Once again, the bugbear of “federal overreach” rears its ugly head. This time, it has been spotted by Jesse Bjorkman, a newly-minted state senator from the Kenai Peninsula.
His ADN commentary (April 16) claimed that the evil Feds are coming to take away Alaska’s fish and game management authority — if they haven’t done so already. He cited the Alaska Statehood Act and the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) as federal laws that “guaranteed” state wildlife management authority over federal lands in Alaska, but I defy him to point to any provision in either act that precludes federal wildlife management on federal lands within Alaska.
There are three broad land management categories in Alaska: federally-owned lands, state-owned lands, and privately- owned lands (including ANCSA Native corporation lands). The state has fish and game management authority over state lands and private lands. In addition, the state has some authority over federal lands — but only to the extent that state management does not conflict with federal statutory requirements covering these federal lands. On federal lands, federal laws trump state laws, pursuant to the Property and Supremacy clauses of the U. S. Constitution.
That is exactly what has happened in the example Sen. Bjorkman uses in his commentary. Alaska’s state hunting and trapping regulations, as applied to federal wildlife refuges and national park preserves, fail to meet the enacted requirements of ANILCA because they do not promote and protect the “natural diversity” of wildlife populations in these federal areas.
Instead, the state regulations deliberately target predator species by imposing “intensive management” methods and means, to artificially reduce predator numbers below their natural diversity. The state regulations allow such means as extended seasons and bag limits, killing predators in their dens, allowing bear-baiting and authorizing aerial wolf hunting.
In addition to being the anthesis of “fair chase” hunting, these state practices have as their central purpose the depression of predator numbers, which is the antithesis of protecting “natural diversity.”
Thus, the feds have every legal right, under federal law, to step in to nullify these intensive game management practices on federal lands. The federal courts have upheld this over-arching federal authority, most recently as to the Kenai Peninsula.
Another example for Sen. Bjorkman to chew on: The reason the feds manage subsistence uses by local rural residents on federal lands in Alaska is because the Alaska Legislature, since the 1980s, has consistently refused to pass a proposed constitutional amendment, and place it before the voters, to designate subsistence uses as the first-priority uses of fish and wildlife on Alaska’s public lands. Without this guarantee, the feds have no choice but to implement the subsistence provisions of ANCSA and ANILCA on federal lands by federal management, through the regional subsistence councils and the Federal Subsistence Board. This is a “federal overreach” situation that the Legislature (including Sen. Bjorkman) could reverse, but to date, it seems quite disinterested in doing so.
— T. E. Meacham
Anchorage
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