The man who preserved Alaska

Right about now, within a shrub in southern Texas, a ruby-crowned kinglet twitches to face northward.

In a few months, guided by forces neither the kinglet nor human biologists fully understand, the thumb-size songbird will leap into the air and head for Alaska, where it was born. The bird’s ancestors — and billions like them — have flown here each spring for thousands of years.

What’s the appeal of this giant peninsula that juts into the cold ocean?

Alaska — as well as the greater landmass north of the Arctic Circle — is “the world’s bird nursery,” said Natalie Boelman of Columbia University in December 2024. She cited Alaska’s abundance of insects and undisturbed space during her lecture at an immense conference in Washington, D.C.

Today, about a month after Boelman’s lecture, is the official national day of mourning for Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the United States. He died Dec. 29, 2024, at age 100.

When he was 56, in December 1980, Carter signed into law the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act.

Ronald Reagan had walloped Carter in the election a few weeks before. But Carter changed the map of Alaska in a big way on his way out.

One of his final signatures as president made it more likely that in spring 2025 the kinglet can fly from Texas and still land in the Alaska spruce in which its great-great-great grandmother built a nest and laid her eggs.

By signing that one act into federal law, Carter ended up protecting almost half of the land area (43 percent) of this giant state, with multiple new national conservation units, including parks, wildlife refuges and monuments.

“In Alaska, we have a unique opportunity to balance the development of our vital resources required for continued economic growth with protection of our natural environment,” Carter said in December 1980 to a reporter for the Washington Post. “We have the imagination and the will as a people to both develop our last great natural frontier and also preserve its priceless beauty for our children and grandchildren.”

This was not one of those last-minute stabs at legacy building. Carter was a fan of Alaska. He had a map of the state tacked up in his office for much of his four-year term. He slept on the ground here. He felt the bend of his fly rod while he stood in Alaska waters.

Carter’s foresight — and the immense work of many professionals who drew up proposals for land worthy of protecting — preceded environmental changes that have since come to roost.

Among them is the loss of almost 3 billion birds from the U.S. and Canada since 1970. And the crash of salmon numbers in Alaska’s largest waterways, to the point where subsistence fishermen are no longer allowed to catch them.

Alaska, however, is still rich in bugs. Unlike in places like Germany, where scientists recently documented a three-quarters reduction in numbers of insects, Alaska still hosts healthy populations. Entomologist Derek Sikes said that Alaska is almost 200 years behind the Lower 48 and the Tropics in regard to habitat degradation.

Just like hungry kinglets, we depend on insects, which pollinate plants that are food sources for us and for other creatures we like to eat. Without them and other nonhuman creatures that share this planet, we are sunk.

So, on behalf of the kinglet and millions of other creatures, a tip of the cap to the man who helped create more than 43 million acres (!) of new national parklands in Alaska. Here is a partial list of those parks and other conservation units that became reality with the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act:

• Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge
• Alaska Peninsula National Wildlife Refuge
• Admiralty Island National Monument
• Aniakchak National Monument and Preserve
• Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (expanded)
• Becharof National Wildlife Refuge
• Bering Land Bridge National Preserve
• Cape Krusenstern National Monument
• Denali National Park (expanded) and Preserve
• Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve
• Glacier Bay National Park (expanded) and Preserve
• Iditarod National Historic Trail
• Innoko National Wildlife Refuge
• Kanuti National Wildlife Refuge
• Katmai National Park (expanded) and Preserve
• Kenai Fjords National Park
• Kobuk Valley National Park
• Koyukuk National Wildlife Refuge
• Lake Clark National Park and Preserve
• Misty Fjords National Monument
• Noatak National Preserve
• Nowitna National Wildlife Refuge
• Selawik National Wildlife Refuge
• Steese National Conservation Area
• Tetlin National Wildlife Refuge
• Togiak National Wildlife Refuge
• White Mountains National Recreation Area
• Wrangell-St Elias National Park and Preserve
• Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve
• Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge
• Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge

Since the late 1970s, the University of Alaska Fairbanks' Geophysical Institute has provided this column free in cooperation with the UAF research community. Ned Rozell is a science writer for the Geophysical Institute.