The Quiet World Douglas Brinkley

It is a long and fascinating story of wilderness and Alaska.   A massive book for a massive landscape.  Brinkley begins with Theodore Roosevelt – an extension of his previous book – Wilderness Warrior (conservation biography of TR) then we get introduced to people like Charles Sheldon, Rockwell Kent and other lesser known, but important people mixed with John Muir, Bob Marshall, Aldo Leopold,  Olaus and Mardie Murie, and the work of FDR who carried on his cousins conservation.

We learn about the efforts to try to keep the wilderness and the wildlife of Alaska for the future versus the voracious appetite of the developer and unfettered capitalists.  The Wilderness Society came out of the energy of many of the Alaska participants and Leopold, Murie, and Marshall fought hard to keep the Alaskan brown bears and the caribou populations from being decimated.

Ansel Adams photography was more than art, he was an active environmentalist who used his images to help sell his ideas.   The who’s who just keeps going and is filled with good background, but I do question the Gary Snyder – Kerouac section – it seems like a reach to me.

Learning about people like Sea Otter Jones and other people who have not gotten much press is excellent.  We also get a glimpse at the significance of Sigurd Olson outside our MN borders.

There is a lot of research background in this essay and you can sample the stories in the book by perusing the lessons and stories below:


A riveting history of America's most beautiful natural resources, The Quiet World documents the heroic fight waged by the U.S. federal government from 1879 to 1960 to save wild Alaska - Mount McKinley, the Tongass and Chugach national forests, Gates of the Arctic, Glacier Bay, Lake Clark, and the Coastal Plain of the Beaufort Sea, among other treasured landscapes - from the extraction industries. Award-winning historian Douglas Brinkley traces the wilderness movement in Alaska, from John Muir to Theodore Roosevelt to Aldo Leopold to Dwight D. Eisenhower, with narrative verve. Basing his research on extensive new archival material, Brinkley shows how a colorful band of determined environmentalists created the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge just before John F. Kennedy became president. Brinkley introduces a lively gallery of characters influential in preserving Alaska's wilderness resources. And wildlife fervently comes to life in The Quiet World: Brinkley tells incredible stories about the sea otters in the Aleutians, moose in the Kenai Peninsula, and birdlife across the Yukon Delta expanse while exploring the devastating effects that reckless overfishing, seal slaughter, and aerial wolf hunting have wrought on Alaska's once-abundant fauna. While taking into account Exxon Valdez-like oil spills, The Quiet World mainly celebrates how the U.S. government has preserved many of Alaska's great wonders for future generations to enjoy.

Wildlife in America (1959) A non fiction book by Peter Matthiessen

The Wilderness of Denali

Charles Sheldon

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Known as the person most responsible for the protection of Denali, he is a key part of this Alaskan story.

http://www.kenaifjordslodge.com/foxisland-rockwell-kent.html

Rockwell Kent’s story is part of the transition from Sheldon and Roosevelt.

Wilderness: Rockwell Kent's Fox Island

Rockwell Kent, an avid adventurer and pioneer in his time, shared with many other great explorers an energetic view of life, and a love of beauty and nature.

He lived on Fox Island from August 1918 to March 1919. Kent's primary residence on Fox Island was a small cabin that was part of a fox farm and goat ranch run by Lars Matt Olson.

A true tale of wilderness adventure, Rockwell Kent's Wilderness: A Quiet Journey of Adventure in Alaska describes his day to day experiences of living in the remote solitude of Fox Island. Compiled from the stories Kent wrote in his daily journal, you can imagine yourself there, experiencing the hardships along with the simple joys he encountered along the way.

Through his thoughtful representation of the landscapes and seascapes at Fox Island, we gain an insight into his life in the rugged wilderness of Alaska. Kent's search for remote and wild northern landscapes to paint took him to many other places during his lifetime, but none were more delightful or majestic than this trip to Alaska.

Come experience the serenity of this remote place, while enjoying the modern day comforts and genuine hospitality of our staff. The dramatic beauty surrounding Fox Island and the absence of technology in your private cabins will enlighten your mind and refresh your soul.

http://wilderness.org/about-us/bob-marshall The following is from this site.

Robert Marshall

Robert Marshall cherished looking across an open expanse of wilderness, knowing that neither road nor motorized vehicle, pollution nor human settlement would intrude upon the serenity inherent in the pristine vista.

A visionary in the truest sense of the word, Marshall set an unprecedented course for wilderness preservation in the United States that few have surpassed. His ideas and dreams continue to be realized long after his death at the young age of 38 in 1939.

He was the principal founder of The Wilderness Society, was among the first to suggest that large tracts of Alaska be preserved, shaped the U.S. Forest Service's policy on wilderness designation and management, and wrote passionately on all aspects of conservation and preservation.

With a doctorate in forestry, Marshall was well-acquainted with the logic of scientific argument and the economic underpinnings of federal forest policies. Yet he spoke from the heart.

