Celia M. Hunter

Celia Hunter (January 13, 1919 – December 1, 2001) was an American conservationist and advocate for wilderness protection in her home state of Alaska. She was conferred the highest award by the Sierra Club, The John Muir Award, in 1991. She was presented the highest award by the Wilderness Society, The Robert Marshall Award, in 1998. Celia graduated high school in 1936. She sought college education only decades later, earning her Bachelor of Arts in botany in 1964 with a minor in economics and anthropology from the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Career

Military service as a pilot Hunter trained as a pilot and eventually served as a pilot during World War II, becoming a member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots, also known as the WASPs, and graduating with class 43-W5. Hunter flew planes from the factories to training centers and ports of embarkation throughout the USA. She successfully completed each upgrading until she was qualified to fly the most sophisticated fighter planes in the US military.

The US Ferrying Division ruled that women should not be allowed to ferry military fighter planes any farther north than Great Falls, Montana. "We ferried them from factories clear across the US, but 'sorry, gals, turn them over to the men here' and they got to fly them on the Northwest Staging Route through Edmonton, Fort Nelson, Watson Lake, and Whitehorse to Fairbanks," Hunter told students at Linfield College during a 1997 speech.

Two years later, Hunter and fellow WASP Ginny Hill Wood traveled to Fairbanks. They made a deal with an Alaskan pilot, who was in Seattle, to fly two of his planes to Fairbanks. The trip from Seattle to Fairbanks took 27 days. which was planned to be similar to the hut systems in Europe, with simple accommodations coupled with outdoor activities. The threesome staked out a Trade and Manufacturing Site claim under the Homestead Act along the then-western boundary of Denali National Park, with a view of Denali, and opened in 1952.

The three found themselves increasingly involved in Alaska's issues. When Hunter and Wood first arrived in Alaska, it was a territory with approximately 180,000 people. "Flying across bush Alaska, the entire landscape was a seamless whole, unmarred by man-made boundaries. Alaskans assumed it would always be like this, and they resisted strenuously the setting aside of particular lands to protect them."

The group soon realized that setting aside the Range was virtually impossible to do through Congress, because the congressional delegation of Alaska was adamantly opposed to any withdrawals of land for conservation purposes. Hunter and others began fighting for the Refuge unofficially until they decided they would need to form an organization in order to be most effective. The Alaska Conservation Society (ACS), Alaska's first statewide conservation organization, was formed in 1960, providing a venue for Hunter and others to testify on behalf of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Support for ANWR came primarily from congressional delegates and other conservationists outside of Alaska. Hunter remarked, "OK, if you don't want to listen to people from Outside, you better listen to us." Despite strong opposition from Alaska's senators and lone congressman, a presidential proclamation by President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Secretary of the Interior Fred Seaton created the Wildlife Refuge shortly before Eisenhower left office in 1960. Following this success, ACS continued to serve as a vehicle through which Alaskans could be heard on conservation issues. Hunter acted as the executive secretary of ACS for the next 12 years.

Organizations The Alaska Conservation Society (ACS) took on many other battles utilizing both reactive and proactive strategies to protect Alaska's environment. ACS chapters worked on their own issues and communicated through the News Bulletin. The organization dissolved after 20 years. They divided the remaining money between the Alaska Center for the Environment (ACE), Southeast Alaska Conservation Council (SEACC), and The Northern Alaska Environment Council (NAEC).

Mentorship

In the mid and late 1970s, while serving on the Joint Federal-State Land Use Planning Commission for Alaska (headquartered in Anchorage), Hunter mentored young women arriving in Alaska from the southern states in search of both adventure and participation in one of America's landmark conservation episodes: the apportionment of then-undesignated federal lands into forms with protected status (national parks and national monuments) versus unprotected status (United States Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management), culminating in Congressional passage in 1980 of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act.

A former Camp Denali employee who later became the wilderness coordinator for the Alaska region of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service wrote in a 2020 governmental report on women in conservation that Hunter's leadership style embodied light-hearted humor, grace, humility and the ability to listen.