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 The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has released a draft environmental impact statement for revising the Arctic Refuge Comprehensive Conservation Plan (CCP). The final plan will guide stewardship of this iconic, magnificent wilderness for the next 15 years or more.
The Arctic Refuge is 19 million acres of America’s premier wildlands. In 1980, Congress designated 8 million acres as Wilderness. The CCP should recommend designating the remaining 11 million acres as Wilderness. But because wilderness designation alone does not guarantee protection of the Arctic’s special values, and since only Congress may designate additional wilderness, the standards set in the CCP for managing both the designated and potential Wilderness will determine whether these incomparable wildlands remain wild and pristine for years to come.
Your comments needed—Now is the time to speak up for this Wilderness treasure. Wilderness Watch encourages you to write to the FWS urging it to provide the Arctic Refuge with the strongest possible protections. Advocate the eight points listed below in your comments. It’s particularly important to mention if you’ve visited the Refuge. Speak from the heart. Comments expressed in your own words, that are not part of a form letter, will carry added weight.
The Most Important Comments to Make for Those Who Wish the Arctic Refuge to Remain Natural, Wild, and Free
 Wilderness Watch and our Alaska Chapter, consisting of many veterans of Arctic Refuge advocacy and who know the Refuge from many years of experience, urge you to include the following points in your comments:
1) Support Alternative E recommending wilderness designation for the entire Refuge except for lands near villages.
2) Support the CCP’s proposed goals, especially 1 and 2, specifying protection of ecological processes and wilderness character.
3) Support Management Guidelines 2.4.11, 2.4.12, and 2.4.12.7 allowing the natural behavior, interactions, and population dynamics of all species to continue (no predator control), and leaving habitats natural, unaltered, and unmanipulated.
4) Support addressing climate change by reducing other stressors on wildlife, and allowing natural systems to adapt and evolve as they will, without intervention.
5) Support goal 5, wilderness recreation, proposing to perpetuate opportunities for visitors to experience adventure, challenge, solitude, independence, and freedom with minimal interference from management.
6) Support the CCP’s Special Values of the Arctic Refuge section and insist that it is used to guide all management decisions.
7) Visitor Use Impacts and issues—During the scoping process, the public identified many actions that are needed to protect wilderness qualities and experiences, but almost all were deferred to some future planning process. The Refuge’s 1988 CCP also committed the agency to address visitor use issues in future plans, but none were ever begun. Significant visitor use impacts that should be addressed now in this plan include:
• Restoring wilderness character: Since 1980, when Wilderness was designated in the Refuge, public use has grown and concentrated along certain river corridors resulting in degraded wilderness conditions. The plan must include measures that restore the wilderness character to that which existed at the time of designation.
• Aircraft landing sites: The CCP must mandate a process for developing regulations that prevent proliferation of aircraft landing sites in the Refuge and prescribe measures to restore impacted areas. The CCP should develop and implement a system of zones within the Refuge where aircraft landings are not permitted, and it should limit landings to durable services, such as gravel bars.
• Commercial services: The CCP should require the FWS to establish limits on the number of commercial outfitters allowed in the Refuge. The plan should also establish commercial free zones (as provided for by the FWS’s nationwide Wilderness Stewardship Policy).
8) State “Game” Management v. Refuge Management—The draft plan appropriately recognizes the need to coordinate with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. However, it fails to acknowledge that the state’s goals for managing wildlife (i.e. predator control, intensive management) sometimes conflict with the Refuge’s purposes for maintaining natural and wild wildlife populations.
• The plan needs to explicitly state that when in conflict with the state’s goals, wilderness values and Refuge purposes must prevail, and in such cases, the FWS must exercise its responsibility to preempt the state game department and Board of Game.
• The final plan must assure that the primary Refuge purpose to conserve natural diversity must never be compromised by decisions to allow predator control or habitat manipulation to increase game species for hunting.
For those wanting more suggestions, our group of Arctic advocates and experts has developed an additional list of concerns to consider when writing your comments. Click here to view the list.
You can view the Draft Comprehensive Conservation Plan at http://arctic.fws.gov/ccp.htm.
 Please send your comments by Nov 15, 2011 via:
Email: ArcticRefugeCCP@fws.gov;
Online: http://www.fws.gov/mountain-prairie/alaska/ccpdraftcomment-i.cfm; or
U.S. Mail: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Arctic NWR - Sharon Seim, 101 12th Ave., Rm. 236, Fairbanks, AK 99701.
THANK YOU!
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