The US Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that rivers that pass through national parks in Alaska are not federally owned and therefore not subject to the jurisdiction of the National Park Service (NPS).
John Sturgeon, a resident of Alaska and avid moose hunter, was stopped by Park Service rangers for piloting his hovercraft along a section of the Nation River that passes through the Yukon-Charley Preserve, a large wilderness conservation area in rural Alaska. Sturgeon had been following the same route to his preferred hunting location for more than four decades and soon after filed suit alleging that the NPS had no jurisdiction over the Alaskan river under the terms of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) and could not prohibit him from piloting his hovercraft along the waterway.