Reactions

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Conservation groups celebrated the Carter administration's actions. "Environmentalists are very pleased," said the state's Wilderness Society director. Charles Clusen, executive director of the Alaska Coalition, noted, "President Carter has now replaced Teddy Roosevelt as the greatest conservation president of all time."

On the other hand, many Alaskans reacted angrily. "Shocked State Leaders Try to Fathom Effect of Freeze," the Fairbanks News Miner told its readers. "Leaders React Angrily to Andrus' Withdrawals," the Anchorage Times proclaimed. Senator Gravel said, "I think it is clear the administration has overstepped the bounds of the law." The state attorney general announced an immediate suit to overturn the executive actions.

Congressman Don Young complained that "Alaskans have been slanderously portrayed as land rapists by the preservation lobby, and the President has chosen to believe this image." At a rally in Fairbanks, citizens burned President Carter in effigy. The state legislature debated but did not adopt a measure to pay for legal assistance for people who might violate new monument boundaries.

Perhaps the most threatening action occurred in the non-Native village of Eagle on the Yukon River. The town council there adopted a resolution saying, "We do not intend to obey the directives and regulations of the National Park Service." They did not advocate violence, the council said, but they could not be responsible for the actions of individual citizens. When the new director of the NPS Area Office appeared in the village in January 1979, he was confronted with signs saying, "National Park Service employees and anyone else advocating a dictatorship (including those locally who support National Park Service activities under the Antiquities Act) are not welcome here!"

Protesters burn President Carter in effigy

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