From: alra@governance.net Subject: Pilgrim Family Airlift Builds Momentum Land Rights Network American Land Rights Association PO Box 400 – Battle Ground, WA 98604 Phone: 360-687-3087 – Fax: 360-687-2973 – E-mail: alra@landrights.org or alra@governance.net Web Address: http://www.landrights.org Legislative Office: 507 Seward Square SE – Washington, DC 20003 Phone: 202-210-2357 – Fax: 202-543-7126 – E-mail: landrightsnet@aol.com Pilgrim Family Airlift Builds Momentum The Pilgrim Family airlift is now over 63 flights. People are sending material and money from all over the country. We recommend that anything outside of Alaska be limited to funding for the airlift or the Pilgrim Family Legal Fund. See below for the addresses. The airlift is continuing with winter feed, fuel, and supplies being transported by volunteer pilots. Aviation fuel is being supplied with donations. As with the Berlin Airlift 1948, the people of Alaska and across America are responding favorably to the Pilgrim Airlift in Alaska. Even European news outlets have reported on the Pilgrims plight. But we have a long way to go. The Berlin Airlift had to go on for eleven months until the Soviets backed down. The Pilgrim Airlift will not last as long but it may go on for a while. Supplies are being gathered at the various locations. The Park Service continues to blockade the McCarthy Creek Road into the Pilgrim homestead. This fight is about access. It is a fight for every rancher, prospector, miner, forestry advocate, off-highway and recreation advocate. Native groups in Alaska are taking an interest. The fight for access for the Pilgrims is a fight for all Americans. It is a fight to see if the promises that were made by Congress will be honored. Access to inholdings was guaranteed by the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act which passed Congress in 1980. Some of that law applies to all inholdings and access rights across America. It is fight for legitimate RS 2477 Rights-Of-Way. It is fight against a giant bureaucracy that no longer thinks they are responsible to the people of America. The Pilgrim Family Airlift offers every American an opportunity to strike back peacefully at a giant bureaucracy that is trying to take America’s parks away from the people. Volunteer pilots are still needed to ferry the flyable supplies from McCarthy into the Pilgrim Family Marvelous Millsite in upper McCarthy Creek Valley. Planes and trucks are needed to shuttle supplies out to McCarthy for the airlift to the Pilgrim Homestead. All of this is weather permitting. Were in a race against the weather. And the weather in closing in fast. When the snow comes, the planes will have to cut back. Flying is more difficult in that kind of weather. Anyone who can fly a load or can somehow get a load to McCarthy should call the Collection Points below to make arrangements to pick up donations. The central place for fuel, supplies, and food to be received and stockpiled for airlift to the Pilgrims at Marvelous Millsite in upper McCarthy Creek valley will be at the McCarthy B&B hanger on the McCarthy WEST airstrip located off the Mile 58.5 turnoff across from the National Park Service closed Kiosk. Donated supplies will be received there. Call John Adams at 554-4433 or 554-1133(cell) for more information. In McCarthy the local coordinator of Airlift logistics is: Laurie Rowland at 554-4498. When it comes time each airlift flight to take off, the goods will be transferred by local volunteers in McCarthy across the footbridge with four-wheelers and pickups to the McCarthy state airport. This will be an expensive rescue effort. Please do your part by sending a contribution for $25, $50, $75, $100, $500, $ 1,000 or whatever you can afford to the McCarthy-Kennicott Community Church or MKCC to meet some of the family’s immediate needs. Right now that is fuel and feed for the animals. Make a notation on the check or money order that it is for the Pilgrim Fund. Mail to McCarthy-Kennicott Community Church, McCarthy #42, PO Box MXY, Glennallen, Alaska 99588. For more information, call Rick Kenyon, pastor (also the editor of the local Wrangell-St Elias News) at (907) 554-4454. Flights by Wrangell Air, McCarthy Air and volunteer pilots will shuttle the supplies between the McCarthy State Airport and the Pilgrims (a 15 minute flight one way) as needed and as donations received for flight costs allow. LEGAL FUND ----- The Pilgrim Family legal fight will help all Americans who want access to their parks and other conservation areas. We have a number of lawyers who are helping out but there will be substantial basic costs and fees. At least $10,000 is needed. Please send your donations to the Pilgrim Family Legal Fund, American Land Rights, PO Box 400, Battle Ground, WA 98604. LOCAL COLLECTION POINTS – COORDINATORS Volunteers are needed to get the supplies by truck from some collection points to Copper Center or McCarthy. Please call Laurie Rowland at 554-4498 if you can help. Copper Center -- Please drop off donated goods at Copper Basin Assembly of God, Mile 112 Richardson Hwy. Call Clarence Catledge at (907) 822-5523. Glennallen - Please drop off donated goods at Glennallen Quick Stop Truck Stop (next to Homestead Supply) – Kathy Stratton (822-5545) Wasilla – Please drop off donated goods at home of Dan & Pat Sentz, 901 McAdoo Way, Wasilla (376-4574). Anchorage – Please drop off donated goods at 201 Barrow Street (RA Kreig & Associates), contact Mary Duville, 276-2025 Fairbanks – Materials, food, money and other supplies are to be dropped off