He was not an armchair explorer but a man of limitless energy who believed he would have been more at home during the time of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, when there were adventures and never-ending expanses around every bend. He regularly made 30- and 40-mile-long (and longer) day hikes, preferred tennis shoes to heavy hiking boots, and loved to map unknown regions. He personally underwrote a new government map of U.S. roadless areas, then surveyed many of the 46 areas himself.

The wilderness brought him and others who shared his love for nature a certain joy that no other manifestation of beauty or art could match. He spoke for his contemporaries of similar mind when he wrote that "To us the enjoyment of solitude, complete independence, and the beauty of undefiled panoramas is absolutely essential to happiness."

Robert Marshall was born on January 2, 1901, in New York City to Louis and Florence Marshall. The son of German immigrants, his father was a prominent lawyer, an active conservationist, and a leader in the Jewish community.

Young Bob was educated in the city but spent the 21 summers of his youth at Knollwood, his family's summer home on Lower Saranac Lake in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York. Here he and his brothers, George and James, learned to use a compass and map, and between 1918 and 1924 Bob and George climbed 42 of the 46 Adirondack peaks above 4,000 feet, then later climbed the remaining four. (On July 15, 1932, Marshall set a record of a different sort by climbing 14 Adirondack peaks within 19 hours, a feat that required a total ascent of 13,600 feet.)

Marshall had decided in his teens that he wanted to be a forester. "I love the woods and solitude," he wrote at the time. "I should hate to spend the greater part of my lifetime in a stuffy office or in a crowded city." By 1930, Marshall had earned three degrees, including a Ph.D. in forestry from John Hopkins University.

In 1929 he took the first of several trips to the remote town of Wiseman, Alaska, beginning a long love affair with the Central Brooks Range in the Alaska wilds. He was one of the first persons to explore much of this range, especially the headwaters of the North Fork of the Koyukuk River. (Much of these lands are now protected in the Gates of the Arctic National Park.) It thrilled Marshall to witness a landscape never before seen by any human. "Views from summits were deep spiritual experiences," his brother George wrote. "His joy was complete when, standing on some peak, never before climbed, he beheld the magnificence of a wild timeless world extending to the limit of sight filled with countless mountains and deep valleys previously unmapped, unnamed, and unknown."

A voracious outdoorsman, Marshall was also a prolific writer. (His book Arctic Village, chronicling his experiences while living with the Eskimos and whites in Wiseman between 1930 and 1931, was a 1933 best-seller.) Beginning during his years as a student and continuing through his tenure with the federal government (he was director of forestry for the Interior Department's Office of Indian Affairs and later the head of recreation and lands for the Forest Service), Marshall's writings detailed the aesthetic value of wilderness to humankind and also pushed for public ownership.

Marshall believed that private interests would certainly destroy American's forests. Marshall outlined his argument in support of wilderness lands in his article "The Problem of the Wilderness," which ran in Scientific Monthly in February 1930. Militant in his politics, he was equally uncompromising in his quest for an organization that would fight for wilderness preservation.

His call in the article for a new conservation group was heeded in 1935, when Marshall, Benton MacKaye (the founder of the Appalachian Trail) and six other men formally founded The Wilderness Society. Marshall, who initially started The Society with a $1,000 gift, continued to keep it solvent and single-handedly steered its course with his ideas until his death almost five years later.

Marshall died of heart failure on an overnight train in November 1939. Independently wealthy, Marshall left one-quarter of his $1.5 million estate to The Society, assuring its existence and commitment to wilderness preservation for years to come. At first small by choice (Marshall refused to have any "straddlers"), the organization now has more than 300,000 members and supporters and continues to carry out the visions of a man who dared to dream big.

.

Olaus Murie

Olaus Murie’s passion for wilderness began simply, during his childhood in the fertile Red River valley of Minnesota. Born in 1889, the son of Norwegian immigrants, Murie would become a renowned biologist and one of the country’s greatest champions of wildlife and public lands.

Striking west, Murie studied at Pacific University in Oregon before taking a position as a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Bureau of Biological Survey, now the Fish and Wildlife Service. His work for the Survey took him to Alaska, where he began landmark studies of caribou herds in northern Alaska’s Brooks Range and found his lifetime companion, a Fairbanks native named Mardy.

Scientist, visionary, president of The Wilderness Society. Murie’s vision helped establish the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska and shaped a new way of thinking about predators and ecosystems.

Olaus and Mardy took their vows in 1924 in a 3 a.m. sunrise ceremony on the Yukon River. They took their honeymoon by boat and dogsled, continuing Olaus’s wildlife studies. From then on, Olaus and Mardy adventured as a team, sometimes with their newest baby bundled into the boat with them. Mardy herself would become active in The Wilderness Society and, fondly known as the “grandmother of the conservation movement,” she advocated for wilderness until her death at the age of 101.

