Clay Hardy oral history transcript (conducted by Norman Olson)

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Clay Hardy - Final
Hello, my name is Norman Olson. I’m a retired US Fish and Wildlife Service employee and a volunteer at the National Conservation Training Center in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. And this morning I’m going to interview Clay Hardy who is also a former US Fish and Wildlife Service employee and we’re conducting the interview in Island Falls, Maine at Clay’s cabin. And today is Wednesday, August 31st, 2005 and it’s approximately 9:15 in the morning. And Clay perhaps you could start out by giving us your full name and if you would spell it for us please; and then perhaps talk a little bit about where you were born and grew up; where you went to college and the degree you received and the year that you received that degree; and then talk a little bit about how and when and where you actually got involved with the Fish and Wildlife Service.
CH OK. My name is Clayton Morison Hardy: C L A Y T O N M O R I S O N H A R D Y. I was born in Concord, Massachusetts on June 3rd, 1931 and lived in … family lived in Brewer, Maine at the time, but my mother was down with her folks when I was born, so that’s how that came about. I was educated in Orrington … in the grammar school --- Brewer High School and after two years with the federalized Air National Guard … I had the GI Bill … I attended the University of Maine, graduated in 1959 with a degree in wildlife management. I had taken the civil service exam and after a prolonged battle with them because they kept putting me on registers that the Boston office couldn’t reach, I was hired as an Assistant Refuge Manager at Brigantine National Wildlife Refuge the first of November of 1960. I stayed there until ’63 when I went as a biologist to Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge in Smyrna, Delaware and while I was there I became Assistant Refuge Manager. And from there I went to Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge as a … as the Refuge Manager. In August of 1970 I was nominated by the personal office in Boston to a position as a biologist on Amchika Island in Alaska and never figuring I would be considered I stuck the form away. And we came home from vacation and I had a telephone call from the personal office and they wanted to know if I had heard from Portland and I of course thought Portland, Maine and I hadn’t heard from anybody but then they told me I had been selected for the job in Alaska and would I take it. And I said well I’d better ask my wife because she knows absolutely nothing about any of this. I went over to the house and Charlene was on the phone trying to get out of becoming a girl scout leader or something and she said I’ve got to hang up now my husband just came in and I’ll get back to ya. She hung up the phone and she looked at me and said where to? And I said how about Alaska. And she said you’re kidding? And I said no and so that found us later in November driving in a Volkswagen Bus with two kids, a dog and a plant headed for the ferry and Anchorage and that began my career in Alaska. I was out on Amchitka Island three weeks on and three weeks off for … through the shot, which was project Cannikan, the atomic bomb or nuclear device that they tested in November of ’71. And after that was fired … the amount of work I had to do when I was in Anchorage for the three weeks diminished and I was looking for something to do and Dick Hensel mentioned I ought to keep track of what was happening with the various Native Claim Settlement Acts which he I guess was the only one in the Service who knew about them. So I did. I started tracking them getting maps and plotting all of the impacts that were taking place on the refuges that existed in Alaska at that time. Then one day Gordy Watson the Area Manager was in Washington and a group from the Fish and Wildlife Service met him at the plane and wanted to know about what was happening with this lands bill that they were calling it 2
or the Native Claims Settlement Act rather. And he called me on the phone and I told him about all of the things that I knew about it and telephoned him back and I don’t know what they did with it down there. But I then had gotten a RIF notice that Amchitka was closing down and there were some jobs available in Alaska which I applied for. And then I had to go back to Columbus, Ohio to a Battelle meeting on Amchitka and Baine Cater, who was the other monitor out there, came a couple of days later and advised me that I now had a job as … in charge of native claims actions for the Fish and Wildlife Service in Alaska. And that’s how it all began.
NO A question ... you talked about the Native Claims Settlements Acts, you were referring to what eventually became known as ANCSA or the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, that’s basically it?
CH Yeah, that was it. And from it 17d2 that required the identification of lands to be studied for additions to the Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, the Forest Service and the Wild and Scenic Rivers. And I don’t recall the actual time frame of it but the first assignment that we had in this regard was to identify all of the lands that had refuge potential. And I don’t recall how many millions of acres that we identified … I think it was probably somewhere about 70 thousand … million …70 million acres that might be refuges and also because there was no representative from Wild and Scenic Rivers in Alaska at the time we identified 135 rivers that had potential. And this was all sent back to Washington DC which sort of began the whole process of identifying lands to be studied for potential … well under 17d2 to become these new lands.
NO And 17d2 is a section of the ANCSA legislation? Is that correct?
CH Right.
NO Where were you actually located in Anchorage at this particular time?
CH At that time we were out at … I don’t remember the exact address … there’s a small building out on Old Seward Highway … 6916 or 13 or somewhere in that neighborhood. And then at that time the aircraft division was out at Lake Hood and the law enforcement was out there, the wilderness group was down in the upstairs office on Fifth Avenue and that’s where the ANCSA shop was first set up. And we began … we had a group of realty people and others detailed up to study the land status of these areas and this required quite a bit of flying around Alaska and looking at them. The Fish and Wildlife Service had just completed the modification of a Grumman Goose by making it 41 inches longer and installing turbo jet engines in it and unfortunately they did not include any kind of a ventilating system for the back cabin. This thing had a capacity for 10 people and somewhere there was a minor leak in the gas tanks and people … many people got awful air sick in that airplane as we flew around the countryside looking at these various refuge things.
NO Now who was the pilot at that time … that was flying the Goose?
CH Well, that was it’s first official run so Theron Smith … I think Theron Smith was the pilot and Dave Spencer was the copilot on that. 3
NO Did you ever fly with Bob Richey … who was …
CH Oh yes. I flew with Bob Richey, I flew with Tom Delue, Bill Overway, Larry Haddock … while I flew with Cal Linsink, Jerry Hout. If a guy had a pilot’s license in Alaska I probably flew with him sometime during this adventure. As well as many charter pilots because one of my jobs was to go on the various tours that came up to Alaska and included the congressional group and bunch of reporters that the Secretary brought up and some congressman and some senators and one group that Don Young brought up that he toured around the state in a government … presidential fleet DC-9 and wound down through the Copper River Canyon in that airplane like it was a Piper Cub which will be never forgotten.
NO These tours that you’re talking about now were they happening say during the Ford Administration in the ‘70s or did they run into the Carter Administration?
CH Right. Most of … the biggest ones were during the Carter Administration because that’s when the action really picked up and the House committee … John Seiberling and Mo Udall their committee’s were involved in that process. So we had two Twin Otters which took … I think there were 41 in the group and we flew all over the state and looked at everyone of these plus they had … any village that we were near they would hold a town meeting to discuss the potential with the with the local people.
NO So these members of Congress that you were referring to those were people that were actually on some of these tours Mo Udall and Seiberling and what have you and did they actually attend these meetings in the villages?
CH Oh yes, that was the … that was the purpose, that they were gathering first hand information on the natives or the local peoples reaction to this … this whole thing.
NO So this was all over the state, places like Fort Yukon or out in Bethel or in the villages out in the Delta or Arctic Village?
CH Yeah. I’m trying to … I know we were in Bethel … we were up in … we went up to Glennallen … I think they did some in Anchorage … we did one in Ambler I can remember … Kiana. I don’t … yes Fort Yukon because they were … the members were intrigued with … because that’s where Congressman Young’s home was and that was a two week adventure.
NO Oh boy, that sounds interesting. During this process actually … how were the actual boundaries of these potential refuges actually determined?
CH Well, we would take an area … we had the quad maps or reduced versions of them … and actually we would just look at the area and then take a significant buffer around it and draw a line on the township boundary lines all the way around there or the coast line or whatever … that would define the area.
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NO So that’s the initial attempt to sort of define an area on the ground and that must have gone through lots of you know changes and reviews.
