WASHINGTON, D.C. – Saying it has taken far too long for Alaska and Native corporations to gain full title to lands promised them at both Statehood and during the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski today urged quick passage of legislation designed to complete the conveyance of land claims within the next five years.

“It’s been 45 years since Statehood, 33 years since passage of ANCSA and the repeal of the (Alaska Native) Allotment Act. Yet under current law and procedures we are at least 20 years from seeing these conveyances complete. And some estimates are that it might take 85 years or even another 300 years to complete the conveyances.

“It’s long past time that Congress take action to streamline this process and build some flexibility into administrative authority so we can get this job done before the end of the decade,” said Murkowski during the hearing by the Subcommittee of Public Lands and Forests of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee into the senator’s Alaska Land Conveyance Acceleration Act (S. 1466).

Murkowski, joined by Sen. Ted Stevens, has proposed legislation designed to speed up the conveyance of federal lands to the state and Alaska Native corporations – an attempt to complete the transfer of all of Alaska’s Statehood selections before the 50thanniversary of Statehood in 2009. The bill includes a number of technical changes to solve a host of land conveyance problems in the state.

The bill is intended to lay out a blueprint for the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to complete the surveying and final title transfer of 89 million acres, 60 million of the state’s outstanding 104-million-acre Statehood entitlement and the remaining 29 million acres of the 44 million acres given to Alaska Native Corporations under the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. The bill also addresses steps to complete the transfer of some 2,500 of 16,000 total parcels of Native land applications made under terms of the 1906 Alaska Native Land Allotment Act.

The bill addresses a host of issues including:

· It will clarify that certain minerals can be transferred to Alaska Native landowners. It would revoke withdrawals of the so-called 17 (d) 1 lands and allow the Secretary to properly classify the lands for potential use for mining or oil and gas leasing.

· It will give the University of Alaska the ability to select interests around lands that it already owns that will likely produce economic opportunities for the university not presently available.

· It will clarify the rights of miners’ to convert from federal to state mining claims without jeopardizing ongoing mining operations. Properly maintained federal claims will continue to be excluded from conveyance.

· The bill sets up a process where BLM will have broader authority to solve land claim disputes and give it the right to confer with land owners to attempt to settle disputes through negotiation. It also sets up a timetable to settle final land selections (roughly within three to three and one-half years) and then to convey the lands.

· The bill establishes a hearings and appeals process located in Alaska to settle land disputes. The Secretary of the Interior is given authority to establish a hearing and appeals process, appointing administrative law judges or other hearing officers to hear appeals. The goal is to speed up the slow pace of hearings in Alaska of all types of appeals

· The bill also establishes processes for dealing with state selection of hydroelectric sites, Native corporation selections of cemeteries and historic sites, the handling of small selections of less than a section, and for handling overselections, so-called topfilings.

· The bill also settles some long-standing specific land issues. The most notable is that it will allow the Kaktovik Inupiat Corp. to gain clear title to the last of 2,000 acres that it is entitled to under ANCSA and under a 1983 land trade in the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. While the bill would complete the complex land trade, finishing the transfer of the land to KIC, it would not permit oil development on the inholding inside the “1002” area of ANWR until Congress approves oil development from the coastal plain.

After a statement of support for the bill by Senator Stevens, Kathleen Clarke, director of the Bureau of Land Management, and Alaska State BLM Director Henri Bisson, testified in favor of the bill. Other witnesses included: Marty Rutherford, commissioner of the Alaska Department of Natural Resources; Jim Mery, senior vice president Lands and Natural Resources of Doyon, Ltd.; Edward K. Thomas, president of the Tlingit Haida Central Council in Juneau; Jack Hession, Alaska representative for the Sierra Club, and Russell Heath, executive director of the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council based in Juneau.

“This bill will streamline administrative processes that will expedite the transfer of millions of acres of land to Alaska Natives, the State of Alaska and to Native Corporations. It will bring finality to this decades’ long conveyance process. The Federal government now has management jurisdiction over about 63 percent of the state. It is long past time to transfer these public lands from Federal to state and private ownership,” said Murkowski during the hearing.

She noted, addressing potential controversies with the proposed bill, that the legislation still requires a full public process before the BLM can permit development of the any of the so-called 17(d) 1 lands that were withdrawn on a temporary basis at the time of the Alaska lands act passage in 1980. And she noted that the provision that settles the Village of Kaktovik’s land claim problems will complete the remaining 2,000 acres owed to Kaktovik on the Arctic coastal plain. But she noted that the bill in no way opens that land to oil exploration or development – such development still precluded until Congress approves oil development in the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

On the second bill, the Bush Administration and witnesses largely supported the senator’s

Native land allotment bill, (S. 1421) designed to resolve a recently discovered problem affecting Alaska Natives who wish to subdivide their land holdings. It is intended to solve a problem that threatens the right of Native landowners, who acquired lands under the Native Allotment Act of 1906, to subdivide their lands or to dedicate rights-of-way across their lands for public access or for utility purposes. The issue threatens the ability of Natives who own nearly 15,000 Native allotment parcels in the state from having the freedom to sell their private property, like all other Alaskans.

Under the measure all previous subdivisions would be retroactively approved, while Native land owners will gain the same rights as all other private property owners in the state. The measures now will head to the full committee for approval before they could go to the Senate floor for consideration.

MEDIA NOTE: There will be a satellite feed this afternoon including the senator’s comments and some testimony from witnesses. The feed will be from 2:30 to 2:45 p.m. AST this afternoon on Telestar 5, transponder 15V, channel 15, downlink 4000. Audio will be available either late today or early Friday morning at 1-800-545-1267 then pressing 322. On the web the audio can be obtained at: http://www.murkowski.senate.gov/press.html then click on audio.