This op-ed in the Anchorage Daily News argues that King Cove Corporation and Alaska are pushing ahead with a road into Izembek National Wildlife Refuge despite a court vacating the land exchange, contending the project is commercially driven and medically unnecessary, and warns it would threaten the refuge's critical wildlife habitat.
In mid-August, a federal judge vacated a land exchange that would have allowed a road to be gouged through the heart of Alaska’s Izembek National Wildlife Refuge and Wilderness.
The district court ruled that the deal between Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and King Cove Corp., an Alaska Native village corporation, violated the laws that have protected Izembek for decades.
Unfortunately, the threat remains.
KCC and the state of Alaska are starting to bulldoze a 3-mile road segment on KCC lands within the refuge boundary to the edge of the Izembek Wilderness in a cynical ploy to make a road through Izembek seem inevitable.
A longer road on KCC lands has already led to a proliferation of off-road vehicle trails inside the refuge. By connecting this road to the doorstep of federal lands, the new project would funnel more illegal ORV activity into the heart of the Izembek Wilderness, scarring wetlands and displacing sensitive wildlife such as brown bears and caribou.
With construction set to begin any time, the stakes are high. That is why Defenders of Wildlife is seeking emergency relief from the courts to stop the bulldozers before they start.
Izembek is one of the last habitats of its kind. With some of the world’s largest and healthiest eelgrass beds, the refuge attracts dozens of species of migratory waterfowl each year, birds that are vital subsistence resources for the Native peoples of the Alaska Peninsula, the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta and the Arctic. Brown bears shelter in its quiet, secluded valleys. All five species of Pacific salmon spawn in Izembek’s clean, cold waters. Even walrus, reacting to a shifting climate, now haul ashore in Izembek by the thousands.
Proponents argue that a road between King Cove and Cold Bay would enable King Cove residents to access the Cold Bay airport for medical evacuations in inclement weather.
Tens of millions of federal and state taxpayer dollars, however, have already been spent addressing these needs, including a marine transportation link for a hovercraft vessel that once successfully delivered all medical evacuations between King Cove and Cold Bay before being decommissioned and sold.
Obscured by the rhetoric of decades-long controversy is an even more important detail, which is that the road is more unnecessary now than ever before.
In recent months, Lake Clark Air flies almost daily between King Cove and Anchorage. These flights land and take off reliably from King Cove, alleviating the need for a medevac road. The U.S. Coast Guard also has a helicopter stationed at Cold Bay full time, providing additional options for emergency transport.
So why have the Trump administration and the State of Alaska made a road that would ultimately serve a population of fewer than 400 people such a priority?
The devil is in the details
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on his first day back in office titled “Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential” to “unlock” a “bounty of natural wealth” through “mineral, timber, and seafood” production and instructed Secretary Burgum to use all his authorities to make the Izembek road happen. The EO did not mention health or safety concerns.
Months later, the exchange agreement between Secretary Burgum and KCC predictably allowed the road to be used for commercial purposes, perhaps laying bare the real motivations for the project.
Some proponents of the road, including Sen. Dan Sullivan, have framed the Izembek impasse as a zero-sum game, claiming wildlife must lose so people can win. This false dichotomy oversimplifies a nuanced but solvable issue. It also clouds the obvious commercial motivations for the exchange and the precedent that would be set with this land exchange for a road.
If the federal government can exchange away congressionally designated refuge and wilderness lands to clear the way for roadbuilding through one of the most globally important wetlands complexes, then all of our precious federal lands are at risk of backroom deals to trade them away for private or commercial gain.
Although the court’s decision vacating the exchange has stopped the road through Izembek for now, it would be a tragedy of nearly equal proportions for KCC and the State of Alaska to build a 3-mile road dead-ending at the edge of the Izembek Wilderness.
We owe it to future generations to leave Izembek better than we found it. Now is the time for us to make good on that promise.
Nicole Whittington-Evans holds an M.S. in environmental studies from the University of Montana and is the senior director for the Alaska and Northwest programs at Defenders of Wildlife.
