Evaluating ANILCA

Conservationists in America were initially happy, even though they did not get many of the areas they wanted to protect into the bill. As they began to review the bill carefully, some became even more disappointed, for what at first seemed to be protection instead was very confusing. Senators Stevens, Gravel, and Congressman Young were able to write a great many exceptions to the act. Some of the exceptions drew boundaries of one sort or another around lands of economic potential, excluding them from the conservation units. The Alaska Coalition had wanted whole ecosystems preserved, but in many instances, they were cut up or incomplete. 

A number of units that the conservationists had wanted named parks had instead been given a new conservation classification: preserve. This meant that sport hunting and other kinds of activities were permitted in them—these activities were banned from Lower 48 parks. Snow machines, motorboats, and floatplanes, as well as high-powered rifles, chainsaws, and even cabins, would be allowed in areas called "wilderness." 

The act allowed prospecting on most land with mineral or oil potential and excluded several areas with known mineral deposits. In addition, the Secretary of the Interior was to assess the potential for oil development in the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and he had the power to permit exploratory drilling there.

In the Tongass National Forest, where two pulp mills operated in Ketchikan and Sitka, the act provided a $40 million annual subsidy for the U.S. Forest Service in the Alaska Region. This ensured that timber lease sales and forest roads would allow 4.5 million board feet of timber to be cut annually, a 35% increase from the past's average annual cut. No other forest region in the country was supported like this for timber lease sales. 

Conservationists considered many of these exceptions as serious flaws in the act, making it a shell of what it had started out to be. After reviewing all the exceptions, some critics wondered if it could be called a conservation act at all. Yet most recognized that even though there would be much controversy as the act was implemented, it did provide a framework for preservation in Alaska. President Carter, writing 15 years after ANILCA, said that it was "one of my proudest accomplishments as President," a feeling most Americans accepted.

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