After 11 years of battling the lower courts, an Alaska man will have the U.S. Supreme Court consider whether the National Park Service can deny him the use of his hovercraft on a river in Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve in Alaska.

The lawsuit against the Park Service was filed in 2007 by John Sturgeon, who was using a hovercraft on the Nation River to reach a hunting area above the preserve. Park Service regulations ban the use of hovercraft, and rangers warned the man about that prohibition after he beached his hovercraft on a gravel bar in the river.

Mr. Sturgeon, joined by the state of Alaska, sued the Park Service. He had argued that in passing the Alaska Native Interest Lands Conservation Act, Congress took away the Park Service’s authority over rivers and lakes within Alaska’s national park sites.

Last fall, however, a three-judge tribunal from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was unanimous in backing the Park Service's authority.

"The panel held that ANILCA section 103(c) did not limit the Park Service from applying the hovercraft ban on the Nation River in the Yukon-Charlie preserve," the judges held in their ruling. "The United States had an implied reservation of water rights, rendering the river public lands. On remand from the United States Supreme Court, the panel again concluded that the federal government properly regulated hovercraft use on the Nation River in the Yukon-Charley preserve."

Some viewed the case as a "monumental conflict between state and federal rights" because of the interlacing of private and state lands within the federal landscape in Alaska.

“Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve was created in part to protect the rivers and lakes that run through this unspoiled wilderness. Alaska’s rivers and lakes are among the wildest places in the world. If the Park Service loses its authority to protect them within the boundaries of Alaska’s parks, the Alatna in Gates of the Arctic National Park, the rivers and lakes of Yukon-Charley Rivers Preserve, and the waterways of many other Alaska parks will lose part of the ‘wild’ that makes them special. It is time for the Supreme Court to lay to rest this tired power grab," said  Jim Adams, Alaska regional director for the National Parks Conservation Association.

According to NPCA, "Alaskans can use a motorboat, snowmachine or airplane to access hunting opportunities in national preserves. Hovercraft have long been prohibited under Park Service regulations for the noise they produce and their ability to travel over gravel bars, onto wetlands and over tundra, causing significant damage to wildlife habitat."