CH Right and it … as I say initially we identified the Alaska Peninsula all the way to the Aleutians and we identified Lake Clark and many of the areas that ultimately became national parks.
(Pause while telephone rings and clay’s wife answers it … short conversation.)
NO So actually did the team’s that were doing this did it include National Park Service and BLM people in this identification process … the boundaries and trying to sort things out?
CH I’m going to have to say yes but they were doing it independently. Nothing was being done as a group at this time. We identified ... we had our map of Alaska and did our identification, the Forest Service did theres and the Park Service did theres and I suspect that each one of them probably did some Wild and Scenic Rivers at the same time.
NO OK. How did the acreages of what you were looking at change over time? You say at one point it looked like you were looking at perhaps 70 million acres … did that sort of fluctuate in terms of the potential areas?
CH Oh, many times. Because here again the areas that we looked at many of them as I say were the same as those that the Park Service looked at and then there was in Washington … I believe it was an in … an initial part of this can be refuges, this would be parks, this would be forests and then we went on to the further study of those areas that had been cut down.
NO I think you mentioned last night in our conversation that actually there was sort of a … as you looked at these areas and considering that the Park Service generally had very restrictive you know regulations in terms of hunting and things of that nature as opposed to national wildlife refuges where hunting was allowed … or could be allowed … there was a lot of sort of play on that in terms of what might go to who.
CH Right. That came … became more important further down the line when they … when the Carter Administration came in I believe was when we sort of made the final cut. And at that point in time the initial EIS’s had been completed and they had thirty … I think it was 32 million acres of new refuges and 34 million acres of parks and so many of national forests and identified the wild and scenic rivers. On this go around they had determined in Washington that we had a certain requirement for study but there was no limit on what Congress could actually do. So we went and identified … going back to our initial work … we identified areas that could be managed by the Fish and Wildlife Service as … if the Park Service couldn’t get it because of their restrictions on hunting and things like that … that Fish and Wildlife Service as a refuge was a better fall back position than not having the land protected at all.
NO You mentioned the Washington group. It’s my understanding that there actually were two groups working on this. There was a group of people in Alaska in which you were involved 5
and then there was a group in Washington DC that was also working on this stuff and you were exchanging … you were providing information to the Washington group, is that correct?
CH Right. The main staff was up in Anchorage … I think at one time we had 15 people if I remember right … and in Washington there was Bill Reffalt, Christine Enright and he had a collection of other assistants, the last one being Burkett Neely. They were the forefront to the Administration, to both the Congress and to the Fish and Wildlife Service and what they needed we provided because we had … oh, individuals were assigned to do and become expert on particular areas. Ed Bailey for example had the Maritimes and Fran Mauer had the Arctic and Lou Swenson, if I remember right, had the Yukon Flats and some of them were combined but … you know Moe Lafever had Galena and Nowitna and they would be out and they’d deal with the natives and get information and Bill would get requests for particular information and we’d supply it to him and then he would do the political end of it.
NO You mentioned a while back the EIS’s … the Environmental Impact Statements … on these proposals. How were they done and what role did you play and what role did Washington play in those EIS’s?
CH OK. The EIS’s which turned out to be 34 volumes total and they were all done in Washington and there was a joint team that set up offices on K Street and Bill Reffalt was the head of that as well as the Interior liaison for this whole business. And we sent people back … they were there for 6 to 8 weeks cranking these things out and there was a Park Service team and Forest Service and Wild and Scenic Rivers. And they did the drafting and we would supply information that they needed to fill out … but many of the people were from Alaska that were detailed down there … Cal Linsink was down there for a long time … Barb Ely went down … there’s … she was a secretary and she did typing and all these other things that were needed. That was called the K Street Operation.
NO You mentioned 34 volumes. So that’s including Fish and Wildlife Service refuge proposals, parks… national parks… and forest service sites and wild and scenic rivers?
CH Right. And they … they basically set the standard for all future EIS’s. It was … they were the most comprehensive that had ever been done and Bill was … and whoever … I guess Roger Carter with the Park Service … equivalent to Bill … that was working on these and … because they had to clear it through John Farrell who was … I can’t recall his title, but he was the one who reviewed all impact statements and …
NO Yeah, he worked directly under the Secretary’s office and was responsible for reviewing the Interior Environmental Impact Statements that’s right. I would assume that during all of this there was an awful lot of competion between the Park Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service in terms of who was going to get what for ultimate management responsibilities.
CH Yes. There was quite … in the initial proposal it was as I say the Park Service was 2 million acres bigger than the Fish and Wildlife Service. But after we went through this … just something I talked about … we identified everything that would take to be refuges and they did … they the Park Service maintained its position while we expanded greatly. And then the 6
Administration sort of decreed that the Forest Service was not … that some of the areas that they were looking at really weren’t Forest Service type forests like the Yukon Flats. There was the Yukon Flats Forest, the Yukon Charley Forest and Yukon Flats Refuge … well in the upshot of the beast we got the entire area. We got an expansion … a great expansion of the Arctic and a great expansion of the Delta. We lost the Seward Peninsula to the Park Service, we lost the Noatak to the Park Service, we lost the Kenai Fjords to the Park Service. And we still ended up when the final bill was passed with having I think it was 56 million acres of refuge in addition of the 19 million acres that was already in Alaska. So we came out way ahead land wise.
NO And the Park Service was still around 30 million acres?
CH They were at there same 34.
NO I see. OK. So we did really well then in the process, making our arguments I guess.
CH Right.
NO Very good. Who were some of the … you mentioned a number of people actually that you worked with … Lou Swenson, Fran Mauer, Cal Linsink, other people in the Anchorage office that you were working at this time. Who are some of the other people that you worked with … were there state people you were working with?
CH We always had an interface … usually somewhat in conflict … mostly you know competitive … but when they set up the Joint Federal State Land Use Planning Commission they had a resource team and the Fish and Wildlife Service had a representative on that team … Don Fortenberry was the Fish and Wildlife Service’s person. And … but initially the first two people … to go back to your question … that I hired or had detailed … got assigned were Bob Stevens and Elaine Rnode. She was a writer and he was just somebody who could do everything and we had a lot of detailed people, as I say there were a bunch of realtors that were detailed up and then as wilderness folded up we ended up with two secretaries from there … Barb Ely and her name escapes me … Williams, Jeannie Williams … and then for a while Dick Hensel and Dave Cline worked in the shop. Dave went on to National Audubon, Dick Hensel transferred over to the Park Service. Then we added staff and I hired Moe LeFever and … lets see who else did we actually hire … John Blankenship … we hired a photographer which the first field photographer that the Service had. We hired Cynthia Wentworth who was the first economist that the Service had ever had and she did a magnificent job computing the natives needs and she was part of this team that went back to Washington to for the EIS’s that were not so much … the economics weren’t in dollars as much as she acquired and figured out the amount of protein or meat that each native needed and the ability to … of the game in the area to supply it and things like that.
NO So was the idea subsistence … in the sense that there were going to be whole villages that were located within the boundaries of some of these new refuges … was the idea of subsistence of being able to continue that native dependence on the local food sources … was that always an important part of the process?
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CH Yes. It was deemed somewhere that it was essential to … if there was going to be native support … then the view was maybe it wasn’t as … all that important because developed into I guess the major wildlife consideration in Alaska these days that … but anyway it was always a part, it was always … the natives were always told that they would be able to continue their lifestyle. And the Park Service made great concessions so that that could happen on their lands but they had no areas like … I think theres 17 villages at least in the Yukon Delta and … so it was critical to us.
NO Yeah. So was … would part of that be a reflection of the fact that were’re talking about national wildlife refuges and basically the Service was really focusing on places where those wildlife resources had the greatest presence?