An assignment to study the local elk herd brought the Muries to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, their home for the rest of their lives. Olaus studied local fauna, earning his reputation as “the father of modern elk management.” Yet his views were often unpopular. Studying the “coyote problem” in Yellowstone, he became an early, staunch defender of predators and their crucial role in ecosystems. The skepticism of his colleagues never deterred Murie from insisting on what he knew was true. As he stated, “The use of the term 'vermin' as applied to so many wild creatures is a thoughtless criticism of nature's arrangement of producing varied life on this planet.”

In 1937, ready to act on his knowledge, Murie joined the council of the young Wilderness Society. “That was the best time,” Mardy Murie said later. “It seemed that our lives just blossomed. He felt free to do what he wanted to do.”

In those first Wilderness Society years, he pushed for replacing the artificial, human-centered boundaries of national parks with lines that fit the land. He helped convince President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to add surrounding rain forests to Olympic National Monument.

With his younger brother Adolph Murie, also a wildlife biologist, he worked to establish Jackson Hole National Monument in the valley below the Teton Range, the Muries’ own backyard. Most of that National Monument eventually merged into Grand Teton National Park to preserve an extensive, coherent landscape. Just as he saw the interdependence of predator and prey, Murie understood the connection between mountains and adjacent valleys: one could not be protected without preserving the other.

In 1950, The Wilderness Society named Murie its president. The Muries’ log cabin in Moose, Wyoming, at the base of the Tetons — now a National Historic District — became an unofficial Wilderness Society headquarters. As president, Murie lobbied successfully to prevent large federal dam projects within Glacier National Park and Dinosaur National Monument. He urged his countrymen to rein in their arrogance toward the earth — from blind faith in technology to efforts to get rid of “harmful” wildlife like wolves and to “control” rivers with dams. He even opposed naming natural features after people.

Arguing against building a church on the south rim of the Grand Canyon, Murie said: “We human beings should forget our modern exultation in material progress and approach the Grand Canyon and similar places with humility, in the hope that we can improve ourselves.”

Murie’s views brought together the ecological and the ethical — a process that occurred slowly, through years of studying nature. In his early years in the field, he remembered, “I was more concerned with the what of nature; now I care more about the why. I try to form philosophies — linkages of knowledge.”

Murie’s ideals found their greatest manifestation in the quest to preserve what is now the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, in northeast Alaska, around the same area where he had studied caribou decades before. In 1956, Mardy, Olaus, and a few others spent several weeks on an Arctic expedition, collecting data, making a film, and reveling in the magic of the awe-inspiring, wildlife-rich area. Then, armed with their evidence, they returned to the lower 48 and spent four years campaigning tirelessly to protect the place so dear to them.

The idea of preserving entire ecological systems was new and visionary. Nevertheless, in 1960, President Eisenhower set aside 8 million acres as the Arctic National Wildlife Range. Later, it was expanded and redesignated as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as part of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act signed by President Carter in 1980. Mardy later said news of the establishment of the Arctic National Wildlife Range moved Olaus to tears — one of two times in a 40-year marriage that she saw Olaus cry.

Olaus Murie left more subtle legacies as well. He served as a mentor to young biologists and conservationists. He insisted on the universal value of wild lands, eschewing more material pursuits: “Many of us who travel in wilderness have not been burdened by large bank accounts.”

He published several volumes, including A Field Guide to Animal Track, first published in 1954 within the famous Peterson series and still in print with Murie’s original drawings in place.

Even in his last years, until his death in 1963, Murie kept up his life’s work, including corresponding with Rachel Carson. In the words of George Schaller, one of Murie’s students, Murie taught “that the collecting of scientific facts is only the first step of a long process to give work meaning and value.”

Sources

• Fox, Stephen. “We Want No Straddlers.” Wilderness 48.167 (1984): 5-19.
• Glover, James M. “Olaus Murie’s Spiritual Connection with Wilderness.” International Journal of Wilderness 9.1 (2003): 4-8. http://www.wilderness.net/library/documents/Apr03_Glover.pdf.
• Kendrick, Greg. “Olaus J. Murie.” National Park Service: The First 75 Years. Eastern National Park & Monument Association, 1990. http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/sontag/sontagt.htm.
• “Olaus and Mardy Murie: Alaska’s Passionate Protectors.” http://www.wilderness.net/index.cfm?fuse=feature0704.

Brother of Olaus.  The two of them with Mardie made an amazing team of biologists and wilderness Advocates.

http://www.muriecenter.org/

William O Douglas reached out from the Supreme Court to give trees and nature status in the court.

William O. Douglas

William O. Douglas is known for having been the longest running Supreme Court Justice in United States history, holding his position for over 35 years (1939-1975). During his lengthy stay and commitment to the law, Douglas pushed the envelope on many controversial topics including the preservation and protection of wilderness across the United States, earning him the nickname "Wild Bill" and the criticism of the public and other government officials. Douglas never wavered in his stance and today holds a position in the Ecology Hall of Fame for his dedication to conservation.

