In 1954, the National Park Service recommended that the untouched areas in the Northeastern region of Alaska be preserved for research and protection of nature. The controversy over whether to drill for oil in the National Wildlife Arctic Refuge has been a political controversy since 1977. The debate mainly concerns the "Section of 1002" in ANWR. The section of 1002 is located on the coastal plain where many of the Arctic's diverse wildlife species preside. The usage of section 1002 in ANWR depends on the amount of oil worldwide. There are two sides of this debate: support for drilling and the opposition of drilling. Most of the supporters for drilling are big oil companies and political campaigners who sought to go after the resources that could be found in the refuge. The oppositions of drilling include people who currently reside in Alaska and people who want to preserve the wildlife and land for future considerations. In 1956, Olaus and Mardy Murie led an expedition to the Brooks Range in northeast Alaska, where they dedicated an entire summer to studying the land and wildlife ecosystems of the Upper Sheenjek Valley. The conclusion resulting from these studies was an ever-deeper sense of the importance of preserving the area intact, a determination that would play an instrumental part in the decision to designate the area as wilderness in 1960. As Olaus would later say in a 1963 speech to a meeting of the Wildlife Management Association of New Mexico State University, "On our trips to the Arctic Wildlife Range we saw clearly that it was not a place for mass recreation... It takes a lot of territory to keep this alive, a living wilderness, for scientific observation and for esthetic inspiration. The Far North is a fragile place." Environmentalist Celia M. Hunter met the Muries and joined the fight. Founding the Alaska Conservation Society in 1960, Celia worked tirelessly to garner support for the protection of Alaskan wilderness ecosystems. The region first became a federal protected area in 1960 by order of Fred Andrew Seaton, Secretary of the Interior under U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower. In 1980, Congress passed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. The bill was signed into law by President Jimmy Carter on 2 December 1980. Eight million acres (32,000 km2) of the refuge, the Mollie Beattie Wilderness, are designated as wilderness area. The expansion of the refuge in 1980 designated 1.5 million acres (6,100 km2) of the coastal plain as the 1002 area and mandated studies of the natural resources of this area, especially petroleum.