CH Oh, no question. That was … that was what we did on the initial assignments. We you know clearly … the Delta there was no question about that. We ended up in the Togiak because someone had said that there was muddy faced bear or something down there as well as fishery resources and things like that. Selawik and the Noatak were … well Selawik was a wildlife waterfowl area as was the Flats and the Nowitna and things like that and Koyukuk … as well as the resident game species that were basically a Fish and … Alaska Department of Fish and Game … true responsibility. But it was that and habitat that … plus the fact that it was the last chance that this kind of stuff could be done.
NO You mentioned the state … the state group that was working with you had a Fish and Wildlife Service member of the group, now were they also looking at the lands in terms of the areas that the state was interested in primarily?
CH The state lands I believe had already been identified. The state had x number of acres that they could have and they had identified most of them … the natives had their … I think the state … my memories cloudy on this … but I think the state was entitled to something like a 104 million acres and the natives were 41 million acres and then these other lands that we were looking at were separate. So basically what we were doing was taking them out of the public domain which was BLM.
NO Would that be part of this … the process of becoming a state that they were able to select lands out of the public domain you know?
CH Right. They were given under statehood a hundred and … I think it was 104 million acres, the vast majority of which they had already identified.
NO Now were … were there others … outside of federal or state agencies that you worked closely with and I’m thinking of the conservation community at that time?
CH Oh yes. As the thing went on it became more and more … there was the Friends of Alaska, the Sierra Club, Wilderness Society. We dealt with the National Wildlife Federation, NRA … National Rifle Association … who else was … Izaak Walton League …
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NO Now you had already mentioned Dave Cline who was a Service employee at the time but went on to become the Alaska representative for National Audubon … Sierra Club you just mentioned … Jack Hession was he a player in all of this?
CH Oh very definitely … sometimes for or occasionally against … because they are more wilderness oriented and that was there big emphasis along with the Wilderness Society, to get wilderness into this piece of legislation because the Wilderness Act timeframe had run out and there had been not very much wilderness actually designated in Alaska so it became a big part of the lands bill.
NO Now you mentioned at one point that you had moved into … your ANCSA group moved in with what was the wilderness working group with the Fish and Wildlife Service. Now was that group at that time actually working on the requirements of the Wilderness Act in terms of designating potential areas in this plan?
CH Right.
NO So they terminated when the ... when the Act … the requirement expired?
CH Well, as I recall their legislation ran out … their timeframe for this identification had run out … so there was no longer any need for them. And the group was made up of … Will Troyer was the head of it and there was Marv Plenert and Dave Cline, Palmer Sekora, along with Jeannie Williams and Barb Ely.
NO Digress a minute, you mentioned bringing in the first photographer that worked for the Fish and Wildlife Service, would that be Joe Keller?
CH Right. In the field, they had Rex … Gary Schmidt in the Washington office.
NO I know in looking through the slide files in Anchorage when I was up there working, that there were an awful lot of slides that Joe Keller had taken of field trips and river trips and what have you.
CH Yeah, she had … we had a dark room setup there and they subsequently … when she left they felt there were more important slots to be filled than hers and the dark room became part of a research lab and the storage files became Bob Olendorf’s in Public Affairs office.
NO Now when I was there in Anchorage Bob Olendorf of course was there and had an office I believe in the back of the conference room down on the first floor. Now he was separate from Joe Keller, he wasn’t exactly a photographer but what were his responsibilities … he worked in Public Affairs?
CH He was the media specialist in Public Affairs … I think that’s what his title was.
NO I know a lot of the slide files were actually down there and that’s where I saw the Joe Keller … a lot of the Joe Keller slides and the credits in publications for her … for her 9
photography. You also mentioned that at this particular point in time Anchorage was an Area Office, a branch if you will of the Regional Office in Portland, Oregon.
CH Right.
NO When did … when did that change from being an Area Office to a Regional Office?
CH Well, I’m vague on the exact date … that’s historic … I mean that’s a documented thing but it was Keith Schreiner was the … he replaced Gordy Watson as the Area Director and it was during his tenure that he became the first Regional Director if my memory serves me.
NO I think when we were talking last night and we were looking through some of your papers we thought that might have occurred in 1981 at some point after the passage of ANILCA.
CH Right, it was after ANILCA.
NO And when we talk about ANILCA what actually does the acronym ANILCA stand for?
CH The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act.
NO And that was … that was signed by President Carter?
CH By Jimmy Carter on December 2nd of 1980.
NO And that sort of brought … that was the culmination of all this effort that had been going on in the ‘70s in terms of actually establishing areas … setting aside areas that sort of thing in Alaska.
CH Right that … that established them and then the planning for them and all that sort of business … the actual staffing of them that all began at that point in time.
NO There’s an event that occurred … we talked briefly about it last night…that was probably … and I don’t know the date myself … but it is a matter of record as you say … that sometime during the 1980’s … mid 1980’s perhaps … with the Carter Administration in office in order to try to speed the process up they actually … Jimmy Carter exercised his rights under the Antiquities Act to establish by executive order a number … identify a number of these areas around the state as national monuments. Is that correct?
CH Right … but that was in the ‘70s because the bill passed in 1980.
NO Excuse me … the ‘70s.
CH What was happening … if I remember right … there was a deadline that Congress was supposed to meet … I could be totally wrong on that … but there was danger to these areas so using his executive authority President Carter designated the vast majority of the lands that had been identified in the bill as national monuments. And that was met with great enthusiasm by 10
the preservationists and just the opposite by many others and it’s … it probably did promote Congress to do something about it because under the monument act or executive orders describing the monuments there are things … for example the mineral leasing law can not apply on a monument. That meant that in a refuge you couldn’t cut timber, you couldn’t mine gravel … you know a whole variety of things that you that are not prohibited by … I won’t say not prohibited but could be allowed by the Fish and Wildlife Service on a refuge if necessary. So it was a much more restrictive covenant on the land.
NO And that of course as you said occurred during the Carter Administration. Was there more interest in this whole question of Alaska on part of the Carter Administration and the Secretary’s office as opposed to under say under the Ford Administration and earlier Administrations?
CH Oh lord yes. You know when it went into a Democratic Administration and Mo Udall became chairman of … I can’t remember the exact name of his committee … but then the committee that handled the lands bill or the subcommittee … it was headed up by John Seiberling … and these were … the majority were Democrats … the majority were in favor of this act as opposed to under the Republican Administration where they were … I’m not going to say they were totally opposed to it but they would have done it with more … with less restrictions. You know they were less favorable to wilderness, they were less favorable to … more favorable to mining and things like that. And so one of the first things that Seiberling and Udall arranged one August they … the whole … practically the whole committee came up to Alaska and we toured them all around the state in two Twin Otters and they had town meetings in villages that we went to and then they were just interested in seeing the land and the areas that we were interested in. And then we shuttled them all into Selby Lake for two or three days of fishing and that was a time of interest because we were up there and an airplane landed on the far end of the Lake and a couple of guys set up a camp … probably three quarters or a mile away … and then they came paddling down through in a kayak and went back and a little while later they came back dressed in their game warden uniforms and checked everybody for fishing licenses. Now one of the things that the Secretary was adamant about when that crew started off was that everybody have a fishing license and everybody did. And there were of course reporters along on this trip to and they had a … they had a fine time with that thwarted attempt to embarrass the Congress.
NO I imagine that would have been pretty embarrassing if members of Congress had been arrested for fishing without a license.
CH Right … yeah … particularly that group of … and the interesting thing was that it took place on the first day of sheep season and here were two game wardens who should have … could have been out catching sheep hunters with … doing that with … actually I think they were state police by that time because I know the change in Alaska was made wardens under the Department of Public Safety.
