State Joins Lawsuit over Federal Jurisdiction in Yukon-Charley

Associated Press –
The state of Alaska has joined an Anchorage man’s lawsuit in challenging the authority of the National Park Service on state-owned waters within national parks and preserves in Alaska.

The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner says federal Judge H. Russel Holland this week recognized the state’s interest in the lawsuit filed by John Sturgeon.

Sturgeon is suing the park service for not allowing him to use a hovercraft to hunt moose on the Yukon and Nation rivers in the Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve east of Fairbanks in 2007.

Sturgeon claims the federal Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980 denies the park service the authority to enforce its regulations on those rivers. That is the same argument the state has been making for years, but it has not been upheld in court.