Cite as: 521 U. S. 1 (1997)
Opinion of the Court
statehood. The Alaska Statehood Act transferred to Alaska certain real property used for the conservation and protection of wildlife, but withheld from the State "lands withdrawn or otherwise set apart as refuges or reservations for the protection of wildlife." Pub. L. 85-508, § 6(e), 72 Stat. 341. Among other things, the United States argued that the lands within the Range, including coastal submerged lands, had been "set apart" by the combined effect of the application and a Department of the Interior regulation in force when the application was filed and when Congress passed the Alaska Statehood Act. That regulation provided that the filing of an application "shall temporarily segregate such lands from settlement, location, sale, selection, entry, lease, and other forms of disposal under the public land laws, including the mining and the mineral leasing laws, to the extent that the withdrawal or reservation applied for, if effected, would prevent such forms of disposal." 43 CFR § 295.11(a) (Supp. 1958). Accordingly, under the United States' principal theory, the 1957 Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife application had the legal effect of segregating or "setting apart" all lands within the projected boundaries of the Range, including submerged lands, as a wildlife refuge. If this were so, § 6(e) of the Alaska Statehood Act withheld such lands from Alaska at statehood.
The Special Master rejected this approach. He focused on the fact that § 6(e) prevents transfer only of those lands "set apart as refuges or reservations for the protection of wildlife." (Emphasis added.) The Master concluded that, taken together, the 1957 application and the Department of the Interior regulation "caused land to be set apart for the purpose of a wildlife reservation," but found that the land "was not yet set apart as a refuge or reservation" upon Alaska's admission to the Union, because the application had not yet been granted. Report 464 (first emphasis added). Since the application and regulation did not withhold the lands within the Range from Alaska under § 6(e) of the Alaska
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