NO Now you’ve mentioned members of the House and the involvement and interest in this particular situation. What about the Senate, who were supporters and opponents really in the Senate? 11
CH Well … John Durkin was the Senator from New Hampshire and they took a much less interest in it … the Senators that I can recall was as I say John Durkin … I went out to Lake Clark one time when they were out there and got quite friendly with John Durkin … he came back up and we went fishing and things like that. He was very much for the bill he was a Democrat. Stevens was … it was very interesting because he was on the surface opposed to it to a degree that he went down and it turned out that at the time the actual number of licensed hunters in Alaska was no where near the percentage of the population that one would think. So that from a voter standpoint hunters alone … it was not … now he opposed the thing all the way don’t get me wrong, as probably the majority of Alaskans did, but it wasn’t … it was probably more on the basis of mining and these kinds of things than it was just for hunting.
NO Now you’re talking … your referring of course to Ted Stevens the Senator from Alaska. Who was the other Senator at that time?
CH Mike … yeah … Mike Gravell … yeah … Mike was, because Murkowski was after that. And the other … the only other Senator that I remember went out … it was a tour arranged … and it was Senator Metzenbalm from Ohio and we went out on the boat out to the Kenai Fjords and Cynthia Wilson was onboard … she had the ANILCA lead for Interior --- but I know Senator Metzenbalm and his daughter Amy were … were on the trip because I spent a lot of time talking to him at his request but he was just interested.
NO So it’s fair to say then that there was an awful lot more interest and support in the House as opposed to the Senate at that point?
CH Yeah … yeah but then we had another instance in that … I think it was somebody was not at a committee meeting and Representative Jerry Huckabee … I think he was from Louisiana … he put in a bill … there had been … I don’t … I can’t remember how many different bills kept floating up and down --- but Huckabee’s bill was the one that came out of the committee. And he came to Alaska in the wintertime at the request of Don Young … he and John Breaux and John Dingle and a guy from Florida … but basically there was a plane load of them and Huckabee was virtually a hero in Alaska … that when the bill came up for a vote Mo Udall had done something with the rules committee … Bill Reffalt could tell you all of the details on this … but after all of the debate and the time was about run out Mo Udall introduced his bill … which was the original bill that we had worked on … as an amendment in total to the earlier bill and this amendment couldn’t be amended. I don’t know how he had worked it, but when the vote came that’s what was voted in overwhelmingly and I can recall distinctly walking out of the Capital … that’s another interesting story to, because Reffalt and myself and Christine and Burk Neely … Bill had said early in the morning that there will be a decree come down from the Secretary that Interior employees aren’t supposed to attend this. This was just something that he felt was going to happen, so we made it a point not to be in Interior so we never got the ultimatum and we were in fact in the gallery when the bill passed. And so we walked out behind John Breaux and Jerry Huckabee and those two gentlemen were in … they didn’t know what had happened to them. Udall had … was such a parliamentarian that he had just done this, and bang, and the bill was just passed.
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(Clock chimes 10 o’clock)
NO Well, you can tell it’s now 10 o’clock. Well, another member of Congress that you’ve mentioned several times Don Young … again I suppose we can assume he was rather enthusiastic in his opposition.
CH Yeah. It was sort of interesting because he would come to Alaska with these people but he was never on the tour. He would … he was always politicking either in Anchorage or Fairbanks but now when this group came up that I was telling you about, they came up in a DC-9 and we went up to the Arctic and it was sort of … his wife was along on the trip … but he had told people that there were not caribou in the interior in the winter time. And we were flying this DC-9 up … going up to Prudoe Bay and then over to the Arctic and we encountered over 20,000 caribou in the Arctic Village area. And these pilots in this DC-9 went right down and looked at them. I mean … I don’t know what there minimum was but we were below 1,500 feet probably cruising in … the congressmen were all bantering back and forth about Don Young’s no caribou. And another time when we were out with Mo Udall’s group we were down over the Katmai somewhere and of course, Young was a new congressman then he hadn’t become as astute as he has become, and they were kidding about when we established this this would be the Don Young memorial wilderness area and things like that.
NO OK. It’s interesting and of course both Ted Stevens and Don Young are still in Congress and are still very active in Alaska. And let’s see, you mentioned the group in DC that was working on all of this at the same time on that end and did you often go back to DC to … to consult with that group or provide them with information during this period?
CH Yeah. I think in 1978 I made 6 trips back to the central office for … well, it was never less than a week and one time it was for a month … just doing whatever I could do and would be in consultation with Bill and all during that I probably talked to Bill just about every day so that … it was an interesting relationship because there was the time when Joe Youino came up and was the chief of resource planning for about a year in Anchorage while I was still there and he couldn’t get along with Bill at all so I still was the liaison and it was … Bill was … I’m not going to say difficult to work with or for, if you understood him which the crew often didn’t. But Bill would have an idea and he would ask me to do thus and such and I would start in on it and Bill would stay here and his mind never ceases and he would develop this idea and get so when he got to the time period he had evolved it into something that I had not provided him exactly what he wanted. And then they would criticize what it was that we had turned in but I could get mad if I wanted to but I would just pass it by my crew and take it as a way of doing business and go on because we didn’t have time for dissension.
NO Earlier on you mentioned people that you were at the hearing with where Mo Udall you know executed this change really in the legislation and you mentioned Christine, and that’s, of course, Christine Enright …
CH Right.
NO That’s Bill Reffalt’s wife, is that right? 13
CH No, she wasn’t at that time but …
NO I see … bu,t she is his wife today.
CH Right.
NO But they were coworkers at that time.
CH Right.
NO And she was involved in the Washington end of this work.
CH Very much so.
NO She was part of that Washington group.
CH Right.
NO OK. You’ve mentioned Bill Reffalt several times. When did Bill actually get involved in all this, was he there from the very beginning when you were first working on ANCSA or did he come in sort of later in the process?
CH Well, just a little bit later. Larry Means was assigned to handle this back … oh, probably ’71 or ‘72 … he was working for the Fish and Wildlife Service then and was involved with Culebra down in the Caribbean or what ever was happening down there with the navy bombing range or some such thing on the refuge. And then he had this as an aside and as it developed he brought Bill in and then when he moved over to BLM Bill took over.
NO Bill eventually became the Chief of Refuges in Washington is that right?
CH Right.
NO Was he the Chief at that time or was that later on?
CH No. He was … his sole responsibility was ANCSA and the lands act. In fact it was an interesting thing the … the Fish and Wildlife Service in general was terrified I think … personal opinion … of this legislation and they just let Bill proceed as Gordy Watson let me proceed in Alaska. But Bill actually could … had easier access to the Secretary of the Interior than that he did to the Director of the Fish and Wildlife Service. And I’ve got to say that that … if it was a conscious choice on Lynn Greenwalt’s part then power to him because it’s one of these things that the higher ups could have muddled this thing so that we’d still been working on it.
NO That … that’s what usually happens.
CH Right. 14
NO We both know that.
CH Yeah.
NO You mentioned Lynn Greenwalt … Lynn was the Director of the Fish and Wildlife Service?
CH The Director.
NO Was he the Director during this entire period or did you work under another Director earlier?
CH Well, earlier there was no Director, Spencer Smith was an acting Director. I think from the time that John Gottschalk got through they just had a series of acting directors, Spencer Smith being the name that I recall and then Lynn Greenwalt went form being the Chief of Refuges to being the Director.
NO Well you mentioned that Bill Reffalt eventually became the Chief of Refuges and you told me an interesting story last night about Bill Reffalt which I think happened in Miami you said at a meeting earlier … earlier in the ‘70s, perhaps early in the process.
CH Yeah, we were at the wildlife conference in Miami Beach with the … well it was an annual one and Senator Stevens was there and made a presentation on … before the group on the damage that this legislation would do to hunting in Alaska and used a specific example of the expansion of the Arctic Wildlife Refuge and Wilderness and that it would eliminate Dall Sheep hunting. And Bill was asked a question about that by the group later and he had the figures all that he had gotten from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game about the population of Dall Sheep in that area and the sex ratio and the number of … how long it took a male to get three quarter curl, which I think is 7 years, so there fore there was this many 7 year old males and hunting success being what is was that what they were talking about … I think the figure was 15 sheep that would be affected by this legislation. And Senator Stevens took that as a personal affront and sort of became Bill’s enemy and later on after he had became Chief of Refuges and there was a change of administration then ultimately it lead to Bill’s demise as the Chief of Refuges and ultimately his resigning from the Service and going over to Wilderness Society.
