Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a National Park Service ban on using hovercrafts during a moose hunt within the national preserve of Alaska, but in a narrowly focused ruling, sent the case back to a lower court for additional consideration, according to the Associated Press.
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“There are centuries of law supporting federal authority over navigable waters and other public lands”.
But while the victory is a major one for hunter John Sturgeon, the decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts sets the stage for a whole new round of legal wrangling. The Supreme Court began by criticizing the approach used by the lower court and it further addressed how there was a distinction between “public” and “non-public” lands.
The tribes won a major victory in 1996 when the court of appeals ruled that the federal government had the authority to regulate both state and federal waters in Alaska.
“This decision affirms the original intent of ANILCA and recognizes that Alaska’s unique conditions must be recognized by the federal government”.
“We’ve won a big battle”, said the moose hunter, John Sturgeon.
The decision won’t have national significance because it “applied only for Alaska”, Anderson said. Noting the controversial confrontations between Westerners and the federal government elsewhere – the latest of which ended in a deadly shoot out in Oregon – Sturgeon said, he feels good when people talk to him about “taking on government in the right way”, but the costs are punitive.
Walker said he would encourage more private contributions to the Sturgeon legal defense fund and even offered to add his name to the cause to help increase contributions.
Still, the chair of the Senate Resources Committee was of the opinion that the issues now in play are so large that if Sturgeon can not afford to go forward the state will have to open its checkbook.
“This is a state sovereignty issue”. “No lands ‘conveyed to the state, to any Native Corporation, or to any private party shall be subject to regulations applicable exclusively to public lands within such units'”. The Park Service had denied the state a permit to use a helicopter to conduct salmon research on state land, a gravel bar, on the Alagnak River within Katmai National Preserve.
The appeals court said park service regulations are limited in scope only if they are Alaska-specific. The law placed both federal preservation land and state land in “conservation system unit”. “In a sense, it’s up to John, ” she said.
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And Roberts later represented Alaska before the 9th Circuit in Katie John v. United States, arguing that the state – not the federal government – should have control over the state’s navigable waters.