at Summit Logistics, 3453 Truck St, Fairbanks, Alaska. The Coordinator is Warren Smith at (907) 456-3733. Drop off material between 8 and 5 weekdays. A volunteer is needed to truck the supplies to the Glennallen-Copper Center collection point where it will be trucked in to McCarthy and prepared for the flight in to the Pilgrim Family. Emergency Relief Supplies: (A larger list including construction supplies to winterize their living quarters is at www.landrights.org/ak We have attached a list of the items needed by the Pilgrim Family. Items must be on the following list to be brought in. See website for updates: www.landrights.org/ak Funds to help pay for aircraft flights and gasoline. Non-perishable foods, meats etc. Cloth Diapers. Liquid Tide Soap. Material for winter women’s dresses. Good quality backpacks for carrying supplies. Cross country work skis. Artic Coats (socks, gloves, snow suits for the little children). Winter Boots and Hiking Boots. Sizes 4,5,6,7,9,9,10,10, 11, 11, and 12. Dog Food (50 bags) Hay for the horses. Some hay is critical as the horses are declining. They are short of food. A total of 1,000 bales are needed for the winter. Axel for Track Machine (Bombardier Type). Diesel Fuel and gas for generators, snow machines and tools. Chainsaws. First Aid Supplies. Fire Extinguishers. Go to www.landrights.org for a more comprehensive list. More Horror Stories: *Extortionate Access Rent Demands By Park Service In another Alaska park unit we are aware of a demand for a payment of over $40,000 a year for use of an ANILCA 1110B access. The owners have refused and have made progress supporting their position but have lost a season of work to maintain their access but they don't know where they stand. The Park Service tried to support the high rent by claiming the lands under the access road were valued the same as the artificially sky high prices of the few land sales in the park. A totally illogical appraisal approach but indicative of the stretches they are willing to do to burden property owners. It is paramount that landowners and Federal land users nationwide band together and fight this sort of thing. If you try it alone, you will be crushed. Revealing Radio Interviews ----- With Wrangell-St. Elias National Park Superintendent Gary Candelaria give insight into how the Park Service thinks they can get away with shutting off Congressionally guaranteed ANILCA access. See: http://www.landrights.org/ak/wrst/Pilgrims.htm * Look on the Media Log at the 10/15/03 KCHU interview [38.5 minutes]: -- Candelaria essentially is claiming that no one had access to isolated homesites, homesteads, and patented mining claims before the parks were created on 12/2/90 unless they were already touching a state highway!! This is an astounding and radical rewriting of history and it must not be allowed to stand. Go to 15:44 minutes to hear this part [but the whole interview should be heard to understand what we are up against]. -- Park Service has set up a regime where if you don't use your access they think they can take it from you by crushing you with permit requirements for brush removal or other minor inconsequential maintenance. This is alluded to in the previous interview segment. -- Candelaria said the Park Service doesn't need to buy all the land in the park; he says they can "work with owners to develop lands compatible" to the park. Owners are at liberty to do what they want provided they don't impact the public lands surrounding them. Park Service interference with what is done on private land is of course not provided for in ANILCA but it sounds like they plan on claiming that the slightest impact, perhaps they are planning to claim visual impact on surrounding park lands is enough to impose extreme environmental regulation and land use controls. [listen to this discussion from 12:00 to 15:44 minutes] * Look on the Media Log at the 10/3/03 KCHU interview [27 minutes]: -- Example where Park Service exempts themselves from the very same draconian environmental regulations they inflict on private landowners who try to exercise their access rights. [At 11:45 minutes] Superintendent Candelaria states they gave themselves a National Environmental Policy Act Categorical Exclusion for their own activities when they did unnecessary extensive damage to natural vegetation in the McCarthy Creek valley from a property boundary survey cutline. The Park Service cut a clearcut 12 feet wide and 2 miles long. A completely unnecessary exercise. They won't give a Permit to the Pilgrim family for their inconsequential traverse of a 100 year only mining road. For that they get sued. Meeting Reminder: Saturday, October 25th meeting in Glennallen, Alaska Caribou Restaurant – 2:00 PM This is an important meeting not just for those in the Wrangell St. Elias National Park but also for ALL National Park Service (Fish and Wildlife Refuge and Forest Service) units across the state. Chuck Cushman, Executive Director of the American Land Rights Association, will be speaking in Glennallen. There is a rising tide of problems with ANILCA access in many NPS units that needs organizing on the part of those experiencing the problems and this is the chance to begin to do that. The meeting is sponsored by Residents of the Wrangells (ROW) and is supported by the American Land Rights Association, Kantishna Inholders Association and numerous other groups. A special thank you to all who have helped so much so far. -- To unsubscribe from this mailing list; please visit http://governance.net and enter your email address.