ENVIRONMENT / PRESSURE ON WILDERNESS : Rivalry Growing for Elbow Room In the Far North’s Last Frontier : Old-timers, newcomers, visitors, government--all jockey for their interests in Alaska’s great outdoors.

This is the state where license plates carry the proud motto, The Last Frontier . This also seems to be the year for the question: So, what do we do now, when there is not enough frontier to go around?

Federal officials, who control 60% of the terrain in Alaska, are embroiled in the issue all across the state.

Here at Denali, for instance, the National Park Service is facing a potential crisis over a private plan to open the very center of this huge and famous national park to new development.

And, in a shocking development for free-spirited Alaskans, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has reluctantly taken management of game hunting throughout much of Alaska away from the state. Federal authorities say they acted to preserve adequate herds of animals and settle a hellfire dispute between big game sportsmen and old-fashioned subsistence hunters.

And, to the southeast, federal officials find themselves torn over a law that gives huge cruise ships greater access than traditional fishermen to the waters of Glacier Bay National Park.

“There are a lot of people who come here having read Jack London and thinking that’s the way it is,” said John Quinley, public affairs officer for national parks in Alaska. “They are surprised to run smack into large commercial tourist industries.”

None of these frontier problems are resolved, but each illustrates the pressures bearing down on the Far North’s great outdoors in the 1990s.

Denali National Park

Most of the people who come to Denali, home of 20,300-foot Mt. McKinley, have one thing on their mind. They want to see wildlife, in the wild. And the vast majority of the nearly 200,000 visitors get into the park one way--by bus. They buy tickets on Monday for a Tuesday bus ride and then line up at 5:45 a.m. to get a choice seat. Sometimes they ride the cramped buses for 10 hours on a corkscrew, one-lane dirt road.

Many of them think the effort is worth it. They have driven hundreds of miles in their own vehicles to get here. They have seen few animals. Today is their day.

“We planned our two-week trip to Alaska around this day. On this bus,” said Caryl Rawls of Memphis, Tenn. At midway on her trip, the 40 people on her yellow school bus have seen a half-dozen grizzlies, a score of caribou, any number of Dall sheep, ptarmigan and other creatures.

It’s cold, a rain has started. But Rawls and the other bus riders are thrilled.

That is, until they hear that the Denali buses are in danger of being restricted from driving deep into the park. The reason? Private landowners in the center of the park control 1,300 or so acres in an area known as Kantishna, and one such landowner is considering development that would permit private recreational vehicles on the 89-mile, stomach-churning road.

Park Service lawyers concede that a private landowner has the right to use the road under the law that enlarged Denali park in 1980. And, if a landowner wants to bring in RVs, maybe 200 at a time, he can.

But park Supt. Russ Berry says that, if RVs start clogging the road, the interior of the park may have to be closed to the buses. That’s because of the danger of increased traffic on a road scraped out across sheer cliff faces and over winding passes.

Yes, the road could be widened. Or another road built. But Berry and environmental groups believe heavy traffic would ruin the very thing that makes Denali special--its dense and undisturbed wildlife.

Dan Ashbrook plays the role of “villain” in the drama. He holds a mining claim that he wants to develop into a camping resort. He is a good-natured sourdough who complains that his private-property rights are being ignored by a government that practically gives away the park to private concessionaires.

In an 80-year-old log cabin on the tailings of his placer mine, Ashbrook pulls on his woolly beard and teases visitors about his plans to build a jet runway to bring in tourists. Or maybe he’s not teasing. Maybe he’ll set up a do-it-yourself mining attraction. He’s got land in the middle of the most heavily visited national park in Alaska. And he’s got his dreams.

Supt. Berry has chosen to take the matter seriously and to bring it to a head quickly.

“This is not a crisis yet. It’s a symptom,” said Berry, an experienced political hand. “Whether it is this time and this particular individual or another time and another individual, we are going to have conflicts over use of the road.”

Because of increasing tourist pressure, Ashbrook predicts there will be development in the park eventually, either his or something even larger under park service license to a concessionaire.

Berry takes a different view. “The National Park Service has to face an issue--and it really hasn’t yet,” he said. “We’re going to have to start telling people the theater is full, the next performance will be . . . .”

Special Hunting Privileges

Over the years, Alaskans who live in the bush, whether ancient bands of Indians or modern back-to-the-earth settlers, have enjoyed special hunting privileges.

If they are 50 miles from a store and facing a 30-below winter, the reasoning goes, they need the right to live off the land. Subsistence hunters, they are called. They are allowed to kill more game than others. Federal law recognizes their favored place in Alaskan society. So did state fish and game officials.

But sport hunters filed suit. And the Alaska Supreme Court this year sided with them. Special hunting rights for anyone violates the equal protection provisions of the state constitution, the court held.

The Legislature met in special session this summer to draw a compromise. No agreement was achieved. Then, on July 1, Alaska saw control of hunting on federal lands taken out of its hands by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. This has never happened before in any state.

Federal authorities say they acted reluctantly but had no choice because of U.S. law that sets game management priorities for Alaska. First priority is maintenance of healthy animal populations. Second goes to subsistence hunting. Then sport hunting. Potentially, federal officials seek a lower kill.

State officials responded by declaring that every Alaska resident has subsistence hunting rights, whether an Anchorage stockbroker or Indian villager along the Arctic Circle. By enlarging the number of hunters who can bag more game, the potential is to increase the kill.

The first people to feel the squeeze are out-of-state hunters, who have no subsistence claims here. Somewhere between 10% and 30% of hunting licenses are now purchased by non- residents. The number may be small, but the industry these hunters support--the guides and bush pilots and wilderness camps--is large.

Already, some hunts in some areas have been closed to non-residents. And state fish and game officials say the closures are almost sure to increase, particularly for game animals commonly used for food, including moose and elk.

Glacier Bay National Park

After Denali, Glacier Bay is the next most-visited national park in Alaska. Sightseers, about 150,000 a year, come by boat, usually a cruise ship.

At a rate of two a day during the short summer season, the cruise ships make 109 daylong visits a year, prowling the horseshoe-shaped bowl. This park is a showcase for whales and other marine life and for the blue-water glaciers and the still-evolving forces that shaped so much of the planet.

Jumbo James doesn’t see it like that, though. “That place is my icebox,” he said recently, sitting at home in his Tlingit Indian village of Hoonah, 30 miles to the south. “It’s always been our supermarket.”

James and other Tlingits, who have populated the region for 9,000 years, say the bay is part of their traditional fishing grounds. They claim the right to enter the park and set salmon nets.

But the National Park Service disputes the natives. Because Indians have not used the bay much in recent decades, they have forfeited claims of continuous subsistence, officials say.

The park service has been telling local residents that they may not fish in the park, and a spokesman said the government will issue regulations soon to make such fishing specifically illegal. However, authorities have acknowledged that enforcement has been deliberately lax out of consideration for native sensibilities.

Complicating the issue is the fact that non-native commercial fishermen have been taking salmon in the bay regularly for years. The state of Alaska issues commercial permits for the region.

This fishing, too, is technically illegal. But the park service is considering a seven-year study of fish and the bay. And, during this time, commercial fishing, although not Indian subsistence fishing, will be allowed to continue, according to the park service.

“Our position is that commercial fishermen have been continuously using the bay, but subsistence fishermen have not. And we’re not going to add a new consumptive use while we study the effect of fishing on the park,” a spokesman said.

Free-lance writer David Hulen in Glacier Bay National Park contributed to this story.