 Alaska, a frontier, were once known only to the coastal Eskimos and Aliutes, and the Athabascan Indian along with the Seasons, the Runs of Salmon, the migration of caribou, and was spent gathering enough food and fuel to last the long, harsh winter. Coastal natives hunted whales, walrus and seals. The ocean was their richest and most reliable store, and provided the basis for their traditional life. But it was also the carrier of far-reaching change. Russian sailing expeditions discovered Alaska and returned to make it their colony, pelts of sea otters and seals. More than any other resource, these fur animals along with the beaver, fox, lynx and martin lured men to explore, exploit, and settle Alaska on Alaska's north slope in 1968. Alaska was thrust into a land use, land ownership debate. The Eskimos, Aliutes, and Indians voiced their ancestral claims to the land. The state government demanded its share of federal lands. And people in the other 49 states expressed concern for the future of Alaska's wildlife and their lands. Action came nationally in 1971, when the U.S. Congress passed the Alaska Native Plains Settlement Act. Under the act, Alaska natives can choose and receive title to 40 million acres or about one-ninth of the state as part of their ancestral claims to the land. The act also required the Secretary of the Interior to withdraw up to 80 million acres of existing public land for a specific consideration as new national wildlife refuges, parks, forests, and wild and scenic rivers for ownership by all Americans. Among those lands withdrawn were prime wildlife areas, their potential for addition to the National Wildlife Refuge System was reviewed by the staff of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Other federal conservation agencies studied these national interest lands. The results led to the Secretary of Interior's specific recommendations to Congress for new or expanded national wildlife refuges, national parks, chenal forests, and scenic rivers in Alaska. Lands included in those recommendations will remain in a special withdrawal category until the Congress acts on the Secretary's proposals, or until December 1978. We now have the chance under the Native Plains Settlement Act to protect the land and water living spaces of the millions of birds, fish, and mammals that thrive in the vast wilderness of Alaska. Start with several hundred million shorebirds, add 12 million waterfowl, and multiply by countless warblers and other small birds. And you have summer in Alaska. Coming from the east, west, and Gulf Coasts, endpoints in between, they set their compass-like course for Alaska even before the snow is gone each spring, and on other parts of the national wildlife refuge systems such as Blackwater, Aransas, Julie Lake, and Upper Mississippi will suddenly head north, flying almost nonstop to their traditional Alaska breeding grounds. Joining them are arctic turns which fly 10,000 miles from the opposite end of the world, Antarctica. Some plumbers cross the Pacific Ocean from China, Australia, and the South Sea Islands, Western sandpipers and others come from Central and South America. In Alaska, our prime nesting habitat for great masses of these birds, the Yukon Cuscoquim Delta, the Kayakuk region, the Yukon Flats, and the Sillawick region. Portions of each are proposed as national wildlife refuges. Dissected by rivers, old oxbows and ponds, the proposed Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge is more water than land. The tundra underfoot is spongy with moisture, cushioned with the plants and berries eaten by the birds and the people. The 12,000 Eskimo residents of the Yukon Cuscoquim Delta have a special interest in seeing these wildlife resources so vital in their daily lives, protected for future generations. Farther up the Yukon River is the Kayakuk region, where another national wildlife refuge is proposed. Rivers are the heart of the Kayakuk country. Life flows with them for hours a day by feasting on the flourishing pondweeds and for protein on the flourishing mosquitoes. Rivers escape the hungry insects by immersing themselves in the shallow lakes where they supplement their diet of willow twigs with water lilies. A life refuge, the Arctic Circle, prime habitat for looms, swans, geese and sand hill cranes spreads inland beyond the expanse of Sillawick Lake toward the headwaters of the Sillawick River. In clumps of grass and spongy tundra nests hatched thousands of birds each year. Biologists are on the lookout for the Eskimo Kurlo. These birds once lived within the region and if any still exist, they may well be found in the proposed refuge. Late summer, snow geese, sand hill cranes and others that raised their young in Siberia stopped to rest and feed in the Sillawick lowlands before flying southeast down the North American continent to winter in California and Mexico. They are not the only migratory wildlife dependent on Alaska's land and water. Alaska's rivers are the lifelines of millions of fish that migrate from the salt water into freshwater to spawn. Some traveling nearly 2,000 miles up the rivers to the streams of their origin. The salmon are of particular importance to the people along the rivers and at sea, offspring that migrate down the rivers also sustain the ocean fisheries, so much a part of Alaska's economy. Much of this fishery resource comes from the Ileana area's network of rivers, streams and lakes. This area produces the world's largest number of sockeye salmon, averaging over 12 million annually. The land offers some of the world's finest sport fishing, especially for rainbow trout. The land protecting the quality of these spawning waters is included in an Ileana National Resource Range, proposed as part of the National Wildlife Refuge System. The range would be jointly administered with the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management, their migration phenomenon. Caribou on the move. The two largest herds in the state cover thousands of square miles in their yearly wanderings on the North Slope. Migration means life. Inch-high lichens, the diet of the caribou, are quite fragile, taking years to grow. If the herds did not move continually, they would destroy their own food source. The porcupine herd migrate between Canada and the United States to satisfy their hunger. The proposed Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, incorporating two additions with the existing Arctic range, will help protect members of this great herd, their calving area on the coastal plain, and the fragile land they depend upon. Immediately to the west of the proposed refuge are the oil fields of Prudhoe Bay. Across the Canadian border to the east is a potential international wildlife range, also flanked by oil fields, sound the coastal plain of the refuge. After emerging from snow cave dens, the females lead their cubs out onto the Arctic ice pack. Inland, the cliffs of the Brooks Range will soon hold the aries of golden eagles and hawks, and the Peregrine Falcon, endangered by nesting failures throughout much of its other range. On the opposite end of this chain of mountains, the 240,000 caribou of the Arctic herd, largest in the state, roam across the valleys of the Noatek and into a federal petroleum withdrawal. Some of their wandering is within the proposed Noatek National Arctic range. This land would become part of the National Wildlife Refuge System in joint administration with the Bureau of Land Management. Arctic research will be encouraged on the Noatek, as well as other activities that do not harm the natural environment. There would be a 20-year moratorium on development within Noatek. After that time, the U.S. Congress would decide what will take place, lips of the spurned largest seabird colonies along Alaska's Arctic coast. Just up the coast from the Noatek, the proposed Chukchi Sea National Wildlife Refuge includes two portions of this peninsula and would protect the nesting area of two to three million marine birds, including horned puffins, burrs, and kitty wakes. The Chukchi would be one of five Alaska coastal refuges created or enlarged under this proposal. Together, they stretch along 1,500 miles of Alaska coastline and attempt to protect many of the nesting cliffs and islands used by four to six million seabirds. These areas are also used as horror rounds for such marine mammals as sea lions, walrus, and seals. Both seabirds and marine mammals spend most of their lives at sea, where no land acquisition program can protect them. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has also proposed a minimum three-mile jurisdiction offshore from these refuges and plans a seabird research program to learn how man can protect and manage this wildlife resource in its marine environment. This three-mile offshore boundary also applies to the coastal water off the proposed Togeak National Wildlife Refuge. Togeak encompasses representative samples of all Alaskan environments and wildlife. Togeak is an apt summary for all the refuge proposals, like all the others together. Togeak's values are as varied as the habitats found there. No single one overshadows the others. The Secretary of the Interior has recommended to Congress that each of these areas be your system of national wildlife refuges. Gain the spectrum of fish and wildlife lands in Alaska to rushing streams.