Aerial photo from Wrangell-St. Elias National Park & Preserve / NPS
Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve staff will hold a public hearing in Tolsona, Alaska, on October 22nd from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the Tolsona Fire Hall to take comments and hear resident testimony on Tolsona’s request to be recognized as a resident zone community for Wrangell-St. Elias National Park.
The resident zone is a National Park Service regulation (Code of Federal Regulations 13.430) which allows local, rural residents to engage in subsistence activities inside a national park. There are currently 23 communities in the resident zone near Wrangell-St. Elias: Chisana, Chistochina, Chitina, Copper Center, Dot Lake, Gakona, Gakona Junction, Glennallen, Gulkana, Healy Lake, Kenny Lake, Lower Tonsina, McCarthy, Mentasta Lake, Nabesna, Northway/ Northway Village/Northway Junction, Slana, Tanacross, Tazlina, Tetlin, Tok, Tonsina and Yakutat.
This 1983 study, prepared by the anthropology department at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and funded by the National Park Service, provides an in-depth look at the history of subsistence hunting in Wrangell-St. Elias, and how it's changed over many decades.
The process for adding a community to the resident zone evaluates whether a community contains a significant concentration of current residents with a long-term history and a pattern of use of resources (without the use of aircraft to access them) for subsistence in the National Park which pre-dates the establishment of the regulation of the resident zone in June 1981. This public hearing is part of this evaluation.
The park invites local residents to attend the public hearing to provide comments on Tolsona’s request and welcomes testimony from residents with a long-term history of subsistence use in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park.
For more information, contact Barbara Cellarius, Subsistence Coordinator, at 907-822-7236 or email [email protected].
Comments
There is no longer any need for any one or any group to be engaged in "subsistence hunting" or other destructive activities in our national parks or preserves. None. It's been 30-40-50 yeats: there is no longer any NEED to engage in these actiivtiies in our national parks in Alaska.
There is plenty of BLM, state, and non-NPS federal lands in Alaska to hunt, etc.
Leave our national parks alone.
I agree. Subsistence hunting can turn into chasing caribou on snowmobiles until they drop, and using high powered guns that shoot more than one bullet in quick succession. If they want to do subsistence hunting like in the "good old days" then they need to live that way. The truth is they want it both ways. How much land in Alaska was already designated for native corporations? On which they give oil and gas leasing contracts. So is this compatible with the good old days too?