"We are closer to losing this unique landscape and ecological resource than we ever have been in the past."
At over 300,000 acres of pristine Alaskan lands and waters, the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge is one of the biggest national wildlife refuges in the country and is composed almost entirely of congressionally designated wilderness. Izembek sits on the Alaskan Peninsula. Its heart is an isthmus surrounded by the ecologically significant Izembek Lagoon to the north and Kinzarof Lagoon to the south. These lagoons and associated wetlands serve as a critical annual stopping point for tens of thousands of migratory birds.
The tundra of the isthmus provides important terrestrial habitat for bears and a migratory corridor for the local caribou herd. Izembek also serves as important habitat for multiple species listed under the Endangered Species Act, including the Southwest Alaska distinct population segment of northern sea otter, Steller sea lion and Steller’s eider. This unique and valuable landscape which Congress sought to preserve is now slated to be the future site of a commercial road.
In November 2025, the Trump administration entered into an illegal land exchange agreement and gave away a corridor of refuge and wilderness land bisecting Izembek’s isthmus to a private corporation that plans to turn this landscape into a gravel road connecting two small Alaskan villages. Both the construction and use of this road will have huge impacts.
Pre-construction and construction activities will bring heavy industrial equipment and workers to an area that is rarely touched by humans at all, disrupting wildlife that relies on the areas as a sanctuary from the pressures of human presence. Building the road requires disrupting and filling wetlands that are hydrologically connected to the lagoons, diminishing their water quality. The road will bisect the terrestrial habitat and migratory corridor, requiring wildlife to risk road crossings or displacing them altogether. Road use will continue to disturb wildlife, create pollution that runs directly into wetlands, and allow bad actors better access to the depths of Izembek for unlawful poaching and ATV joyriding. This giveaway is the latest chapter in a long saga stretching back decades.
The Izembek isthmus sits between the villages of Cold Bay and King Cove. There is a long and storied history of corporate interests seeking a road through the isthmus connecting the two villages, initially with the goal of increasing access to air transport for a Japanese-owned cannery located in King Cove.
Prologue
In 1980, Congress enacted the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA), designating hundreds of millions of acres of public lands in Alaska, including Izembek Refuge and Wilderness. Although the Department of Interior (Interior) must manage national wildlife refuges and national wildernesses in Alaska under the National Wildlife Refuge Administration Act (Refuge Act) and the Wilderness Act, ANILCA contains certain management provisions that either supersede or work in conjunction with these statutes. Title XI of ANILCA establishes procedures for putting a road through Alaska public lands.
Where the proposed road would cross wilderness, Congress itself must approve the road, which would otherwise be prohibited by the Wilderness Act. ANILCA also contains a land exchange provision enabling federal agencies to enter into land exchange agreements to fulfill ANILCA’s conservation and subsistence purposes by acquiring private inholdings within Alaskan public land units.
Over decades of back-and-forth advocacy, it became clear that Interior could not allow a road over refuge and wilderness lands without explicit congressional approval under ANILCA Title XI. In 2009, the concept of an ANILCA land exchange with a private corporation as a work-around to this approval requirement arose, thus beginning the litigation story of Izembek.
Chapter 1
In 2009, Congress passed the Omnibus Public Land Management Act, which contained a provision directing Interior to evaluate a land exchange under the National Environmental Policy Act to facilitate a road through Izembek. Following a thorough public process and extensive analysis, in 2013, under the Obama administration, Interior Secretary Jewell considered and rejected the land exchange as inconsistent with the conservation directives of the laws that control Izembek’s management. Proponents of the road sued to challenge that decision in federal district court for the District of Alaska. Defenders of Wildlife joined a coalition of environmental organizations, represented by our partner Trustees of Alaska, to defend it. The court upheld the decision as lawful.
Chapter 2
Upon the exit of the Obama administration, road proponents wrote to Interior Secretary Zinke of the first Trump administration asking for a land exchange. In 2018, Secretary Zinke signed a land exchange agreement without conducting any of the environmental analysis required by law. The same environmental coalition challenged the agreement, alleging that the exchange was a fundamentally unlawful work-around to circumvent ANILCA Title XI. We also challenged the action for violating the mandate to meet ANILCA’s conservation purpose and the requirement to perform NEPA review. In 2019, the district court ruled against the Trump administration, finding that it failed to explain—or even recognize—the change in Interior’s position between 2016 and 2018, a violation of administrative law. The coalition’s specific environmental and public land claims were left unresolved.
