ALERT: Help Prevent Permanent Structures and Extensive Helicopter Intrusions in the Glacier Bay Wilderness
Comments Needed by June 12th
The National Park Service (NPS) is proposing to build and maintain up to eight new permanent weather stations in the Glacier Bay Wilderness in southeast Alaska, despite its admission that doing so will indefinitely diminish the wilderness character of this Wilderness. The Wilderness Act prohibits structures, installations, and helicopter landings for just this reason—to protect wilderness character. Your help is needed by June 12th to keep Glacier Bay Wilderness wild.
The Glacier Bay Wilderness in Alaska spreads across 2.66 million acres of the Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve in Alaska, and protects mountains nearly three miles high and one of the wildest coastlines anywhere. Congress designated the Glacier Bay Wilderness in 1980 as part of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA).
Wilderness Watch supports scientific research in Wilderness, but we do oppose it when such research degrades the wilderness character of the area being studied. The current NPS proposal unfortunately does just that. Six of these eight stations in Wilderness would be Remote Automated Weather Stations (RAWS), and two more would use existing radio repeaters but would add new data-logging thermistors. Helicopters would fly to and land at least four of the proposed RAWS sites. This research won’t benefit the Wilderness or in any way or lead to its protection, so it does not qualify for the Wilderness Act’s exception that says “except as necessary to meet minimum requirements for the administration of the area for the purpose of this Act” which is to preserve wilderness character. On the contrary, this proposal does the opposite.
In the Environmental Assessment, the NPS admits the installations will degrade the Glacier Bay Wilderness. “The number of helicopter landings occurring each year would increase due to the RAWS station at Brady Icefield,” the NPS writes. “The undeveloped quality of wilderness would be diminished for an indefinite period of time by the addition of six new long-term installations” in Wilderness, the agency further admits. “Alternative B” (the NPS alternative) “would contribute adverse impacts from the installation of eight new stations in wilderness,” the agency admits. Yet the NPS still is pushing ahead with its wilderness-damaging proposal.
The current proposal for six new stations is probably only the beginning of such requests to invade this Wilderness with new structures, installations, and helicopters, with more requests over time. We need to draw the line now to protect the Glacier Bay Wilderness.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
Please send your comments to the NPS by June 12 at the website listed below. Write in your own words, but try to include the following points:
1. The NPS proposal will degrade the wilderness character of the Glacier Bay Wilderness and violates the letter and spirit of the Wilderness Act.
2. The NPS considered an inadequate range of alternatives in this proposal. The NPS considered only a No Action alternative, and the proposed alternative for the eight stations inside Wilderness. The NPS should have considered an alternative to gather data from sites outside designated Wilderness.
3. This proposal must be blocked.
Submit your comments online:
https://parkplanning.nps.gov/commentForm.cfm?documentID=61520
Thank you!!
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Photos: Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; Miller Peak Wilderness by Zac Ribbing; Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness by Kevin Proescholdt;Courtesy Red Lodge Clearinghouse via High Country News (hcn.org); Granite Chief Wilderness by George Wuerthner; Seagull Lake, Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness by Gary A. Nelson. |
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