NO After ANILCA had been signed in December 1980 with the change of Administration from Carter to Reagan and then the Reagan Administration took over …
CH Right. It was then that Bill was actually made Chief … it was after the establishment of the refuges because I talked to Keith Schreiner and said that one of the things that was important to Alaska was that whoever was the Chief of Refuges ought to understand what had just happened. You know we had gone from 19 million to 70 million acres of refuges and so Keith was the one who nominated Bill to be the Chief of Refuges and the Director had apparently went along with it because he became that.
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NO OK, and who was actually … who was the Chief of Refuges then in Washington before Bill Reffalt during this ANCSA period … during the ‘70s up to passage of ANILCA?
CH Well, there was a … a variety of them … Mark Nelson … I can’t remember, I think Mark may have come in later after Greenwalt left and then Walt Stieglitz and it was when Walt came … I think it was Walt’s vacancy that Bill filled.
NO I see. So Walt Stieglitz who later became the Regional Director in the Anchorage office … Region 7 later in the 1980’s … he was Chief of Refuges really sort of during the end of this period during the Carter Administration when all of this activity was taking place?
CH Right … here again I don’t … yes, it would have to have been that time period.
NO Was he especially interested at all in what was going on in Alaska or did he sort of leave it in Bill’s hands?
CH He left it … because it was sort of interesting so I asked him you know about the apparent lack of interest in this whole thing and he said well, Clay he said with you and Bill riding herd on it we don’t have anything to worry about. And I said while what I worried about Walt was when we drive this herd into your yard what are you going to do with it?
NO While that’s a very complimentary you know that he would say about the two of you so.
CH Well, that was the thing that had … because there was not really overwhelming support in the Fish and Wildlife Service for this project because … and some people were openly opposed to it. They just figured that it would suck every cent that there was in the pot for refuges would all end up going to Alaska and all the rest of the refuges would suffer.
NO I guess to if you think about the refuge system and the refuge managers in the lower 48 the situation in Alaska were not talking about managing these new lands exactly the way you would manage a lot of lower 48 lands with the habitat manipulation and a lot of restoration work and things you’d being doing there’s a big difference really in how those lands would be managed too.
CH Right and you consider in the case of the Arctic the headquarters is two hundred and fifty miles away from the refuge and that any kind of ground work and you go on per diem and all these sorts of things it … plus you know very few refuges have villages of hundreds of people within them and that you can’t … it would be very difficult to improve on the Yukon Delta as far as waterfowl habitat goes. So what you need to do is to concernratate on those things that will keep it the ideal habitat that it is right at the present time and to reduce any sort of destructive use.
NO If we talk about the passage of ANILCA or the Alaska National Interests Lands Conservation Act in December of 1980 how did things change when the Act was actually passed after we get into … into 19 … we start into 1981 say?
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CH Well, it changed in that in Alaska we had to go through the process … or we … I didn’t … but refuges had to go about staffing those refuges. Then they had to deal with the inholdings as there were cabins on these refuges that were protected by ANCSA, and also by ANILCA. And so Don Redfearn had a team of people come up to do a … let’s see, we called it a subsistence type study to determine … while then came up with a cabin policy was what their ultimate idea was. And they determined that there had to be subsistence uses to qualify for cabins and that was something that I wasn’t always totally in agreement with because the Act didn’t have that. It had things that you had to reside there and that sort of thing.
NO Well actually I’ve got here … we’re talking about the Regional Office now … the new Regional Office in Anchorage and I just happened to bring with what I … something that I picked up in 1982 when I started work in Anchorage and I’ve been trying to remember who was in charge of what and who the players were within refuges in Anchorage. And this is actually from 1982 and it shows Don Redfearn as the Chief really and then there are a number of these different divisions happening underneath and this begins to reflect I would guess the staff hires that were going on and filling positions to begin to actually implement if you will Alaska … carrying out or fulfilling the requirements for Comprehensive Conservation Plans or CCPs that were required and data gathering and what have you. And it’s interesting in looking at this a number of the names that are on here. This pretty much jog your memory a little bit in terms of who was coming on … who the new people were and the positions they were in?
CH Well, we … when I was Jan Riffe’s Deputy was when we hired Frank Bower and he was hired initially as the waterfowl person.
NO I think to some degree this reflects something that someone was thinking about. It isn’t necessarily probably what necessarily … what in the long run came out but it does have a number of the players. Now you mentioned Jan Riffe and Jan Riffe was the Assistant Regional Director for Wildlife and Refuges under Keith Schreiner at that time.
CH Right.
NO But I think there probably are a number of new people here … Bill Knauer I see is there who came in as the NEPA person … the National Environmental Policy Act … I see Bill Kirk who was a player actually during the work that you did in the ‘70s leading up to ANILCA and a number of other people names are there.
CH Yeah.
NO And Dave Patterson … I think Dave had been there for awhile in the Regional Office at that time. One of the things that I always am curious about and I knew really very little about this when I was in Alaska, but this whole business of the Bristol Bay planning effort that was going on initially when I went there. And I know Curt Wilson who was the acting … he was the archeologist who was kind of acting at that time. Nancy Sorenson was his public involvement person and Pete Jerome was hired as a planner. Pete worked on that project and there was this effort and … could you explain at all how the Bristol Bay … this Bristol Bay effort came … started out is it something that came directly from ANILCA? 17
CH Right and I was actually … Bob Putz put me … gave that assignment to me and Jerry Reed and Anne Rappaport … it was a report that was required by ANILCA. And there’s an interesting thing that happens with that. There was a tight deadline and we weren’t permitted to get a galley proof of the document and when they sent it in … Jerry Reed sent it in to the printer … the secretary put a draft rather than the final disc for one section of it so when the thing came back we had to do a 141 page errata sheet which we did right there in the office and it went along … we met the deadline but we had to work like crazy to get that to go along with it. And it was an embarrassment that could have been prevented if we’d only had the … they said it was you know that we didn’t have time for a galley sheet but anyway …
NO So this effort that would involve Curt and Pete is this something that happened then after you had been involved … this would have been … this is dated …
CH No, because I don’t ever recall this ever actually being implemented.
NO It might have been a proposal … as I say early on. I just thought it was interesting because there are a lot of names on there that brought back some memories.
CH Because somewhere right in this time period Curt Wilson went back to Washington DC.
NO Yeah, I think he left not long after I got there in early 1982.
(Long pause here as we look at this 1982 org chart)
CH OK … because here’s planning over here.
NO I think it was Art that actually hired me and hired Pete as well.
CH Right.
NO But I asked the question about Bristol Bay because I never quite understood what was going on with that I was focusing on my work on the Kenai instead but I knew that was going on and there was lots of stuff happening but I never quite understood what was going on with it.
CH Yeah. We did it and got it out and it went out but I don’t think it was … I just about got through that and I ended up getting this 1002 report laid on. All these things were in addition to my job title … they just got sort of added on and because it all happened while I was still … what Chief … I think I was Chief of Planning at that time.
NO OK. If we could just step back a step now and talk about actually the signing of ANILCA and I know you mentioned last night that there was a gathering held at the White House after the signing of the Act … sometime after the signing of the Act ... it would probably have been sometime in December I would assume?
