Leland you are misinformed about  Sierra Club's "outmoded view of
wilderness"   The alert is not about stopping egg hunting, but about
stopping activities in sensitive areas that should not be disturbed. 
Sadly both natives and non natives think they can plunder all species
regardless of the consequences.  Because there are gull eggs just outside
the park boundaries within Huna Tlingit traditional territory there is no
excuse to open a National Park to egg hunting. Are you willing to open
the area to native egg collection just to see if it will cause harm? 
Natives in Izenbek National Wildlife Refuge want to have a road built
through the heart of  world class waterfowl habitat so they can take
advantage of more oil drilling.  And Please--"A carefully managed (by
native religious views or otherwise) resource us is not necessarily a bad
thing".  Well we've seen the destructive side of religion and religion
has no place in environmental matters.  There is little wilderness left
and humans are doing everything to exploit it for personal gain.  And
American  tax payers paid National Park Service to assist them to
successfully collect gull eggs on one of the non-park sites!  Sierra Club
was the original defender of wilderness and we owe what we have to those
that went before us.  It up to us to keep those areas protected and
continue to protect wilderness for the health of the planet and future
generations. Phyllis
Opening Glacier Bay to egg gathering is also completely unnecessary. 
Just outside the park boundaries and within Huna Tlingit traditional
territory are a half-dozen traditional gull egg collection sites of the
tribe.  In a demonstration project in 2001 and 2002 the National Park
Service assisted tribal members to successfully collect gull eggs on one
of these non-park sites.  This proved that NPS facilitation of such
non-park collection trips is a “reasonable and feasible” alternative to
opening the park. 


Apparently Sierra Club’s position is based on an outmoded view of
“wilderness” that has been appropriately deconstructed by, among others,
Gary Snyder, William Cronon, Jim Igoe, and many others. Humans have been
using resources on most of the world’s landscapes for millennia. The
essential problem is to distinguish sustainable from nonsustainable
practices. Is there any demonstration that native egg collection will
cause harm to the gull population? That species of gull is one of the
most plentiful in the Pacific Northwest. A carefully managed (by native
religious views or otherwise) resource use is not necessarily a bad
thing. 
Leland Searles

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