77-22-A4
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Alaska
TranscriptWill Alaska wind up as our biggest state or will it be our smallest state, surrounded by our biggest national park? I'll be right back. I'm sure all of us in the other 49 states take pleasure in knowing, even if we never see it for ourselves, that there is a vast wilderness of mountains lakes, rivers, glaciers and tundra where Kodiak bears roam and the great arctic wolves stalk the caribou. All of this is found, of course, in Alaska, a state which is roughly one-sixth the total area of the United States. It is a place of great beauty, with more than three thousand miles of coastline, rushing rivers, trackless forests and snow-covered mountain peaks. In all of that beauty is a richness of natural resources, many of them growing scarce in the rest of our land. There's oil, natural gas, minerals and great stands of timber. These things we need, but I'm sure no one wants to treat this last American frontier as we treated the first. We're more aware now than we were in an earlier day and another 200 years down the road. We want Americans to know there is a place where Kodiak bears, arctic wolves and caribou will live as they always have. With all of this in mind, Congress closed off 80 million acres of Alaska to mining and certain other uses. This is not exactly just a city park. It's the size of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York and New Jersey, all put together, and it's close to one-fourth of Alaska. That 1971 law expires and the end of next year. The people of Alaska are beginning to feel like clay pigeons on a skeet range. Ideas are popping up as substitutes for for that 1971 law, but no one seems to be asking the Alaskans how they feel about it. Yes they live in all that great beauty and they too want it preserved. They also want to make a living, plus which they know that people must heat their homes in winter and cool them in summer. There must be fuel to drive cars and lumber and plastic for a thousand different things used in daily living. Right now, they wonder why there can't be a reasonable sharing between scenery and the treasures locked up in Alaska's untouched wilderness. Yet, environmentalists have persuaded Representative Morris Udall of Arizona to introduce a bill that would put 140 million acres into federally protected land. Apparently this would be without regard to minerals or oil or gas potential. This would nearly double the 80 million acres covered by the 1971 law. So to the area now equivalent to all of New England, New York and New Jersey, add Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia and West Virginia. Seems a little much, doesn't it? Indeed it is environmental extremism. Remember the alternative is not destruction of Alaska's natural beauty, the alternative is the exercise of common sense so there can be both a large permanent wilderness and the use of natural resources from that new frontier. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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