FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

“Absolutely not,” she said. “We don’t know where our property is, and I could not possibly justify the expense of a survey for such a project.”

Ms Wade went to Washington, DC, where she testified before Congress to her need for more money for the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park (WRST). Money, not for campgrounds or other visitor facilities, but for more armed rangers to “ride shotgun when we visit residents who often have a frontier mentality.”

Word of Wade’s comments reached Alaska, the public outcry was swift and loud, and Wade returned to Copper Center to clean out her desk. (Disgraced in Alaska, she was sent to North Carolina, where, in 1998 she was named “Superintendent of the Year,” and in 1999 was made a regional director. Apparently treating inholders and park visitors as dangerous bumpkins is the route to success at NPS.)

A few years after Wade’s ignominious departure, the private sector came to the rescue and built not one, but two camp¬grounds. Trespass by campers was almost entirely eliminated. Suddenly, NPS must have discovered where their land was, and they built a no-fee campground right across the road from one of the existing, privately-owned campgrounds. The campground owners complained to Senator Frank Murkowski, who sent an aide to scope out the situation. Two weeks later, the free NPS campground closed. If you ask NPS about it today, they will tell you that they closed the campground because it was located in a “bear corridor.” Which is, at best, deceptive. (They recently announced plans to build a two million dollar project with 12 housing units and an RV pad on the same piece of property.)

Two years ago, the Pilgrim family bought the old Mother Lode Mine site. The seller described property line locations in a manner which then seemed reasonable to the Pilgrim family. But apparently, the NPS knew something the Pilgrims didn’t— the seller had probably built the house partly off the lot over onto federal lands.

So why did the NPS overreact this spring and blow $70,000 to do a goldplated complete retracement survey when their own Geographic Information System capabilities inhouse could have, at a fraction of that cost and far less environmental impact, prepared airphotobased plats showing where those lines were located—plenty good enough for NPS management purposes in a remote area like McCarthy Creek!

Even more interesting is why NPS managers insisted on creating a new twomiles of visible slash lines through previously undisturbed natural vegetation around the Pilgrim property over their objections and pleadings!

The American Land Rights Association points out that the 2003 NPS field campaign against the Pilgrim family has caused FAR FAR MORE visible impact on undisturbed natural vegetation in the McCarthy Creek valley than anything they are trying to hang the Pilgrims with doing on the EXISTING 100 year old road!

Sure enough, the BLM survey confirmed that the property line goes right through the middle of the house. The Pilgrims, like the NPS in 1993, didn’t really know exactly where their property was.

The Pilgrims also used their ANILCA granted access rights to use a 100 year old mine road to bring materials and supplies to their land, crushing some brush growth in the process.

This past month, the National Park Service has spent somewhere in the neighborhood of a quarter million dollars to “gather evidence” of “possible resource damage” on the road and on this small, approximately one-acre area adjacent to the Pilgrim home—neither of which has been pristine wilderness for a century. Photos of the area around the Pilgrim home ca 1920 show the brush cleared almost exactly like it is today.

Yet the NPS is sparing no taxpayer expense in its quest to ruin this family with a frivolous lawsuit.

Any good neighbor would have tried to settle the problem in a civil manner. Offer a land swap, let the family restore the alders, whatever. But not the NPS. They jumped at the opportunity to send armed rangers to scowl and intimidate the family, and a swarm of “resource experts” to document every turned leaf and shredded stalk. For two weeks the Pilgrim family endured endless helicopter flights, surly rangers and stone-faced “scientists” digging and probing in their yard. Chief Ranger Hunter Sharp scaring customers away from their popular horse rides and telling people that the “Pilgrims will not talk to us”— which has about the same credibility as the story of closing the campground due to bears.

In fact, the management at WRST seems to be so obsessed with “getting” the Pilgrim family that they have almost completely ignored the rest of the park this summer. (Other than to close Doug Fredericks access to his proper¬ty at Copper Lake, and cite him for trying to repair the trails.) The NPS Visitor Information Center at McCarthy, closed due to “lack of funds” has turned into a junkyard, littered with abandoned vehicles and equipment—yet Candelaria and Chief Ranger Sharp hardly notice.

WRST Superintendent Gary Candelaria now has the army of armed Rangers that Superinten¬dent Wade so badly wanted. But how does one justify an army of law enforcement types in an area populated not with criminals, but hard working pioneer types?

Perhaps by exploiting that “frontier mentality” myth that Wade talked about. Create crimes where none exist. From Nabesna to Jake’s Bar, people report NPS rangers disguised as hikers or campers, trying to find someone breaking park rules, or jumping out of the woods and scaring people with their guns, bullet proof vests and military appearance. People like Doug Fredericks and the Pilgrims are unreasonably targeted for punishment. Their only crime is trying to live the rural lifestyle that is supposedly guaranteed and protected by ANILCA.

Sadly, there seems to be no accountability. Like the lyrics of the song in Big Park, “We don’t answer to the taxpayer, or to your congressman, and we don’t take ‘no’ from anyone. We just want to take your land.”