Opinion of the Court
And more: The Park Service’s reading of Section 103(c)’s second sentence also strips the first and third sentences of their core functions. Under the Service’s approach, the first sentence’s “deeming” has no point. There is no reason to pretend that inholdings are not part of a park if they can still be regulated as parklands. Nor is there a need to create a special legal fiction if the end result is to treat Alaskan inholdings no differently from those in the rest of the country. And similarly, the third sentence’s acquisition option has far less utility if the Service has its full regulatory authority over lands the Federal Government does not own. Why cough up money to “administer[]” property as “part of the [system] unit” unless doing so makes a real difference, by removing a regulatory exemption otherwise in effect? The Service’s reading effectively turns the whole of Section 103(c) into an inkblot.
And still more (if implicit in all the above): That construction would undermine ANILCA’s grand bargain. Recall that ANILCA announced its Janus-faced nature in its statement of purpose, reflecting the century-long struggle over federal regulation of Alaska’s resources. See supra, at 3–6. In that opening section, ANILCA spoke about safeguarding “natural, scenic, historic[,] recreational, and wildlife values.” 16 U. S. C. §3101(a). Yet it insisted as well on “provid[ing] for” Alaska’s (and its citizens’) “economic and social needs.” §3101(d). In keeping with the statute’s conservation goal, Congress reserved
statutory definitions.) But the Park Service’s existing regulations apply, at a minimum, to all federally owned lands within a park’s borders. See 36 CFR §1.2(a). That means there are no regulations “applicable solely to public lands” as defined in ANILCA. §3103(c). So when the Park Service argues that the second sentence exempts non-public lands from that single “class of [its] regulations,” Brief for Respondents 18, 30, it is not even exempting those lands from obviously inapplicable regulations (as we assume in the text); instead, it is exempting them from a null set of rules.
