast that lands within the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska “will be assessed (and) … lands with wilderness character will be identified.”
He said BLM is required by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals “to at least address lands of wilderness quality or characteristics.”
Abbey said BLM believes that under the Federal Land Policy Management Act, “assessing and inventorying … lands of wilderness character is an important function of multiple-use management.”
“So whether or not the NPR-A plan includes a wilderness recommendation, I couldn’t tell you right now. I will tell you this, that the lands within the NPR-A will be assessed. Wilderness lands with wilderness character will be identified.”
BLM began work on an integrated activity plan and environmental impact statement for NPR-A at the end of July; the public scoping period ended Oct. 1 and the agency is now analyzing comments prior to the development of the plan.
BLM says on its website that it will issue a draft of the plan for public comment in early 2012, a final plan late in 2012 and a decision approximately a month after issuance of the final plan.
State’s ANILCA concerns ANILCA, signed into law by President Carter in 1980, “established more than 100 million acres of federal land in Alaska as new or expanded conservation system units,” the governor said in his Nov. 17 letter to Salazar.
But in addition to setting aside “this massive portion of Alaska’s land” to preserve scenic and wildlife, ANILCA also “sought to protect Alaska’s fledgling economy and infrastructure, and its distinctive rural way of life. Moreover, the legislation served the critical purpose of lending finality to the issue of the State’s conservation designations.”
Actions by federal agencies concern the state because they “violate the spirit of ANILCA’s ‘no more’ clauses,” Parnell said, referring to sections of the law which say it “provides sufficient protection for the national interest in the scenic, natural, cultural and environmental values on the public lands in Alaska,” and precludes further studies aimed at establishing conservation system units.
Without congressional authorization, that is.
The governor noted BLM “appears to be weighing whether to add wilderness reviews” to its resource management plans in Alaska. Since the passage of ANILCA, Parnell said, nearly all secretaries of the Interior have asked for concurrence from Alaska’s governor before conducting wilderness reviews on BLM lands in Alaska.
The compromise issue Abbey was asked at his RCA talk why, with the ANILCA compromise written into law — putting a lot of Alaska lands in conservation status in exchange for no more lands ever being designated — BLM was thinking of designating lands in NPR-A as wilderness.
“I, too, am well aware of differences of opinion relative to what the law requires,” Abbey said.
But as BLM goes forward, he said “looking and reviewing and identifying lands with wilderness characteristics will be part of that planning effort.”
There are those who believe BLM does “not have this authority,” Abbey said.
It is certainly “something that we’ll talk about in the future or possibly even litigate,” he said.
“But from our perspective it is important that we take that factor into consideration as part of our land-use planning” and decisions reached based upon those plans.
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