Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act in the context of "United States National Forest"

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⭐ Core Definition: Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act

The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) is a United States federal law signed by President Jimmy Carter on December 2, 1980. ANILCA provided varying degrees of special protection to over 157 million acres (640,000 km) of land, including national parks, national wildlife refuges, national monuments, wild and scenic rivers, recreational areas, national forests, and conservation areas. It was, and remains to date, the single largest expansion of protected lands in history and more than doubled the size of the National Park System.

The Act provided for 43.585 million acres (176,380 km) of new national parklands in Alaska; the addition of 9.8 million acres (40,000 km) to the National Wildlife Refuge System; twenty-five wild and scenic rivers, with twelve more to be studied for that designation; establishment of Misty Fjords and Admiralty Island National Monuments in Southeast Alaska; establishment of Steese National Conservation Area and White Mountains National Recreation Area to be managed by the Bureau of Land Management; the addition of 9.1 million acres (37,000 km) to the Wilderness Preservation System, and the addition of 3.35 million acres (13,600 km) to Tongass and Chugach National Forests.

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In this Dossier

Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act in the context of Becharof Wilderness

Becharof National Wildlife Refuge is a National Wildlife Refuge in the Aleutian Range of the Alaska Peninsula of southwestern Alaska. It is adjacent to Katmai National Park and Preserve. This national wildlife refuge, which covers an area of 1,200,000 acres (4,900 km), was established in 1980 to conserve major brown bears, salmon, migratory birds, caribou, marine birds, and mammals and to comply with treaty obligations. It lies primarily in the east-central part of Lake and Peninsula Borough, but extends eastward into the mainland portion of Kodiak Island Borough. The refuge is administered from offices in King Salmon.

Becharof Wilderness it comprises approximately 500,000 acres (2,000 km) and is bordered by the Katmai Wilderness on the north. It was designated a wilderness area in 1980 by the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act.

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Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act in the context of Katmai National Park and Preserve

Katmai National Park and Preserve is a United States national park and preserve in southwest Alaska, notable for the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes and for its brown bears. The park and preserve encompass 4,093,077 acres (6,395.43 sq mi; 16,564.09 km), which is between the sizes of Connecticut and New Jersey. Most of the national park is a designated wilderness area. The park is named after Mount Katmai, its centerpiece stratovolcano. The park is located on the Alaska Peninsula, across from Kodiak Island, with headquarters in nearby King Salmon, about 290 miles (470 km) southwest of Anchorage. The area was first designated a national monument in 1918 to protect the area around the major 1912 volcanic eruption of Novarupta, which formed the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, a 40-square-mile (100 km), 100-to-700-foot-deep (30 to 213 m) pyroclastic flow. The park includes as many as 18 individual volcanoes, seven of which have been active since 1900.

Initially designated because of its volcanic history, the monument was left undeveloped and largely unvisited until the 1950s. The monument and surrounding lands became appreciated for their wide variety of wildlife, including an abundance of sockeye salmon and the brown bears that feed upon them. After a series of boundary expansions, the present national park and preserve were established in 1980 under the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act.

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Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act in the context of Bering Land Bridge National Preserve

The Bering Land Bridge National Preserve is one of the most remote protected areas of the United States, located on the Seward Peninsula. The National Preserve protects a remnant of the Bering Land Bridge that connected Asia with North America more than 13,000 years ago during the Pleistocene ice age. The majority of this land bridge now lies beneath the waters of the Chukchi and Bering Seas. During the glacial epoch this bridge was a migration route for people, animals, and plants whenever ocean levels fell enough to expose the land bridge. Archeologists debate whether it was across this Bering Land Bridge, also called Beringia, that humans first migrated from Asia to populate the Americas, or whether it was via a coastal route.

Bering Land Bridge National Monument was established in 1978 by Presidential proclamation under the authority of the Antiquities Act. The designation was modified in 1980 to a national preserve with the passage of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA), which would allow both subsistence hunting by local residents and sport hunting. The preserve includes significant archaeological sites and a variety of geological features. The preserve has seen recent volcanic activity, with lava flows and lake-filled maars. Hot springs are a popular destination for tourists.

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Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act in the context of Wrangell - St Elias National Park and Preserve

Wrangell–St. Elias National Park and Preserve is a United States national park and preserve in south central Alaska. The park, the largest in the United States, covers the Wrangell Mountains and a large portion of the Saint Elias Mountains, which include most of the highest peaks in the United States and Canada, yet are within 10 miles (16 km) of tidewater, one of the highest reliefs in the world. The park's high point is Mount Saint Elias at 18,008 feet (5,489 m), the second tallest mountain in both the United States and Canada. The park has been shaped by the competing forces of volcanism and glaciation, with its tall mountains uplifted by plate tectonics. Mount Wrangell and Mount Churchill are among major volcanos in these ranges. The park's glacial features include Malaspina Glacier, the largest piedmont glacier in North America, Hubbard Glacier, the longest tidewater glacier in Alaska, and Nabesna Glacier, the world's longest valley glacier. The Bagley Icefield covers much of the park's interior, which includes 60% of the permanently ice-covered terrain in Alaska. At the center of the park and preserve, the boomtown of Kennecott exploited one of the world's richest deposits of copper from 1903 to 1938. The abandoned mine buildings and mills comprise a National Historic Landmark district.

The park and preserve were established in 1980 by the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, following its designation as Wrangell–St. Elias National Monument on December 1, 1978, by President Jimmy Carter using the Antiquities Act, pending final legislation to resolve the allotment of public lands in Alaska. The protected areas are included in an International Biosphere Reserve and are part of the Kluane/Wrangell–St. Elias/Glacier Bay/Tatshenshini-Alsek UNESCO World Heritage Site, which includes the Canada's Kluane National Park and Reserve to the east and Glacier Bay National Park to the south.

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Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act in the context of Steese National Conservation Area

The Steese National Conservation Area encompasses 1,200,000 acres (4,900 km) of public land about 100 miles (160 km) northeast of Fairbanks, Alaska, and is administered by the Bureau of Land Management as part of the National Landscape Conservation System. Created by the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act in 1980, the Steese NCA's special values include Birch Creek National Wild River, crucial caribou calving grounds and home range, and Dall sheep habitat. While various land uses are allowed in the Steese NCA, the area is managed so that its scenic, scientific, cultural and other resources are protected.

The Steese NCA is split into the North and South Units, located on either side of the Steese Highway. The popular Pinnell Mountain National Recreation Trail skirts the edge of the North Unit.

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Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act in the context of Innoko National Wildlife Refuge

The Innoko National Wildlife Refuge is a national wildlife refuge of the United States located in western Alaska. It consists of 3,850,481 acres (15,582 km), of which 1,240,000 acres (5,018 km) is designated a wilderness area. It is the fifth-largest national wildlife refuge in the United States. The refuge is administered from offices in Galena.

The refuge was established in 1980 by the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. The northern part of the refuge, called Kaiyuh Flats, is adjacent to the Yukon River southwest of Galena. It contains 751,000 acres (3,040 km). The southern part contains approximately 3,099,000 acres (12,540 km) of land surrounding the Innoko River. The land is swampy and is the nesting area for hundreds of thousands of birds including ospreys, northern hawk-owls, trumpeter swans, bald eagles, common ravens, short-eared owls, and red-tailed hawks. Mammalian species that habitat this refuge are brown and black bears, moose, wolves, Canadian lynx, marten, porcupine, beaver, caribou, river otter, red fox, wolverine, muskrat, and mink.

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