Page:John Sturgeon v. Bert Frost, in his official capacity as Alaska Regional Director of the National Park Service.pdf/29

Rh The legislative history (for those who consider it) confirms, with unusual clarity, all we have said so far. The Senate Report notes that state, Native, and private lands in the new Alaskan parks would be subject to “[f]ederal laws and regulations of general applicability,” such as “the Clean Air Act, the Water Pollution Control Act, [and] U. S. Army Corps of Engineers wetlands regulations.” S. Rep. No. 96–413, p. 303 (1980). But that would not be so of regulations applying only to parks. The Senate Report states:

"“Those private lands, and those public lands owned by the State of Alaska or a subordinate political entity, are not to be construed as subject to the management regulations which may be adopted to manage and administer any national conservation system unit which is adjacent to, or surrounds, the private or non-Federal public lands.” Ibid."

The sponsor of Section 103(c) in the House of Representatives described that provision’s effect in similar terms. The section was designed, he observed, to ensure that ANILCA’s new boundary lines would “not in any way change the status” of the state, Native, and private lands placed within them. 125 Cong. Rec. 11158 (1979) (statement of Rep. Seiberling). Those lands, he continued, “are not parts of th[e system] unit and are not subject to regulations which are applied” by virtue of being “part of the unit.” Ibid. In short, whatever the new map might suggest, they are not subject to regulation as parkland.

We thus arrive again at the conclusion that the Park Service may not prevent John Sturgeon from driving his hovercraft on the Nation River. We held in an earlier part of this opinion that the Nation is not public land. See supra, at 12–15. And here we hold that it cannot be