June 24, 1968 Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
A veteran, top-level biologist in Alaska's Fish and Game Dept. has resigned to take a similar post with the government of Guam, the News-Miner learned today.
Citing philosophical reasons, Allan Courtright [sic], 38 of Juneau - an Alaskan for the last 15 years, submitted his resignation to the department Friday.
Courtright's action came in the wake of the News-Miner's revelation several weeks ago that a departmental reorganization proposal was being quietly implemented by Fish and Game Department brass which would have eliminated his and four other positions on his level, reportedly in an attempt to make staff professionals more responsive to political direction.
Pleading professional ethics, Courtright declined to discuss the reasons for his resignation except to say that "If things were different here I wouldn't think of leaving, no matter how interesting a job I was offered."
Courtright, whose resignation is effective July 5, will leave Alaska with his wife and three boys on July 7 to take up his new duties as wildlife biologist with the Guam Department of Agriculture's Fish and Wildlife Division at Agaña.
He leaves his post as acting assistant to the director of the Division of Game here, where his duties consisted primarily of coordinating federal aid programs and supervising a public education and information program for the department.
While he refused to discuss specifically his reasons for leaving Alaska, Courtright indicated that political interference in wildlife management was a contributing factor.
The only conditions which might tempt him to return to Alaska, he said, would be statutory assurance that there would be some continuity in wildlife management programs here not subject to political fluctuation "regardless of what party happened to be in."
"As far as I'm concerned," he said, "fish and game resources are not Democratic or Republican."
Touching on the still-unresolved reorganization proposal by Fish and Game Commissioner Augie Reetz, Courtright said he was "not opposed to reorganization per se," and on the contrary supported it, but took exception to "the way they're going about it." He refused to elaborate.
A native of Michigan, Courtright attended Michigan Tech there for two years, then earned his bachelor's degree at the University of Utah. He came to Alaska in 1953, working for the U. S. Fish and Wildlife bureau until 1959, when he received his master's degree from the University of Alaska here.
Joining the Alaska Fish and Game Department in Nome, he helped write the first departmental regulations following statehood. Shortly afterwards he was reassigned to Juneau, where he has served ever since.
He spent a year in Washington D.C. on a grant, studying caribou and reindeer, and their range relationships, on which he wrote his thesis.