William Orville Douglas was born on October 16, 1898 in Maine, Minnesota to Reverend William and Julia Douglas. Although many accounts of Douglas' childhood suggest he had polio, this is considered to be an untrue embellishment of an unknown intestinal illness he suffered around age two. When he was five years old, his father, who suffered from stomach ulcers, died in Portland, Oregon and Julia Douglas moved the family to Yakima, Washington, where the mountains would come to symbolize serenity and calm in contrast to this early turmoil.

Douglas attended Yakima High School and graduated in 1916 as valedictorian of his class. In response to his academic success, Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington awarded him a partial scholarship. Douglas again achieved scholastic success and graduated from Whitman, Phi Beta Kappa, in 1920 with a bachelor of arts in English and Economics. From 1920 to 1921 he taught Latin and English at a local Yakima high school.

Wanting to pursue a career in law, Douglas attended Columbia University from 1923 to 1925 graduating with a degree in law as second in his class. He spent the next several months working for the prominent Wall Street law firm, Cravath, Swaine and Moore, and then returned to Columbia to accept a position as a professor. In 1928, Douglas moved to work at Yale Law School, where he stayed for six years. In 1934, interested in Franklin D. Roosevelt's "New Deal" proposal, he left Yale to work for the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. In this position Douglas was appointed advisor to the President with who he had become friends. In 1937 he became chairman of the Commission.

When Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis retired in 1939, Roosevelt nominated Douglas to the Court. At 40 years of age Douglas was one of the youngest individuals ever appointed.

Early in his career Douglas focused on the freedoms stated in the Bill of Rights, heavily opposing any act of censorship. Supported by Roosevelt, Douglas was considered as a nominee for United States vice-president several times (1940, 1944 and 1948) though he refused to run for office. He remained in his position as a Justice fighting for the powerless and disenfranchised citizens of the country.

Throughout the 1950's and 1960's he contributed many of his efforts and numerous writings to the conservation movement. In 1954 he organized a 189-mile hike along the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal to protest eminent highway construction in the area. The protest was successful and the plans for the highway were abandoned. In 1958 he organized a similar hike along a portion of the beach in Olympic National Park in opposition to another highway. These plans for road construction were aborted as well. From 1960 to 1962 Douglas served on the Board of Directors of the blossoming Sierra Club, and in 1962 wrote a supportive review of Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring. His book A Wilderness Bill of Rights was published in 1965 in which he spoke of the importance of the preservation of "conservation parks." In 1967 he fought in support of preserving the Red River Gorge in eastern Kentucky and had the Douglas Trail named in his honor. Douglas published a book in 1969 entitled Points of Rebellion and contributed a written piece to the liberal Evergreen Magazine. In a guide published by the Appalachian Trail Club, Douglas is also credited with having hiked the entire Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine.

As a Court Justice, Douglas advocated heavily for the rights to free speech stated in the First Amendment and fought for the rights of individuals against the government, often stirring up controversy in response to his literal interpretations - in his mind even inanimate objects had rights in court. Though disconcerting to other members of the government, Douglas' position was beneficial to the goals and desires of the environmental movement.

In the 1972 case, Sierra Club vs. Morton, Justice Douglas stated,

"Inanimate objects are sometimes parties in litigation...So it should be as respects valleys, alpine meadows, rivers, lakes, estuaries, beaches, ridges, groves of trees, swampland, or even the air that feels the destructive pressures of modern technology and modern life. The river, for example, is the living symbol of all the life it sustains and nourishes - fish, aquatic insects, water ouzels, otter, fisher, deer, elk, bear, and all other animals, including man, who are dependent on it or who enjoy it for its sight, its sound, or its life. The river as plaintiff speaks for the ecological unit of life that is part of it."

Douglas retired three years later on November 18, 1975 succumbing to ill health brought on by a stroke he suffered a year earlier. It seems that politics and the rights of the people and environment had been his first love throughout his life. Marriage was often a struggle for him and three out his four marriages ended in divorce. With his first wife, Mildred Riddle he had his only two children, Mildred and William Jr. His fourth marriage to Cathleen Heffernan took place in 1966 and lasted until his death. William O. Douglas died at the age of 81 from a second stroke on January 19, 1980 at Walter Reed Hospital in Maryland and was buried in Arlington Cemetery.

The William O. Douglas Wilderness that neighbors Mount Rainier National Park was named in his honor for his dedicated work in the preservation of wild places.

References
Ariens, M. (n/d). Supreme Court Justices: William O. Douglas. Retrieved in May 1, 2007, from http://www.michaelariens.com/ConLaw/justices/douglas.htm

Garrow, D. (2003, April 14). The Tragedy of William O. Douglas. The Nation. (n/p). Retrieved on May 1, 2007, from http://www.thenation.com/doc/20030414/garrow

Gosden, S. (Updated 2006). Ecology Hall of Fame: William O. Douglas. Retrieved on May 1, 2007, from http://www.ecotopia.org/ehof/douglas/index.html

Murphy, B. A. (2003). Wild Bill: The Legend and Life of William O. Douglas. New York: Random House.