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CH While it was the date of the signing December 2nd and thanks to the generosity of Keith Schreiner who … Cynthia Wilson had so many slots of people who could attend the actual signing in the East Room of the White House and she had asked Keith if he really wanted to go or would he be willing to let me go. And he said he would be happy to let me go which he did. So we were there at the signing and immediately after the signing we moved into some other room where there was a great layout of punch and cookies and things like that and the people who were there for the signing gathered around there. And one of the things that I remember correctly was that the guard contingent were bird colonels form the military. There was a stairway … I don’t know where it went … but there was a bird colonel standing there to keep you from going up those stairs. And they were you know strategically placed and then … I can’t remember the term they used but the signing of the bill and the party were from this time to this time and we all had to be out so that the next function could just get wheeled in and these colonels all came around and said I think clear the White House or some such thing as that.
NO So this is the actual signing of the legislation itself on December 2nd in the White House. I imagine that was a rather interesting time. Were there any words said by anyone by the President or anyone else at this time?
CH Oh, you know it’s interesting there were but I couldn’t tell you … I know that President Carter and his wife walked in and made some remarks about what a great thing it was. And there was a line of congressional people behind him some of which made statements … both for and against. His … the President’s involvement was maybe 10 minutes total and he went back somewhere else and then we went out and went to the party and then went back to work.
NO Did … did you get a chance to meet President Carter at this time?
CH No, no. There was 400 and some people there in the room and …
NO Conservation community as well as agency members and others?
CH Yeah. There were quite a number of Alaskan natives, there was a conservation contingent, there was a congressional contingent, there was … well, Interior people like Bill and myself and Christine and Burk and what ever allocation that Cynthia had made of the number of slots that she had received. Because then once she had submitted this list then we were subjected to clearances and that sort of thing.
NO Oh. And you mentioned Cynthia … Cynthia Wilson is that right?
CH Right.
NO You talked about her and what was her position?
CH She was directly responsible to the Secretary for everything that was going on with the Alaska lands legislation.
NO OK. Now and the Secretary I assume was there? 19
CH Yes. I believe he was.
NO Now had you met him before all this?
CH Oh yes … yeah …
NO On trips to Alaska or …
CH Yeah.
NO OK.
CH And … we had briefings with him in his office or his briefing room and …
NO So that was something that you had the change really to meet him while you were doing this.
CH Right. Yeah and enough so that he passed me in the corridor on his way to the cafeteria and called me by name so …
NO Oh. That’s really great. The other thing I wanted to ask you about though was there is at NCTC now … and you donated this recently … a reduced scale map of Alaska … of the standard ANILCA map of Alaska … perhaps half the normal size … that has a notation and the signature of Jimmy Carter on it. And I wonder if you could tell me how that was arranged to get his signature actually on that map.
CH Right. They wanted to have something to commerate the event and that’s what they came up with and I think it must have been Bill’s idea because it was … work had been done and I was asked to go from Interior up to the Old Executive Office Building and pick up this signature. So I went in through all the clearances and I signed the book and I was given a … well probably no bigger than a 3 by 5 card that had calligraphy on it and then Jimmy Carter’s signature. I don’t … I couldn’t tell you whether it was his actual signature but I think it was rather than his autograph machine or whatever they call that, because I took that down and that went to USGS who printed the maps and then it was turned back over to Burkett Neely. And I was contacted … I think by the Secret Service … about where that was and I told them that Burkett Neely had it and you know who he was and where he was. And now whether they contacted him or not I don’t know first but he told me later that Secret Service personal came and personally retrieved the card with the President’s signature on it.
NO This map that is at NCTC now in the Service Archives has the signature of a number of people who were involved with either ANCSA the early days or putting together the ANILCA legislation on this and those … you actually got those signatures starting at that ceremony is that correct?
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CH I believe I did. I think I got the first ones at the ceremony. And there were several receptions after that around and then we still had to go back up on the Hill for various things and the congressional types that are on there were all staffers and it was something that everybody thats … whose signature was on there was willing to sign it because it was commerating a pretty important event for all of us that had … well, me for example had worked on it for 9 straight years and so there was you know no arm twisting or pleading or anything they just signed it.
NO Oh and I remember there are signatures on there including a number of people who had worked on the project back in Alaska … Lou Swenson and Fran Mauer and Bob Leedy and a number of other people and Jack Hession I think signed it as well … so you continued getting signatures then when you went back to Alaska after that ceremony?
CH Oh yeah. Whenever I could encounter the people that I had worked with … and some of them once they heard about it came and wanted to sign it just to have their name on the list.
NO Well that’s a considerable … a wonderful thing and a historic document actually in its self and it has dozens of signatures on it and will be preserved in the Service Archives from now on. You mentioned also when we talked last night that you thought that there were some other efforts to get signatures on a map that would be similar. You thought Bill Reffalt might have done one?
CH Yeah. I … I remember two or three people that … I couldn’t put names to them but … for example the congressional staff people that had those maps I wouldn’t be surprised but that theres are decorated with congressional signatures. I didn’t get any because I never encounter any of the active congressman after that so …
NO Well, that is as I say a treasure and it will be preserved forever actually at the … in the Service Archives at NCTC. And that‘s a really interesting story about the President’s signature because I know when I was at NCTC on my last visit a month ago there was some discussion among Jeanne Herald and Mark Madison and Steve Chase about whether that was actually Jimmy Carter’s signature on the map or not. So you certainly clarified that point for everyone.
CH Yeah. He did not sign … I don’t know … I think there were 400 of these maps made of which now NCTC has about a half a dozen I think is what I had left over.
NO What other … you mentioned working on the Bristol Bay planning effort, the joint effort planning with the state in the Bristol Bay area … what other things … you mentioned briefly the 1002 work and we’ll talk about that in a minute ... but what other things did you get involved with? What were your responsibilities after ANILCA had been signed?
CH Well, I was assigned for awhile as the Deputy Assistant for Wildlife under Jan Riffe, still basically concerned with things in ANILCA as well as things in wildlife in general and then I think I went from there to being a Special Assistant to Keith Schreiner. And at that time I was named the Fish and Wildlife Service rep on the Land Use Council staff committee. This was a committee made up … the Land Use Council was made up of the heads of the various departments in the federal government and in the state with Vern Wiggins was the Secretary’s 21
representative and the Governor of Alaska was the State of Alaska. And then the Land Use Council was made up of people like the Secretary of State and … for the state … and natural resources … Esther Wanakee for Natural Resources, the Fish and Game Commissioner and each one of those people had a designee that served on the staff committees because we had determined early on that these high level people were not going to have the time … they were going to be able to make the decisions but they weren’t going to be having the time to do the staff work and that was our responsibility. And so I was on that staff committee for a couple of years anyway and we did all … a whole variety of things … I know I chaired the committee to do a subsistence report and recommendations. And that involved anybody that was interested in that aspect of it, so it was Forest Service, BLM, Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, ADF&G and the native’s … Don Mitchell a lawyer … and we had a quite a session of getting it put together because everybody sort of would spend their time posturing and I let that go on for maybe two or three meetings and then said, well, this is all fine but we’ve got to get work and we did and we got a report and it was about to be sent in … reacted on by the Land Use Council and just before the meeting it got pulled, they didn’t act on it. And so I reported to the committee that that had happened and then low and behold it suddenly was appearing on the agenda of the Land Use Council. And apparently what had happened was that … I suspect it was Don Mitchell got in touch with Senator Stevens who got in touch with Vern Wiggins who was sort of told that had better get back on the agenda and that was the last thing that I did for the Land Use Council. I was subsequently removed for having political power way beyond my … my actual powers.
NO You mentioned during that ADF&G … that’s the Alaska Department of Fish and Game?
CH Right.
NO You mentioned the natives … what is it AFN … the Alaska Federation of Natives?
CH Right.
NO And Don … Don Mitchell was the council for them … the Alaska Federation of Natives. So he was representing the subsistence or the native interests in that partular issue which was why he might have chosen to go to Senator Stevens.
CH Oh, absolutely.
NO A pretty important issue as far as he was concerned. Now as I understand it there was actually … a sort of a predecessor to this Alaska Land Use Council which was established under the provisions of ANILCA when the law was signed is that right?
CH No, No … ANCSA.
