# Alaska Land Conveyances and Trails Act

This bill does three main things for Alaska: it gives federal land to the University of Alaska to support higher education, it protects certain payments to elderly and disabled Alaska Natives from affecting their eligibility for federal assistance programs, and it officially recognizes two hiking trails with historical significance.

The first part creates a program where the federal government can transfer up to 360,000 acres of public land to the University of Alaska. This land comes from what Alaska was originally promised when it became a state but hasn't received yet. The University can use this land to generate money for its operations—for example, by harvesting timber or leasing it—similar to how other universities use land grants. The state and University have four years to decide which specific parcels they want, and they can't take land that's underwater. This mainly affects the University's ability to fund its campuses and programs, and it gives Alaska some of the land it's been entitled to for decades.

The second part helps elderly, blind, or disabled Alaska Natives and their descendants. Currently, when these individuals receive payments from Alaska Native settlement trusts (money set aside from historical land claims settlements), those payments can count against them when they apply for federal assistance programs like Supplemental Security Income. This bill says those trust payments shouldn't be counted, so vulnerable Alaska Natives won't lose federal benefits just because they receive money from their own trusts.

The third part officially designates the Chilkoot Trail—a historic 16.5-mile hiking route used during the Klondike Gold Rush and traditionally by the Tlingit and Tagish people—as a National Historic Trail. This gives it official protection and allows the National Park Service to work with Native tribes to preserve and maintain it. The bill also requires the government to study whether a 500-mile trail from Seward to Fairbanks could become an official scenic trail, looking at how it would affect existing uses and rights on the land.

Alaska Land Conveyances and Trails Act

Peltola, Mary Sattler

Alaska Land Conveyances and Trails Act This bill addresses issues involving Alaska lands and trails and Alaska Natives. Specifically, the bill establishes within the Bureau of Land Management a program to (1) identify and convey available state-selected land to the University of Alaska to support higher education in the state; and (2) acquire, by purchase or exchange, University of Alaska-owned inholdings (certain interests in land owned by the university) in the state. The bill provides for exclusion of certain settlement trust payments to Alaska natives for purposes of determining eligibility for certain federal programs. The bill (1) designates the Chilkoot National Historic Trail, and (2) provides for a study of the feasibility and desirability of designating the Alaska Long Trail as a national scenic trail.