About 15 years ago, my wife and I joined a protest in the Valley of the Giants, a grove of giant, red tingle trees in Western Australia.
We happened into the demonstration while bicycling along the narrow, winding road through the grove, an awe-inspiring ride. The highway department was cutting down several of these 15-story eucalypts in order to widen the road to accommodate more and faster bus traffic.
That is, the government was literally destroying part of a natural attraction so more people could see it more quickly. They put us on Australia TV news, commenting on the absurdity of it.
On Monday, I experienced déjà vu all over again on the new and improved Chilkoot River Road. Scheduled for completion in June, the roadway is already five lanes wide in places. Large swaths of riverside have been filled in, replaced by a new, high, steep bank on its edge. From the road, it’s unclear how an angler or photographer might safely get down to the water’s edge.
My wife looked at it and said, “It looks great for cars but lousy for people.”
The mile-long road will be paved and become the dominant feature of the landscape, just as asphalt now defines the Haines Highway corridor. We once enjoyed a narrow, scenic highway to Canada, bending around trees and along streams. The new road resembles the dikes in Holland, built to hold back the North Sea.
At Chilkoot, expect a similar excrescence.
With a gate installed two years ago, Alaska’s Division of Parks could have maintained the existing road, limiting car access between July and October, and honoring the bears, the river and the stunning, narrow valley there.
By restricting numbers of cars and buses, the state could have protected the bears as well as a profound experience of landscape and wildlife that bear-watchers, photographers and anglers enjoyed for decades.
Chilkoot apparently will instead resemble a Texas animal park, where fierce creatures come really close to your car.
Doubling the road width and the numbers of vehicles there means bears will be forced to shoot a gauntlet twice as wide and busy as the previous one while ambling between their fishing grounds and napping beds. Anglers will crowd along a riverside a fraction of its former size.
What’s happening at Chilkoot is what happened at Port Chilkoot Dock is what happened at the boat harbor is what happened on the highway: We sacrificed our town’s best places in honor of the automobile. To gain a pittance in speed and convenience, we tore up chunks of priceless landscape.
At a time that the world is coming to grips with the toxic folly and exorbitant cost of car culture, we made the Chilkat Valley a better place for cars.
Is there anyone at Alaska Department of Transportation or Division of Parks watching trends at modern wildlife-viewing sites? Does anyone at those agencies understand that wildlife managers all over the world are placing more restrictions on human traffic based on research showing that just the presence of people stresses wildlife and alters animal behavior?
At Hawaii’s Hanauma Bay, arguably the world’s best fish bowl for family snorkeling, new restrictions have been placed on visitation. It turned out that closures of the bay for COVID caused a surge of fish to return there for the first time in years. So the bay is now closed two days per week and open to visitors only from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Fewer people can swim there, but those who do enjoy a more pristine experience, with fish that are healthier and more abundant.
Meanwhile at Chilkoot River, cars and buses will get first priority, people will rank second, and pulling up a distant third will be our majestic brown bears, the very symbol of wild Alaska.
As an old friend of mine said of his 40 years here, I’m just glad I came when I did and got to see it the way it was.