Chapter 3
Not dissuaded, the first Trump administration took another run at the land exchange and signed a nearly identical agreement in 2019. But this time, it was accompanied by a memo by Interior Secretary Bernhardt purporting to explain Interior’s change in position. The environmental coalition challenged that decision, reupping the same challenges to the 2018 agreement and bringing an additional challenge to Interior’s failure to conduct required review under the ESA. The court again ruled in our favor, finding that complying with Title XI is the only lawful way to build a road through Izembek Wilderness. Road proponents appealed to the Ninth Circuit, pulling two Trump appointees for a three judge panel. The panel reversed the district court and ruled 2-1 against the environmental groups. We asked the Ninth Circuit to rehear the case en banc, which it granted. But shortly thereafter, the Biden administration took office; it canceled the land exchange agreement, thus mooting the case before the rehearing could be decided.
Chapter 4
When the second Trump administration took office in January 2025, it aggressively renewed efforts to complete a land exchange. On President Trump’s first day in office, he directed Interior to speedily complete an Izembek land exchange. Interior remained eerily silent on Izembek for many months. The only actions for a long time were poorly publicized public meetings in Cold Bay and King Cove, where it was revealed that the administration would reup the proposed exchange from its first term. Then on October 18, 2025, Alaska Day, Interior Secretary Burgum announced that not only had he signed a new land exchange agreement, but the federal government and the private corporation had already exchanged property deeds for the lands.
This is the first time in the history of attempted land exchanges that property deeds have been exchanged, and federal land has passed into private ownership. The private corporation has already started pre-construction activities on the road corridor in the heart of Izembek’s wilderness without any federal oversight. We are closer to losing this unique landscape and ecological resource than we ever have been in the past.
However, with new risks come new opportunities. The coalition of environmental groups from the first three chapters have reorganized and strategized to mount an all-sides attack on this unlawful action. On November 12, 2025, environmental groups filed three distinct lawsuits presenting unique and cumulative reasons that the land exchange is unlawful. Trustees of Alaska continues to represent a coalition of environmental groups and holds the line on the central Title XI claim, as well as additional ANILCA and NEPA claims. A collection of Alaskan Tribal governments represented by the Center for Biological Diversity brings many of the same claims and adds additional ESA and tribal subsistence claims under ANILCA.
For our part, Defenders of Wildlife has filed suit alleging entirely new claims that the exchange violates the Refuge Act and Wilderness Act, which, in conjunction with ANILCA, govern the administration of Izembek Refuge and Wilderness.
Previously, the focus of Izembek litigation had primarily been on ANILCA. While ANILCA is the statute that designated public lands in Alaska and layers on special management requirements in certain circumstances, it does not stand on its own as a land management statute. ANILCA is an overlay on top of a foundation of public land statutes that govern federal land management throughout the United States. In enacting ANILCA, Congress created exceptions and special provisions that supersede some parts of those statutes—like Title XI—but explicitly directed that the Refuge Act and Wilderness Act otherwise control Refuge and Wilderness lands in Alaska.
The Wilderness Act bars all permanent roads from being built in Wilderness. It does not give Interior the authority to dispose of wilderness lands. Title XI specifically and directly gave agencies the ability to put a road through wilderness in Alaska only if they follow special procedures, including explicit congressional approval. In contrast, the land exchange provision in ANILCA provides a general authority that does not overwrite the Wilderness Act’s prohibitions and Title XI’s requirements.
Similarly, the Refuge Act requires that Interior find that any refuge lands traded out of federal ownership in a land exchange are “suitable for disposition”— meaning it can’t trade away high-value wildlife habitat, especially where, as here, the habitat is the heart of the refuge. ANILCA’s land exchange provision does not relieve Interior of that obligation in entering into the Izembek land exchange, but it made no such finding. The Refuge Act also requires all management decisions to fulfill the specific purposes of the refuge as well as the mission of the National Wildlife Refuge System, another requirement that cannot be relieved solely by invoking ANILCA. Again, Interior made no such findings.
To defend its unlawful actions, the Trump administration must win on every claim brought in each of the three lawsuits. While we face greater threats than ever before, we have also collectively brought the strongest and most comprehensive challenges to this exchange possible. Defenders’ case is a critical link in the legal shield wall protecting Izembek from the devastating effects of a road. This next chapter in litigation to protect Izembek Refuge and Wilderness is shaping up to be the most important chapter yet in this ongoing story.
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