SITKA, ALASKA
The Sitka Conservation Society is being honored for its work over the last two years in pioneering a Wilderness Stewardship Project.
SCS director Andrew Thoms, speaking from Washington, says there would be no wilderness project to honor without the work of Chuck and Alice Johnstone and other forward-thinking people forty-four years ago.
“I think it’s just the fact that they’re ordinary citizens who had a love for the landscape and a love for their community and were not just thinking about themselves and the right now, but people to come in the future and what the community would be like in the future, and what the natural environment around the community would be like in the future. They had the passion and vision and wanted to do something.”
Thoms says the Johnstones and other Sitkans founded the Sitka Conservation Society to propose the West Chichagof-Yakobi Wilderness Area in the 1960s – Alaska’s first citizen-initiated wilderness campaign.
The idea of setting aside land as wilderness was not popular in Sitka in the 1960s. Thoms says it is appropriate that the Johnstones accept an award named for Bob Marshall, who was a Forest Service employee in the 1930s, and would go on to found the Wilderness Society.
“The spirit of the award is in the spirit of Bob Marshall, who was one of the first to come up with the idea of setting aside areas as wilderness. So for us, the organization was founded by Chuck and Alice Johnstone who got together with the idea that we need places around Sitka designated as wilderness. So that’s why we felt that the award being given to us isn’t just about the people working now on these projects, but the people who founded the organization.”
The West Chichagof-Yakobi Wilderness Area was designated as part of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980. The designation protects 264,000 acres of coastline and islands, including sea lion rookeries, old-growth watersheds, and snow-capped peaks.
© Copyright 1970, Raven Radio Foundation Inc.
