“It seems to me the Park Service doesn’t have jurisdiction.“

Those were the last words Justice Antonin Scalia spoke from thebench of the U.S. Supreme Court before his death earlier this year.The case involved Alaska. And, indirectly, CIRI.

The Sturgeon v. Frost case pitted Alaska moose hunter JohnSturgeon against the National Park Service. It started back in 2007when Sturgeon was prohibited from using his hovercraft on theNation River in the Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve.Sturgeon didn’t have anything to do with CIRI and the hovercraftincident happened far from CIRI land, but CIRI’s interests becameinvolved when the potentially precedent-setting decision out of thefederal courts, if they had survived, would have authorized theNational Park Service, and other agencies, to regulate privatelands within conservation units.

This episode of CIRIosity discusses why CIRI was drawn into thecase and what it did to protect future access to its land. Tolisten to the actual oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court,clickhere. To read the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the Frostcase click here.