AIP RESPONSE TO WASHINGTON POST

John Glotfelty
North Pole, AK
Sep 30, 2003

I read your article about Alaskans and the National Parks Service with both amazement and sadness. Here in Alaska from the capital city of Juneau to Anchorage and Fairbanks we have regular encounters of the third kind with our wildlife. Several years ago in Juneau an elder lady was killed dead by a moose in her back yard. All of Alaksa cities are prone to have a black bear, a brown bear or a polar bear show up. Mostly these are garbage bears in search an easy meal. Dogs and cats in a fenced yard are fair game. These are wild animals and we take great care to try to stay out of their way. That said it is not always possible. When living or traveling outside of the cities in Alaska you must be prudent and carry a firearm. Unless of course you have a death wish. In the last frontier, in the bush two thousand or more miles from Seattle, Humans are a food source for some of nature's predators.

Because we have the pioneer spirit and enjoy nature is not a reason to demonize us. To tell a child of 12 or 13 not to take protection when outside in the mountains is indeed stupid and could be considered a form of child abuse. No park ranger in Alaska will go into the deep woods without weapons, no not one. Yet it is somehow wrong for everyday folks to do the same. I would remind the Park Rangers of Wranglell National Park that you are there to protect the Park, NOT private Property. Likewise you are not father nature. The people who homesteaded private land in what is now national parks did so long before congress created the park. The NPS are the new comers and are not doing their jobs. Rest assured that folks are watching the NPS very closely in this latest round of extreme abuse of power much closer to the park than Washington, D.C. Yes each one of us are also Americans. That is unless Washington wants to revoke our citizenship because we actually do live in the 49th STATE. Bottom Line: NPS is dead wrong, and this massive abuse of power must end.

Sincerely,
John Wayne Glotfelty , SFC, US Army Ret., B.S., M.S.
Alaskan Independence Party, Vice Chairman North

Webmaster's Comment:

Rememeber Joe Vogler and his dozer was on the trail into Woodchopper for over 20 years. It was secretly moved just prior to his assassination in 1993.