Wikipedia. (2007). William O. Douglas. Retrieved on May 1, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_O._Douglas

Article found at http://www.wilderness.net/index.cfm?fuse=feature1007

Mount McKinley and Wonder Lake, Ansel Adams.

Refuge Notebook

Bob ‘Sea Otter’ Jones
- A lifetime of Achievement

by Vernon Byrd
Aleutian Canada Goose (now Aleutian cackling geese) Recovery Team Leader
2001 - celebrating the removal of the goose from the Endangered Species List

Robert D. Jones, Jr. was an uncommon man. He loved the wilderness in a way that some of the mountain men must have loved it. He saw beauty and adventure in a region of Alaska where most visitors did not. As a young army officer during World War II, Bob was among the first troops to go ashore at Adak in the central Aleutian Islands, that arc of submarine volcano peaks that extends from Alaska toward Siberia.

Nearly to the man, soldiers viewed the Aleutians much like Warrant Officer Boswell Boomhower who wrote the following poem (p. 309 in The Thousand-Mile War, Brian Garfield, 1988, Bantam Books, New York):

A soldier stood at the Pearly Gate;
His face was wan and old.
He gently asked the man of fate
Admission to the fold.
"What have you done," St. Peter asked,
"To gain admission here?"
"I've been in the Aleutians
For nigh unto a year."
Then the gates swung open sharply
As St. Peter tolled the bell.
"Come in," said he, "and take a harp,
"You've had your share of hell."

Bob was different. He loved the treeless tundra, found the fierce winds invigorating, and saw the snow-covered volcanic peaks as needing to be climbed. Like the other soldiers, he was concerned about the threat of Japanese attack, but he probably went about his duties professionally and did not let the situation color his view of "paradise."

Bob spent the whole war in the Aleutians serving at the main bases on Adak and Amchitka with scouting trips to Ogliuga and Tanaga to evaluate them as sites for emergency runways. Although he probably did not realize it at the time, nothing could have prepared him better for his future career than these years roaming around the Aleutians.

Before the war, Bob had graduated from South Dakota State University with a degree in biology, so he viewed the Aleutians through the trained eye of a biologist. He realized that the area had been the Aleutian Islands National Wildlife Refuge since 1913, and in spite of the war, it was obvious to him how rich the area was in wildlife. Furthermore, he became aware that foxes had been introduced to most of the islands before the war, and many species of native birds had been decimated by predation.

After making the appropriate contacts following the war, Bob was hired as the first resident refuge manager of the Aleutian Islands National Wildlife Refuge and was sent to Cold Bay to set up an office in 1947.

One of his first priorities was to try to figure out how to travel around his 1,100-mile-long refuge.

There were few settlements and only three bases remained open, leaving most of the islands uninhabited by people. Bob developed a network of friends in various locations including the navy, the coast guard, local Native people, and employees of Reeve Aleutian Airways (the only commercial carrier in the region). He also acquired several double-ended Cape Cod dories – small, but seaworthy, open boats for traveling among the islands.

One of Bob's priorities was to try to remove introduced foxes from Amchitka Island – selected because of its extensive wetlands and grassy meadows – on the off chance that a few Aleutian Canada geese remained somewhere and could be saved from extinction.

With little more than his dory and his amazing energy and persistence, Bob spent the best part of 10 summers removing every last fox from Amchitka. During the work there, he and his associates actually saw a few Aleutian geese in the spring, apparently migrating further west. He suspected a few birds might be left on Buldir Island, the most isolated island in the island chain, so rugged and unprotected from the sea that fox farmers would not have been able to regularly land their boats on the beaches.

In 1962, Bob got the Coast Guard cutter Winona to load his dory on her decks and drop him off near Buldir. In a matter of hours after landing, he confirmed that a remnant breeding population indeed existed! Over the next five years he removed introduced foxes from islands near Buldir, and he captured goslings at Buldir to form a captive flock, ultimately at Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, for future reintroductions to the wild. His work provided the basis for the formal recovery program that was to come.

I met Bob Jones in 1968 when I reported to Adak as an Ensign in the Navy. One of my duties was to coordinate wildlife issues on the base with the refuge staff in Cold Bay. Bob was famous by then for his work on geese, caribou and sea otters, and he was known throughout the region as "Sea Otter" Jones. I was in awe.

Before the Navy, I had studied wildlife management, and my dreams were to work with wildlife in Alaska. I must have acted a lot like an excited puppy around Bob at times, but he was kind to me. He became my mentor; he already was my hero.

My tour at Adak was for one year, but I too fell in love with the tundra, mighty winds, and volcanic peaks. Although I had to get clearance from the navy psychiatrists to extend my tour (most folks still felt like WO Boomhower about the Aleutians, and the Navy had to confirm that I was of sound mind), I was able to stay at Adak for three years.

Bob and his staff got me all excited about Aleutian Canada geese, and when I got out of the Navy, he hired me as a seasonal employee on the refuge. Eventually I was sent back to Adak to open the refuge's first office there. Bob effectively, passed the mantle. He went on to work primarily with black brant and other waterfowl and eventually moved to the new regional office in Anchorage where he retired in 1980.

