Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, my amendment is a relatively complicated amendment in the sense that a lot of people don't have any history of the Alaska National Lands Act. My amendment prohibits the Director of the Fish and Wildlife Service from issuing a final ruling that would seize authority from the State of Alaska's Alaska Fish and Game to manage fish and game on all lands. That was under ANILCA. My amendment also withdraws the existing National Park Service rule that interferes with State wildlife management authority under the National Preserve Lands of Alaska, agreed to by this Congress. The Alaska National Interest Land Conservation Act, ANILCA, passed by Congress, signed into law in 1980, protects the ability of the State of Alaska to manage wildlife across the State on State, private, and Federal lands. As Alaska's lone Representative and someone who was intimately involved in the process of producing ANILCA, an agreement with my colleagues, it is my conclusion that the proposed rule set forth by the Fish and Wildlife Service and Park Service is in clear violation of Federal law. The scope of the proposed Fish and Wildlife Service rule is enormous. There are 76.8 million acres of wildlife refuges in Alaska, an amount of land about the size of four Michigans, at least two or three Virginias, and on top of that there is 20 million acres of national preserves in Alaska, a total of 100 million acres in the State of Alaska.…”