https://www.theraf.org/news/2016/backcountry-airstrips-supported-us-budget-report
The RAF says the US Senate budget bill supports back country airstrips on Federal lands and directs Federal land management agencies to consider aviation as a legitimate way to access remote areas for recreational purposes. I haven't seen anything about a companion bill for this from the House of Representatives. Has anyone else???

BTW, Kudos for the RAF on this.

That looks great. Any idea why the verbiage does not include US fish and Wildlife Service? Too bad, as the USFWS has a lot of land locked up in Alaska..

sean

[quote="seward"]That looks great. Any idea why the verbiage does not include US fish and Wildlife Service? Too bad, as the USFWS has a lot of land locked up in Alaska..

sean[/quote

All FWS lands in the Lower 48 are closed to aircraft landings.

But, ANILCA, which established or re-established every National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, specifically authorizes aircraft landings, with very few exceptions. The only exceptions that I'm aware of are parts of the canoe area on the Kenai NWR. Even designated wilderness areas on refuges in Alaska, again with few exceptions, are open to aircraft landings.

Same goes for many if not most National Parks and Monuments in Alaska, which were also established/re-established by ANILCA.

For a number of years, I'd fly my seaplane up to Denali NP and land in Wonder Lake, and eat my lunch. Wanted there to be documentation that airplanes did land in the park.

MTV

This one's also a good read if you haven't yet.
https://www.blm.gov/style/medialib/blm/ ... cLands.pdf

MTV


The letter of the law for ANILCA is one thing, actual practice another. Much more than the canoe lakes trail system is closed. Strips in the high country are closed, traditional strips on the grassy area near chickaloon are closed (all the mud flats are open...good luck there). Most of the lakes are closed during swan nesting, even though swans successfully pull off clutches on Beluga lake in Homer each year, and even though swans are off the endangered list. One of the few USFWS strips left open (indian) is grown over but access is not allowed by wheeled vehicle so no maintenance occurs. I appreciate that you are aware of some of Alaska's uniqueness, having worked up here, however each year we see more and more closed off. If an agency declares an area to be under consideration for wilderness, it gets closed. Congressionally designated wilderness is closed. It is not a matter of everything being wide open. The letter of the law for ANILCA is not followed.

To be fair, often open areas get trashed quickly. One only needs to look at the ugly trails leading from Homer to the caribou hills, or out of Eureka in unit 13. While those are from ATV traffic, man does have a tendency to screw up good things. The USFWS is trying to protect the land, however I feel there should be some give.

Seward,

Actually, every case you note IS in compliance with the letter of ANILCA. As I pointed out, ANILCA provides exceptions to the general access provisions. The places you note are likely all justified as exceptions for cause. Those exceptions require a public notification and process, but those notifications can sometimes be a bit hard to find.

As to Trumpeter Swans nesting in Beluga Lake, there is a huge difference between a pair of birds which moves into a high human traffic area, compared with a situation where the high human activity is imposed on birds nesting in a somewhat "primitive" area like the canoe trails. There you also have the potential conflict between motorized and non motorized users as well.

I'm not defending closures necessarily....I have always felt that ANY closure/restrictions on those lands needs to be thoroughly justified. If not, the agency needs to be taken to task. That office answers to a supervisor in Anchorage, who answers to another in DC, etc.

Best thing to do is get involved.

That said, the Kenai refuge was the only refuge with significant restrictions to aircraft that I was aware of....but I've been out of there for a while.

MTV

For those in the know, what are the best places to go for information on closures and exceptions to ANILCA?

On a recent trip to southwest AK I spent a lot of prep time on NPS and other websites looking for closures/restrictions in each area I planned to visit. Some areas specify "lakes, streams, and other bodies of water" as usable for aircraft so is that interpreted as including gravel bars on streams/rivers and lakeside/ocean beaches?

Other than a thorough reading of the sectional legend and margins, what do local Alaskans use to find this type of information?

If this is too much thread drift I could post something separately.

colopilot wrote:This one's also a good read if you haven't yet.
https://www.blm.gov/style/medialib/blm/ ... cLands.pdf

Good info and a great read, I agree.

THREAD DRIFT (Couldn't resist): Didja notice the SAFECOM at Appendix A? "We launched from FCA on 7/24/03 @0926 for a 3 hour mission as Air Tactical Group Supervisor on the Wedge Canyon Incident. .... At 1115 the left engine started running rough and we lost all engine power within two minutes. While trying to determine why we lost one engine the pilot discovered we were out of fuel. Our first intention was to try and return to FCA with one engine out. I had pinpointed several airstrips along the North Fork road previously from locating areas for a portable retardant plant. Directly below us we located Wurtz airstrip, a closed airstrip on Forest Service ground. The pilot executed a slow left bank turn while descending to the airstrip and we landed without incident at 1125. ... The previous evening the pilot had requested [of the FBO] that the aircraft be fueled by first thing in the morning. The pilot had arrived early this morning and cleaned all windows, leading edge of all wings, and pre-flighted the aircraft. With the aircraft sitting on the strip the fuel tanks still registered full [on the gauges?]. The FBO did not refuel the aircraft as thought, and the desk receptionist informed him that the receipt from fueling was still in the truck and he could get it later."