As manager of the Aleutian Islands Refuge, I was fortunate enough to help start the formal recovery program for Aleutian Canada geese in 1975, but I frequently went to Bob for advice. His insight, enthusiasm, and wisdom about the Aleutians continued to help guide the program that ultimately resulted in the recovery of the goose.

Bob passed away in 1998. Although he never saw the notice of removing the Aleutian Canada goose from the Endangered Species List, he knew his work had been a success. Sea Otter Jones will be missed, but his legacy includes the recovery of the Aleutian Canada goose.

Vernon Byrd Aleutian Canada Goose Recovery Team Leader http://alaska.fws.gov/nwr/akmar/historyculture/notebook/JonesTribute.htm

Celia Hunter, 1919-2001

Celia Hunter was Alaska’s modern-era John Muir –bold adventurer, tireless conservation advocate, inspirational leader.

Celia Hunter came to Alaska long before the steady march of civilization reached the far north, with its widespread threats of reckless development. Arriving in 1947, she was looking for adventure in Alaska, not to save it.

She ended up staying a lifetime, leaving behind a treasure of well-protected natural wonders and a strong movement to defend and expand them. Among her many legacies is the Alaska Conservation Foundation, which she helped launch in 1980.

Celia Hunter was Alaska’s modern-era John Muir – bold adventurer, tireless conservation advocate, inspirational leader. Few have done more to save Alaska’s wilds from exploitation at the hands of man.

Searching for adventure

When Celia first came to Alaska she did not consider herself a conservationist or an environmentalist. “I don’t think ‘conservationist’ existed in my vocabulary at that time. We were just looking for adventures!” she once remarked.

Celia Hunter in the cockpit.

Celia was no stranger to adventures. As a young adult, she had learned to fly just as World War II was looming. On her first solo flight, she made a rookie mistake and nearly killed herself by taking off under another plane.

She persevered, and the war gave Celia a chance to put her flying skills to work. After joining the Women Air Force Service Pilots (WASP), Celia flew planes of all kinds from factories to training centers and shipping ports throughout the Lower 48.

Heading to Alaska

The military wouldn’t let women deliver planes to Alaska, though – and that piqued Celia’s curiosity. After the war, she and her good friend and fellow WASP, Ginny Wood, decided that they would get to Fairbanks on their own “Just to see what the fellows had been talking about.”

It was a long, cold trip.

She and Ginny made a deal with an Alaskan pilot who was in Seattle buying planes and needed them delivered to Fairbanks. Taking off in early December, “It took us 27 days to fly from Seattle to Fairbanks,” Celia said. “Ginny’s plane had unairworthy fabric and no heat—we nicknamed it ‘Lil’l Igloo’. On the leg between Watson Lake and Whitehorse, a three-hour flight, we had to chip her out of the cockpit when we landed; she was so cold she couldn’t move!”

In Fairbanks, they found themselves stranded by 50 degree below zero weather.

That kind of cold has scared off many a would-be Alaskan, but Celia and Ginny were unfazed. They found work as flight attendants and flew the first-ever tourist trips to the remote coastal towns of Kotzebue and Nome.

At summer’s end, their thirst for adventure took Celia and Ginny far from Alaska. They spent a semester at school in Sweden, then spent 10 months bicycling throughout Europe, which was still suffering the devastation inflicted by the war. To get back to America, they hitchhiked across the Atlantic Ocean on a tanker.

Upon arriving, Celia explained, “We bought a jeep station wagon and drove cross-country to Seattle, but found the U.S. too affluent for our tastes [so we] headed back to Alaska.”

Ecotourism entrepreneur

They could have found work with their old employer, Chuck West, at his growing tourism business.

“But catering to large-scale tourism such as [Chuck’s] Westours was not our style,” Celia said.

Along with Ginny’s new husband, the two women decided to start something that was their style. Inspired by the hut system in Europe, they looked for a wilderness setting where they could offer simple accommodations with outdoor activities that encouraged appreciation for the natural world.

They found it along the western boundary of Denali National Park, and filed a Homestead Act claim on land with a magnificent view of Mount McKinley.

Camp Denali opened for business in 1952.

“Although the term had not yet been invented, Camp Denali was probably the first eco-tourism venture in Alaska, possibly the U.S.,” Celia once wrote. Located some 90 miles from the park entrance, accessible only by small plane or a long drive on the national park’s primitive road, Camp Denali closely reflected Celia and Ginny’s philosophy on life and the natural world and continues to do so under its current owners. (In 1975, Celia and Ginny sold Camp Denali to Wally Cole, who gave them two snowshoe rocking chairs as a down payment.)

As Celia’s and Ginny’s business grew, so did their deep respect and love for the natural world. But Alaska was changing rapidly before their eyes and they realized it was going to take a lot of work to protect the Alaskan wild-lands they loved.