NO The Alaska … the Alaska Native Claims …
CH The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act set up the Joint Federal State Land Use Planning Commission.
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NO OK.
CH And that also had a staff committee that was represented at … by the Fish and Wildlife Service by Don Fortenberry who served on it and then when it faded away he … Don came over and worked in the resource planning shop.
NO OK and then that … with the signing of ANILCA in December of 1980 … that was actually replaced essentially as a group by the Alaska Land Use Council as a working group?
CH I … I’m trying to think if … I don’t think it was necessarily ANILCA that did it. I think it was … if I had an ANCSA here I think the Joint Federal State Land Use Planning Commission had a 10 year life span and then they decided that it was such a … that it was doing good things so they reestablished the Land Use Planning Commission which was composed a little bit differently.
NO OK, I see. What other … you mentioned the 1002 area which is the provision of ANILCA that … that does what … you mentioned a study?
CH Well it required I think with … by such and such a time period … that the coastal plain of the Arctic Wildlife Refuge … that area that had been excluded from the wilderness designation would be studied for oil and gas. And there was a group put together, at first headed up by USGS, but because it was on a refuge … and I think it may have been Bill Reffalt who … somebody went and there was actual litigation and the courts determined that USGS could not head up a study on the refuge. So Noreen Clough in Washington and myself in Anchorage were the co-editors of this … or co-leaders of this study which had … oh, lets see there was a couple of USGS people, BLM … Anne Rapaport worked on that, I think Glen Elison was on our team and we had to put together a report. USGS handled the oil and gas. We knew the caribou were going to be very controversial so we took and had a … put together a symposium in Fairbanks that had the leading caribou experts from actually around the world. I think we had people from Sweden and … ADF&G and Dr. Cline at the university and all of that and they are the ones using all of the available data that came out with the … what we called the core breeding area concept which overlays of years said that this area was essential to the calving of caribou. And that’s what appeared on the draft EIS that we put out … on the draft report. And we got it back and the comments and we were responding and we were working at the time down in Lakewood … that’s the place in Colorado …
NO Where the Regional Office is?
CH Right. Because USGS was providing all the cartography so … and there big office was there … so that’s where this was happening. And we were in the Fish and Wildlife Service building … Marv Plenert had arrived … arranged he was ARD for Wildlife there … he was the Deputy but actually he was heading it up or something … but anyway he provided staff help for us and that was where we got a call that we could not use the core calving area because there was evidence that the caribou had calved outside of it some years. And it didn’t hurt us any … it made us look foolish but everybody immediately recognized that it … because the draft had said 23
it was the decision of the professionals … that the fact that it wasn’t in there was some kind of a political decision. And so we put that together and got it published.
NO This area that we are talking about over the years has become known variously as ANWR or now the 1002 area and of course is still in the news today and it looks like there will be another serious attempt by this Administration to open up that area for oil and gas exploration since they have included it within the budget which can not be … can not be changed really. So it looks like it may actually be happening under this Administration ... although there are still I understand serious efforts being made to fight it.
CH Right. It sure is interesting because it’s been somewhat evident that there isn’t that kind of interest from the oil companies. That some of the bigger ones have withdrawn from any involvement with it but as I recall when we did it … that was ’88 or something like that ’85 or ’88 … that it would not be economically feasible to do that unless oil reached $30 a barrel in ’85 dollars … 1985 dollars. With oil at $70 a barrel … that probably is more than $30 in ’85 … but as far as I know there had been one test drill … one test well drilled there and I don’t know as they ever made the results of that known.
NO Is that the well that was drilled actually on a native … on native property … on native lands actually out there and that … yeah, as far as I know I’ve never heard anything about the results of that.
CH Right. So I don’t know what will come of it. They say it’s a drop in the bucket as far as the demand.
NO So perhaps the demand won’t be there and it won’t actually happen so … yeah, if we’re really lucky perhaps. Is there anything else you got involved with following the passage of the act that were sort of during your normal duties that would have been …
CH Well, in this … various things would happen … in my career I have actually applied for two jobs and neither one of them I ever got and I’ve had something like 17 job titles. But then I was made Chief of Planning and was involved in supporting the planning team that finished up the first go around of the Comprehensive Conservation Plans for the refuges.
NO During which you were my supervisor since I was in planning at that particular time. And that’s the position that you were actually in when you retired from the Service is that correct?
CH Yeah. I was still … actually it had gone away but I was gone before I was reassigned anywhere else.
NO I guess you’d actually … I wound up working for Gail Baker in Resource Support or something … planning I think there were only three or four of us left … Leslie Kerr, myself and Mikel Hasse … just a few of us left … wound up under Gail Baker and that was roughly at the time when you retired.
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CH Yeah that was the time.
NO In fact I remember we were talking last night about going to your retirement party which was held at the officer’s club out at the Fort …
CH Fort Rich I think.
NO OK. I remember that well. The other thing you mentioned last night that I thought was extremely interesting and I think it would be good to get it on the record here was … is the fact that there was a legislative history of ANCSA and ANILCA that was prepared by ADF&G … by the state some time during the ‘80s while you were still there and you mentioned it was 35,000 pages or something like that I think, is that right?
CH Right. 34, 068 or something like that and this came about … I became aware of it through Tina Cunning who was my … whatever … on the planning committee … resource council staff committee. She represented Alaska Department of Fish and Game and I think they may have been the ones that did it and they had x number of sets of this … it may have been something like 41 volumes or something and through working with her the Fish and Wildlife Service bought three sets of them … they cost about $2,100 a set. And we turned one over to Keith Goltz with the US Solicitors … or the Interior Solicitors Office there in Anchorage and one went in the Fish and Wildlife Service library and I think the other one may have gone to the Washington office library … I don’t … I can’t recall for sure where that third set went to but … boy what a fascinating documents because that piece of legislation was surpassed only by the Civil Rights Act as far as legislative history and congressional involvement in a particular piece of legislation.
NO Yeah. I think it would be extremely important to try to track that down to see where those sets are ... at least the Fish and Wildlife Service sets are … and possibly get a hold of a set and put it in the Service Archives because as you pointed out it does really well document everything that went on.
CH Right. It has you know … I don’t know how many different bills there were … they each had there little speech and there dog and pony show with … you were there when there was all of the various … there were a number of bills that started off the Native Claims Settlement Act and then once that was there were a whole set of different bills that were different versions of what turned out to be the Native Claims Settlement Act and then all of the congressional record and everything that went along with that. That’s what makes up this history that they put together.
NO Yeah. Well we’ll try to track it down back at NCTC to see if that can be located. I assume it would be a very valuable document. You mentioned Tina Cunning who was I think you said your counterpart sort of on the staff committee … the staff that worked with the Alaska Land Use Council and so you got to know each other fairly well.
CH Right and I think one of the things that we did was try to relieve the tension between ADF&G … Alaska Department of Fish and Game … and the Fish and Wildlife Service. And 25
Bob Gilmore who was the Regional Director at that time, Tina and I went to him and said how would … because we had talked about creating what became know as the Forum where certain people out of ADF&G and certain Fish and Wildlife Service people could periodically meet to discuss and try to solve mutual problems. And Bob Gilmore said you know there’s more here than both of us can do together cooperatively than … and we never do it in conflict … so he said go ahead with it. So we did, we set up this Forum that lasted as long as he was the Regional Director and Walt Stieglitz opted to not carry it on so that was a … in my view it was something that probably could have been beneficial to everybody and saved a lot of heartburn but …
NO You mentioned Bob Gilmore and Stieglitz and Keith Schreiner … you actually while you were there working on these various aspects of this whole big project there were a number of Area Directors or Regional Directors involved … Gordy Watson, Keith Schreiner, Bob Putz, Bob Gilmore and Walt Stieglitz who … how were these people to work with over that period and what kind of support did you get from them?