Oops. A big 'GOTCHA' here. The pilot wasn't present during refueling, nor did the pilot dip the tanks (or look!!). While trust in the fuel gauges and FBO to follow through is nice, it's a great idea to VERIFY!

MTV. You make the assumption that due process was followed for public involvement. Since the exception can be almost anything if the agency so desires it, the process can be manipulated. Heck, I work for a government agency and see it happen all the time. Currently the USFWS is using the mandate of "protect natural diversity" to justify various actions. Natural diversity is pretty vague, thus it works quite well for authorizing exceptions. Want to close the one strip in the high country? Planes will crush vegetation when landing, so diversity is at risk. The same for no wheel access to mystery creek road except for a brief period for moose hunting. I can see restricting truck/atv traffic in sensitive areas, but the refuge also prohibits ANY wheel device. No game carts on the road, no bicycles, no strollers on the road. Yet agency personnel and gas line personnel can drive it any time. That decision was made over 30 years ago and no refuge manager has agreed to revisit it, ever. Why? To limit access to the public.

Swans? The original justification was based upon low population numbers and a real need to protect breeding pairs in order to help overall population growth. Now that the population is doing well by all measures, including USFWS metrics, will the number of landable lakes be increased? Nope. A different justification has to be found to continue the closures. In other words, the original metric (protect swans), has been met, but the desire to keep lakes closed is still present. The public can not rely on an agency to bargain in good faith. Heck, I have even had agency personnel talk about "refuge airspace" and the desire to re-route air traffic from Anchorage to/from Homer to restrict overflights.

The RAF is just starting up here and hopefully will gain traction with Alaskan pilots. No all agency staff and agencies operate the same. Heck, the NPS in Wrangell St. Elias worked with local groups to improve strips recently. It was great, and work was in both Park and Monument I believe.

I absolutely do not want the doors thrown open wide because we (the public) will not take care of the land properly. No question about that....but I would sure like to see more give from the agencies, especially when we can still see traditional landing strips that are now closed off because of "exceptions" that are not always biologically relevant. Someone even ditched a strip in the Kenai mountains to close it off, which is especially problematic behavior. Given that Alaska was supposed to have different parameters than the lower 48 for access, it is hard to watch the erosion of access over the years. Simply because the rules are on the books does not mean the spirit of those rules will be followed. Many federal staff rotate up to Alaska from the lower 48 on 3-5 year assignments, then return to the contiguous states. When they arrive up here they carry with them the expectations and understanding of how management actions work elsewhere. ANILCA is not formally presented/explained to them, thus it is easy to see why they wish to apply lower 48 standards to management actions in Alaska as they would in Oregon. It creates an adversarial situation which is not good.

Seward,

You make good points, no doubt, and I wouldn't necessarily argue some of them.

That said, these are National WILDLIFE Refuges, not Parks. When it comes to people versus wildlife, I have always believed the wildlife should win. I doubt that the swans have overpopulated the canoe trail lakes, and swans and loons are both species that don't tolerate disturbance well.

I totally agree that one manager coming in from the lower 48 can change things in ways that are perhaps inappropriate in Alaska.....been there, and dealt with some of that.

Frankly, Alaskans don't lean on their elected representatives enough on this kind of stuff. Everyone has a boss, and those three folks have a lot of pull with agencies.

I'm not really very familiar with the Kenai....too "urban" for my taste, so can't speak to many of the things you describe. I've seen airstrips that were built as part of oil exploration, within a conservation area, and one of the mitigations that was required in the permitting process was that the airstrips had to be "closed" or made effectively unusable when the exploratory work was complete....that sounds like the ditched strip you describe.

Sounds like you need to visit some other refuges in AK.....my experience with ten or eleven of the others is there are very few such restrictions. The Kenai has always been a bit too close to "civilization" for my blood. Civilization being Anchorage.

By the way, much of the good work you describe in the Wrangells was started by an NPS staff person who argued that most of the strips in the Park were the only way to access and thus maintain historic mining cabins.....volunteers helped rehab strips so the NPS could restore historic cabins, which were then opened to the public. Ya gotta like that kind of management style.

MTV

WA_L16 wrote:For those in the know, what are the best places to go for information on closures and exceptions to ANILCA?

On a recent trip to southwest AK I spent a lot of prep time on NPS and other websites looking for closures/restrictions in each area I planned to visit. Some areas specify "lakes, streams, and other bodies of water" as usable for aircraft so is that interpreted as including gravel bars on streams/rivers and lakeside/ocean beaches?

Other than a thorough reading of the sectional legend and margins, what do local Alaskans use to find this type of information?

If this is too much thread drift I could post something separately.

The best approach in my experience is to contact each conservation unit directly and ask to speak with a law enforcement for that area. Sounds overwhelming, but in truth you probably aren't going to visit more than a few units anyway.

Also, by contacting them directly, you may get other useful advice about things to see or avoid, best times to visit, etc. But, don't talk to just anyone, and make a record of your call, when and who you talked to. If you did get crossed up, and you got bad info from the source, it will help your case.

Every conservation unit has a web page, which will give you contact info. It's really easy to get there these days.

I know I always appreciated folks gettin in touch so we could help them have a good experience rather than a bad one. Often it made my job a lot easier.

MTV