For the benefit of future generations

Barely six weeks into the Bush administration, the battle lines have been drawn between those who would develop natural resources of great tracts of America that have been set aside as wilderness preserves and those who want them to remain forever wild.

The initial focus of attention is the vast Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a 19 million-acre expanse in northeast Alaska, which has been off limits to oil drilling and other development since 1980. The subject came up repeatedly during the presidential campaign, and legislation representing both sides of the issue is actively pending in Congress.

The wilderness in question is one of America's most remote corners, far off routes most Americans will ever travel. But the same issues have been raging for years in another, more accessible area of Alaska, in fact, on what has become the primary tourist route.

Tongass National Forest, which stretches virtually the entire 500-mile length of Alaska's Panhandle, encompasses more than 17 million acres of mountains, fjords and glaciers. With its close Canadian counterparts, it represents about one-third of the world's remaining temperate rain forest. This vast realm is home to eagles, bears, deer and wolves. Amid icebergs calving off timeless glaciers, the waters along its Inside Passage harbor whales, porpoises and salmon. More than 1,000 islands fringe shores, where sheer mountains plunge precipitously into deep Pacific waters. The great forest also incorporates dozens of tiny isolated villages and towns, as well as more substantial settlements, such as Ketchikan, Sitka, Petersburg and Alaska's capital, Juneau.

Many visitors see the Tongass these days, but most do so at a distance, from the deck of one of many luxury liners that in the last decade have made the waters of Alaska's Inside Passage the world's second-busiest cruising grounds, after the Caribbean. Readers will find an outline of many of those ships and cruises on Page F-5.

But as Gibbon reports, not all is smooth sailing. With so many ocean liners trying to maneuver in these ecologically fragile waters of Glacier Bay, traffic jams are common. In fact, just this week, a federal judge ordered the National Park Service to cut the number of ships permitted to cruise there from 138 down to 107.

The Inside Passage has other transportation options than these tourist cruises. The ferries of the Alaska's Marine Highway System (800-526-6731 or www.akferry.com) and the the British Columbia Ferry system 888-223-3779 or www.bcferries.com) provide year-round shuttle service to the towns and villages along the Inside Passage. Many of these ships are day vessels, but several offer passengers private cabins on overnight journeys.

These ships are inexpensive options compared with the tourist vessels, and they also allow the flexibility and time to explore this magnificent coastline at a more leisurely, self-directed pace.

The goal of all these efforts, however, is personal, first-hand experience with a vast wilderness as formidable as it is fragile, and as time goes by, increasingly rare.

Even in the Tongass, large scale logging operations are gobbling up the greenery at alarming rates. Several large swaths have been clear cut right up to a narrow coastal fringe to leave cruise passengers with unblemished panoramas.

Clearly in this case, the revenues generated by tourism in this area have served as a counterbalance for the profits earned by stripping the wilderness of its resources.

Appearances are nice, but what about the havoc these practices perpetrate on the greater biology, both on land and sea, life that is inevitably altered and possibly lost forever?

And what about any preservation in places like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge which are far removed from most prying eyes?

Preserving these wilderness places for the benefit and enjoyment of future generations must be a primary consideration of any plan for their use. Present interests are not the owners of this bounty, only its stewards.

In the final analysis, future generations will judge us by the legacy we leave for them rather than the resources we use for ourselves.