CH Well, with Gordy it was fantastic. He just gave us full reign just as they had Bill Reffalt in Washington. Gordy was ... I’ll say this, the first time we put together a budget for this … I can’t remember what our first name was we had several we were systems and planning and we were resource planning and we were this and we were that … but the first budget that we had … because Gordy was a pilot and the aircraft division was a big part of the Fish and Wildlife Service and 15% of every budget was creamed right off the top to support the aircraft division … that our first budget had to have three airplanes in it that would be bought new … Cessna 180’s. And … but I was not … there was no problem … there was no problem with Keith Schreiner and by that time things had gone along you know so we were well into the process and followed by Bob Putz and Bob Gilmore … I was a Special Assistant to the Regional Director at that time and Gilmore didn’t think he needed one so I had some other kind of a title change, I can’t remember whether that was when I went to be Deputy Assistant Wildlife or not. I can go back in my records but he was … there were none of them that ever stood in the way of anything that we were doing. So I had nothing but support and with the small exception of some remarks that Dave Cline made when he was with us that sort of were anti Secretary of the Interior … we never in any way did anything but a credit to the Service so I think that was one of the reasons that we could do what we did the way we did it. Plus the fact that our monies came … you know were approved out of Washington without any kind of a problem. I can’t remember what the planning budget … but I know in resource planning when you know when there were a lot of trips we had a $1.2 million budget but that included many thousands of dollars to pay for airplanes to fly dignitaries around and stuff like that.
NO So it sounds like you had really … during this whole process … the best of all worlds. You know free reigns almost to do the job as you saw it needed to be done and then money to do it.
CH Right.
NO With little interference, so that’s the best of all worlds.
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CH The only thing that … and this isn’t … this didn’t affect anything was that with nobody knowing what I was doing at performance standard time they had nothing to … and once you start to be worth money you know if you got such and such a grade that … so until … it didn’t mean anything to me I always got a good one but I never got one that was profitable until Joe asked one time was I satisfied with the honorable one he gave me and I told him no and he about went through the floor and I said well you didn’t take into account the Bristol Bay Report, the 1002 Report, the Forum that we set up and all these other things that … well like I was teaching defensive driving and all of that sort of stuff. So I got a upgrade in my performance evaluation that got me some money. (Note: During my career I received five special achievement awards, 3 secretarial commendations, and the departmental meritorious service medal.)
(Clock chimes 11:00)
NO That’s always nice.
CH Yeah.
NO You mentioned Joe Mazzoni so … who actually was your supervisor of record in terms of doing performance evaluations?
CH It depended on the time. When I was a Special Assistant to the RD it was the RD, Keith Schreiner. My first assignment when I went into this ANILCA thing I was actually an Assistant Refuge Supervisor under Dave Spencer and then going back trying to think of who did my performance … Dave Olsen I can remember did one and Joe Mazzoni did some, Jan Riffe did some …
NO OK. A number of people then. You mentioned Dave Olsen and Dave Olsen was a Deputy Regional Director during the ‘80s … at one period during the ‘80s for several years, is that right?
CH Right.
NO And he went on to go to Washington actually to become the Deputy Director for Refuges? Is that what his title was?
CH I think that’s what he was.
NO So he was up in the front row?
CH Yeah.
NO OK. OK. Well I guess we could probably at this point just talk a little bit about when you retired and what you’ve been doing since.
CH Well, I was set up to retire in February of ’89 and I had them do a search of the records because I had worked for the Forest Service during my college days on vacation and they 27
couldn’t find that but they had found that the duck banding assignment I was on in ’57 actually was a … for the Department of the Interior. So that moved my retirement date from in February up to December 15th I think. So I opted to finish out the month and retired on the last day of December of ’88. We stayed in Anchorage to sell the house and we sold the house, had the retirement party, that was sometime in January. We got all of our stuff to the movers and we were totally beat so said let’s go to Hawaii cause we were going to drive out. So that’s what we did. We got a condo on the big island for a week … two weeks … and came back and loaded up the Volvo and Ford Van and went to Fairbanks and visited our daughter and then headed down the highway and arrived here in Maine. Heard about the oil spill somewhere in Canada while we were traveling and that made me awful glad that I wasn’t still there because having been in limbo I probably would have gotten an assignment on that. And then we had our stuff in storage in Anchorage for two years and so we came back here and visited my mother and we stayed with Clarene’s sister for awhile and then we went down to my sister’s place in Delaware and then we took off and went out to … or we went to Florida and came back and then we went out to Demming, New Mexico because that was a place we were considering retiring when we were in Anchorage and decided it was too much of a drive. And kicked around and the next winter we spent the whole winter at my sisters place … summers here … and then we needed … I had to get the stuff out of storage if the government was going to pay for the move. So we took an apartment in Bangor and got our stuff down started looking for a house. We looked all around up here and then decided that this was a little to far away from things that we liked to do and got that apartment and found that we enjoyed living in town, being able to walk to things and we found the house in Brewer and for over two years we were there. Moved in and set up a shop in the basement and a quilt shop in the upstairs and I went to building things and at a friends place built a canoe and we played there and we stayed there and my gosh hundreds of kids projects and got involved with the Audubon Nature Center there in Holden and did a lot for them. Built canoe racks and picnic tables and benches for phoebes to nest on and bat houses and window screens and that kind of stuff.
NO So you found plenty of things to do.
CH Oh yes. I was active in Kiwanis in fact I was their cook for six years preparing meals for them. We didn’t have enough members that we could get a caterer that was interested and …
NO You know speaking of cooking something that just came to mind, excuse me, but I remember when I was in my first year in Alaska in December of 1982 there was a … it must have been … it was the first annual ANILCA retreat. It was held out of the Regional Office and it was held out at the Fort … in a cabin you know on the Fort … and it was in December and we went out there for the day and Keith Schreiner was there and everyone who was involved with implementing ANILCA. You must have been there, remember that?
CH No.
NO We had a chance to do some crosscountry skiing but in the evening we had steaks and you know baked potatoes and everything there. I can’t imagine that you wouldn’t have been there then. I have slides from that I’ll have to check and see … but it was called the first annual 28
ANILCA … and it was done on the anniversary of the … I think on December 2nd of course. But you don’t remember that?
CH I don’t?
NO Oh. Perhaps you missed that for some reason.
CH I can’t think that if there were something to eat that I wouldn’t remember it.
NO Yes, you mentioned cooking and I was wondering if you did the cooking. The other think that you mentioned of course that you’ve done is that you have attended a number of the Retiree’s Reunions in Spear Fish and …
CH Been to three. Yeah.
NO Been to three now. OK. And you have I mentioned before you have donated some materials actually to the Service Archives in addition to the map … the signed map that I was talking about. And there are some additional materials that you are going to be donating that will be on record then in the Service Archives documenting a number of the things you’ve just talked about and they will be part of the record also in the Service Archives … as will of course the transcript and this tape itself which is now approaching two hours so … it sounds to be a two hour tape at least … at least a two hour tape if it’s still going … and I really want to thank you you know for taking the time to do this.
CH Thank you for coming all the way to do it.
NO Well, you’ve got a neat place here and I enjoyed staying in your cabin last night and I’ve enjoyed the hospitality of you and your wife. So I appreciate you putting up with me for these couple of hours to document what is some pretty important stuff so … and I hope this … you said you have done several other oral history interviews … I hope this tape documents a little bit better the things you were involved in.
CH Oh, it does, there’s no question about it because I can respond to specifics … more specifically than I could …
NO Well that’s good because the intent here is to have this become part of the permanent record at NCTC in the Archives dealing with ANCSA, ANILCA and that whole period through the ‘70s and the ‘80s in Alaska an important part of the Service’s … the history of the Service in tripling probably the … almost tripling the size of the National Wildlife Refuge System … all those wonderful lands that are up there. So I want to thank you personally for sitting down with me and with that I guess we can probably conclude our interview.
CH OK.