U.S. Strips Alaska of Control Over Wildlife Affairs

The federal government Sunday took control of wildlife management on public lands away from the state of Alaska in a fight over hunting rights.

“We said we didn’t want to assume this responsibility,” said Walter Stieglitz, regional director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, who directed the reluctant takeover when Alaska failed to meet Sunday’s deadline for complying with a federal lands act.

The unparalleled takeover transferred game management in roughly two-thirds of Alaska, an area larger than Texas.

The transfer of power and wildlife management responsibility has been the most hotly debated issue in the state for months, but it is the outgrowth of many years of bitter fighting between rural native subsistence hunters and urban sport hunters--with politicians, courts and government agencies in the middle of the dispute.

State lawmakers who convened in special session in the capital in Juneau a week ago in an attempt to thwart the federal action have instead split into warring camps, sticking to their guns on the divisive issues involved.

White city-dwelling sportsmen contend the case is an equal rights issue, while native groups claim their traditional subsistence way of life is a matter of survival.