BoatBanter.com - Evinrude Junior outboard OK for canoe?

Yes, they (primarily Margaret) were the driving force behind setting up the
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge ("Anwar", in a Texas drawl, to the oil
industry; they don't like to use the word refuge!). An excellent read: Two
in the Far North, by Margaret (one of the books that brought me to Alaska).
She was to the Arctic what David Brower was to the west, and the two spent
much time together.

There are a number of dissimilarities between Yukon-Charlie Preserve and the
Refuge.
1) The Refuge is administered by Fish & Wildlife, the Preserve by the Park
Service. The styles between these two agencies is dramatically different.
To oversimplify, NFW allows and encourages local residents to use the land
for hunting, fishing, trapping, and other historical uses by allowing them
the continued use of their traditional trails, cabins and camps. The NPS
through selected enforcement of local regulations, has forced all
inhabitants of the Preserve from doing what the Refuge residents are allowed
to do. Whether this happened because the Preserve residents were white and
the Refuge residents were Inuit & Athabaskan is an issue I'm not going to
deal with here. The Park Service wanted the land free of human use and the
F&W did not.

2) The country around the Eagle area is very beautiful, but except for the
memories kept by individuals who've passed through, it is not a special
place; it's just another tract of boreal forest which has historically been,
except for the brief gold rush era, very sparsely populated. There are
millions and millions of acres just like it girdling the globe, and much of
it far more productive wrt game and other resources than the Eagle area;
even the indigenous people, the Han Indians, would migrate to the Yukon only
during the summer for the salmon, then leave for ten months to chase the
caribou into the Ogilvie Mountains. But the day the Park Service landed
they started developing their fiefdom, with the river traffic going from a
boat a week to two or more a day, regular helicopter flyovers, and an
administrative system designed to free the land of its human inhabitants.
The Refuge couldn't be more of a contrast. Between migratory birds,
caribou, brown & polar bear, muskoxen, moose, fox, and wolverine it is the
feeding, calving, nesting and childhood area to uncountable numbers of
varied species, as it is to its intricate and spectacular flora. But F&W is
seldom even seen in the Refuge: I've been guiding there for the last six
years, and saw ONE F&W employee, and he was on holiday! But nowhere on
earth, nor certainly in the US, is life more diverse, unique or fragile than
Alaska's Arctic. A few drilling rigs, pipelines and roads the Bush
administration says. Well, picture a beautiful, embroidered white shirt,
and then judge your reaction to that same shirt with a little spaghetti
stain, Now imagine that that is the last white shirt in the nation. What a
careless slob, that diner, no? Barring hotel complexes, strip malls and
coal strip-mining, there is little to fear with what the current
administration can do to Yukon-Charley. Not so the Arctic.

Another excellent book: Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Seasons of Life and
Land (Hardcover) by Subhankar Banerjee This is the book that countered the
Republican claim that the Refuge was just a frozen wasteland, and had its
elaborate Smithsonian display stripped of its elucidating captions and
stuffed into a loading dock access corridor by order of Alaska's Senator Ted
Stevens

So, how do I feel about each federal land grab? Really ****ed that the Park
Service is trying to develop Y-C for the tourist industry by sterilizing the
land, and ****ed at the Republicans for trying to destroy what Edward Abbey
called, "The last bite on the plate." Guess I can't win either way.

"Hanta-Yo-Yo" wrote in message
ups.com...

padeen wrote:
'74 to '83, but still own property in Eagle. Don't know the Murrays

The Murray's or Murry's (?) were instrumental in establishing ANWR.
Which was a conservation program, similar it would seem to what
happened where you were, with the Government coming in and regulating
the natural resourses. I did not get a sense about how you perceived
the take over where you were at. I did not listen to all your audio, so
you may have covered this question there. Looking back, how do you feel
about the take over now? HYY