“Flying across bush Alaska, the entire landscape was a seamless whole, unmarred by manmade boundaries. Most Alaskans assumed it would always be like this, and they resisted strenuously the setting aside of particular lands to protect them,” Celia said.

She and Ginny found themselves becoming increasingly involved in Alaska’s issues.

Her first battle: The Arctic National Wildlife Range

Celia’s transformation into conservation activist – and the modern Alaska conservation movement – started when she met two biologists who had been exploring the foothills of Alaska’s Brooks Range. Olaus and Mardy Murie dreamed of protecting a large area that extended from the Arctic Ocean, across the Brooks Range, and down into the boreal forest on the southern side. After seeing this unspoiled expanse in 1956, Olaus proposed the Arctic National Wildlife Range, which would protect an ecosystem large enough to support the great Porcupine River Caribou herd and other wildlife.

“We really supported very strongly what they were trying to do,” Celia said. “Olaus went home and drew lines on the map and we started fighting for setting aside the area.”

The strongest support for the Arctic National Wildlife Range came from congressional delegates and other conservationists outside of the state of Alaska, and there was nothing that got the Alaskan delegation more riled up than a bunch of outsiders coming in and telling Alaska how to manage its resources.

In response, Celia and others formed the Alaska Conservation Society (ACS), Alaska’s first statewide conservation organization, in 1960.

Celia explained, “Okay, if you don’t want to listen to people from Outside, you better listen to us.” Voting members of ACS were required to be Alaskan residents.

Their efforts helped make the difference. Despite strong opposition from Alaska’s senators and lone congressman, President Eisenhower, urged on by Secretary of the Interior Fred Seaton, created the Wildlife Range shortly before Eisenhower left office in 1960.

Next up: Rampart Dam

Soon after its formation, ACS found itself fighting two other major battles: Rampart Dam and Project Chariot.

Damming the Yukon River at Rampart would have created a lake 300 miles long, flooding numerous Native villages and individual homesites, and swallowing up millions of acres of land needed by waterfowl and wildlife. Rampart Dam was meant to supply cheap hydropower for an aluminum smelter. Celia and others showed that the project was not only a devastating assault on the environment, it was also a colossal waste of money because it was so costly and so much bigger than anything Alaska could reasonably use.

Fighting the A-bomb in Alaska

The second battle ACS fought was known as Project Chariot, a proposal to use a nuclear bomb for blasting a harbor out of the northwest Arctic coast near the Native village of Pt. Hope. Dr. Edward Teller and others from the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) courted Alaska’s business and political leaders by touting the spin-off benefits of experimenting with atomic technology and creating a deepwater port in the shallow seas of Northwest Alaska.

Academics at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks were not so easily convinced, however. Professors demanded to know how Dr. Teller and the AEC could predict what damage a nuclear blast would inflict since they knew nothing about the existing conditions of the land and its people.

“That was how they got the first environmental investigation – the first Environmental Impact Statement investigation,” Celia said. “This was ten years before NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) became law under [President] Nixon. What they found really pulled the plug out from under the project, because it was one of the richest areas in Alaska.”

“They thought that they could push everybody around and they suddenly discovered they were up against an informed citizenry…” Celia explained. “This is how close the U.S. and Alaska came to having their own Chernobyl catastrophe”

However, disaster was not entirely averted. Before the Atomic Energy Commission left Alaska, it imported several tons of radioactive waste and buried it near the proposed harbor to see how it disseminated through the ecosystem.

“They were turned down,” Celia said. “They realized that they couldn’t go ahead and make a nuclear blast because people were already loaded to the gills with the radioactivity. So what did they do but import a bunch of it and bury it and didn’t tell anybody and so now, 33 years later, it suddenly comes to light. I think those people were absolutely dastardly.”

Wolf bounties, another big dam, and more

ACS took on many other battles. It was instrumental in removing bounties on wolves, a fight that lasted nearly a decade. ACS fought the Susitna Dam, another horrendously expensive environmental boondoggle similar to the Rampart Dam. The group worked on community projects such as preserving open spaces in Fairbanks, building trails and improving alternative transportation.

Residents in many Alaskan communities started local ACS chapters to fight issues in their own backyards. The organization steadily grew for 20 years, before Ginny and others realized that they no longer had the resources to run such a large organization.

“Why don’t we go out of business while we still have money left and divide the money up-we had between ACE (Alaska Center for the Environment), SEACC (Southeast Alaska Conservation Council), and NAEC (The Northern Alaska Environmental Council)?” they asked. And that is what they did, knowing they had established a strong conservation movement throughout the state to carry on with needed work.

By 1969 Celia’s work had drawn national attention, and she was offered a position on the Governing Council of the Wilderness Society. In 1976 she was made the group’s president and later executive director — the first woman to head a national environmental organization.

Alaska’s biggest conservation battle

While at The Wilderness Society, she found herself involved in the biggest, and most successful, conservation battle in Alaska’s history: getting Congress to pass the 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act.

The effort took more than a decade, and it provoked bitter resistance inside Alaska. Business and political leaders crusaded against the federal “lock up” of Alaska lands.

In the face of Alaskan resistance, Congress dragged out its work on what was known as the “d-2 bill.” Interim protections for many of the federal lands in question — authorized as part of the 1971 Alaska Native claims settlement — were due to expire if Congress failed to act by 1978. President Jimmy Carter came to the rescue, by declaring 56 million acres of Alaska’s endangered federal land as national monuments.

Rules for national monuments were fairly strict, and had little flexibility for Alaska’s unusual conditions. Carter became the most hated man in Alaska – he was even burned in effigy. But his decision led Congress to pass a compromise bill that protected more than 100 million acres of federal land, while creating some new management flexibility for Alaska parks and refuges.

The 1980 Alaska Lands Act has been called “the most significant land conservation measure in the history of our nation.” It created 10 new national parks and expanded three others, for a total of 43.6 million acres in newly protected parkland. The act doubled the size of the national refuge system, adding 53.7 million acres in nine new refuges and six existing ones. The 56 million acres of new wilderness in Alaska tripled the amount of land in the country now getting the highest level of protection.

Even as that battle came to a close, Celia did not stop looking for ways to advance the conservation cause in Alaska.

As her friend Ginny Wood, had said earlier, “Ironically, I know that after a d-2 bill is passed I will then be fighting to protect the d-2 lands from other development and other management by the very agencies instructed to protect them – The National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and Forest Service.”

There would be a lot of work for Alaska conservation groups to do, and not enough money and person-power to do it on their own.

Starting the Alaska Conservation Foundation

Realizing that, in 1980 Celia helped Denny Wilcher start the Alaska Conservation Foundation. ACF would tap into funding sources and supporters in the Lower 48 so that conservation groups would not have to depend solely on membership dues and volunteer staff to do their work. The new foundation would also continue to promote networking among Alaska conservation groups, as Celia and Ginny had done through the Alaska Conservation Society.

ACF started small, raising less than half a million dollars a year. By the late 1990s, the foundation was bringing in about $4 million a year to support Alaska conservation efforts. In 2004, ACF raised more than $7 million. Along the way, it has nurtured and spun off a wide range of groups including Alaskans for Responsible Mining, the Renewable Energy Alaska Project, Alaska Community Action on Toxics, the Alaska Marine Conservation Council, the Alaska Conservation Alliance and Alaska Conservation Voters.

Celia served on the ACF Board of Trustees for over 18 years. Her talent, enthusiasm, leadership, and inspiration were highly valued by other groups, as well. She served on many other boards, including the Alaska Natural History Association, The Nature Conservancy, and Trustees for Alaska.

Starting in 1979 Celia contributed a regular column to the Fairbanks Daily News Miner offering an environmental perspective to readers of that conservative, staunchly pro-development publication.

Active ‘til the end

On December 1, 2001 at the age of 82, Celia was up late writing letters to Congress insisting that the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge be protected from oil drilling. It was her last act in a life dedicated to protecting the land she loved.

Celia Hunter was a cornerstone of the conservation movement in Alaska, opening minds and halting disasters with unwavering strength and persistence.

Being raised a Quaker on a small farm during the Depression instilled Celia with values that she carried throughout her life. As friend and colleague Rick Caulfield described, “She tried to live to the best of those values: non-violence, seeing beauty in people and in the natural world, and treating all people equally.” She found the confidence to follow her dreams, regardless of whether they were conventional paths for women.

In her last radio interview—only two weeks before her death—Celia offered this advice: “Change is possible, but you have to put your energy into it. You can’t expect me, I’m past 80, to be the mover and the shaker of this, but people like you are. And you’re going to have to bite the bullet and really decide what kind of world you want to live in.”

It only takes one trip to Alaska to fall in love with this extraordinary place. Celia didn’t plan on coming to Alaska, and she certainly didn’t plan on staying.

But as Celia liked to say “Life is what happens to you while you are busy making plans.”

“You just have to keep a fire in your belly, and you just go for it, and when you do, you can make a tremendous difference.”

Thanks for the lessons, Celia Hunter.

http://alaskaconservation.org/foundation/history-founders/celia-hunter/

Celia Hunter

1919 – 2001

Achievement in: conservation; environmental activism

Celia lived an adventuresome, varied and inspiring life. She arrived in Fairbanks, January 1, 1947, after spending 27 days ferrying a plane from Seattle. In 1952, she co-founded and ran, with longtime friend Ginny Wood and her husband Morton, one of the first ecotourism lodges in the country, Camp Denali. She helped create the first statewide conservation organization, the Alaska Conservation Society (ACS), in 1960 in a (successful) effort to establish the Arctic National Wildlife Range. On the national stage, she served on the joint Federal State Land Use Planning Commission and, in 1977, became the first woman to head a national environmental movement, The Wilderness Society. Celia along with friend Ginny are credited as the creators of the conservation movement in Alaska.