Biden Administration Attack On Wilderness Preservation: The Izembek Wilderness Road

Izembek NWR is part of the volcanic Aleutian Range, Alaska. Photo FWS.

The Biden Administration and Secretary of Interior Haaland are ready to destroy one of the primary protections of the 1964 Wilderness Act. The Biden Administration, with the apparent support of Secretary of Interior Deb Haaland, has sided with some Alaskan Natives and the previous Trump administration to approve the construction of a road through the designated Wilderness of Alaska’s Izembek National Wildlife Refuge.

Roads are not permitted in designated Wilderness Areas. To get around this limitation, the administration will allow a land exchange along the proposed route, essentially making it private land so road construction can proceed.

Tens of thousands of black brant utilize the Izembek Refuge annually. Photo USFWS

In theory, only Congress can modify Wilderness Area boundaries. Congress has done this in minor situations to adjust boundaries. However, allowing a Secretary of Interior to override wilderness designation is a huge threat to Wilderness throughout Alaska and perhaps even in the lower 48 states. It doesn’t take much imagination to see how a Trump Secretary of Interior might use this precedent (if allowed to stand) to authorize roads in many designated wilderness areas.

The village of King Cove is surrounded by mountains, making air evacuations from the village’s airstrip risky during stormy weather.

The Biden administration supports the Aleut villagers in King Cove’s efforts to construct a road to an all-weather airstrip in Cold Bay. The villagers argue they need a road to transport medical emergencies to the Cold Bay airstrip.


Some opponents of the road allege the proposed route has more to do with economic opportunities than medical emergencies. The original justification for the road was more financial. In 1994, King Cove passed a resolution saying the road would “link together two communities having one of the State’s premier fishing ports/harbors (including North America’s largest salmon cannery) in King Cove with one of the State’s premier airports at Cold Bay.”

The rugged Aleutian Range consists of high peak, numerous wetlands and treeless tundra. Photo George Wuerthner


The Peter Pan Processing plant in King Cove is Alaska’s biggest salmon and seafood processing operation. The route would make getting workers in and out of King Cove easier. But it would also reduce the costs of shipping fish. Peter Pan must load fish on a boat and transport it by sea to Cold Bay, where it is loaded on another truck to be transported to the airstrip.


However, twenty years later, the justification was changed to the medical emergency rationale.

Map of the King Cove-Cold Bay area showing the road route in red across the refuge (in green).


To find an alternative to the road, the federal government contributed $37 million (a taxpayer subsidy of over $56,000 per King Cove resident) for an improved medical clinic in King Cove and the purchase of a hovercraft and improved dock facilities that could link both communities by water. The hovercraft only operated for three years before the Borough shut it down, arguing it was too expensive and failed to work in high winds. However, during its three years, the hovercraft successfully transported 22 medical evacuations.

Although this argument has some legitimacy, a review of the proposed road found that harsh weather and blowing snow on the treeless tundra could be as much a barrier to transportation as relying on the ferry.


Villagers have latched on to the idea that a road would provide safe passage between King Cove and Cold Bay. However, a doctor who oversaw medical evacuations in King Cove for 15 years said traveling almost 40 miles on the gravel road during 60 mph winds and blinding snowstorms would be “suicidal” for patients and rescue teams.


“Should the road happen, I foresee all sorts of calamity,” said Dr. Peter Mjos, the Eastern Aleutian Tribes’ medical director until 2002. He retired from practicing medicine in 2015.
Anyone driving a highway on the Great Plains during a blinding blizzard can appreciate how operating an emergency vehicle on a road through a treeless tundra in stormy weather could be perilous.


Former President Jimmy Carter filed an Amicus Curaie brief in support of continued wilderness designation and refuge protection. Carter, who in 1980 signed the ANILCA into law, argues that allowing a road to be constructed across the Izembek NWR Wilderness could “undercut” the purposes of the Act and set a dangerous precedent that could threaten Wilderness and conservation lands across the country.

It seems to me that “medical emergencies” is a red herring. While there may indeed be a few times when alternative means of transport are unavailable, I do not believe this is the real reason for the road. The main motive is to create economically viable alternatives for seafood transport.

Previous administrations, including the Clinton and Obama administrations, have opposed the land trade and road. However, the Trump administration came out in favor of the road.

Biologists with a tranquilized brown bear (grizzly) on the Alaskan Peninsula. Izembek has one of the densest bear populations in that part of Alaska. Photo George Wuerthner

Izembek is particularly important for Pacific Black Brant; 98 percent of those small geese spend part of the year there, feeding on the world’s most extensive eelgrass beds, their dietary staple. The area also supports about half the world’s Emperor Geese and a substantial percentage of the threatened Steller’s Eider population. The refuge supports one of the densest populations of grizzly bears on the Alaskan Peninsula and wolves, foxes, caribou, and even walruses.


The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service concluded that allowing a road through the refuge would “degrade irreplaceable ecological resources.” It also would jeopardize the global survival of a migratory sea goose, the Pacific black brant, the emperor goose, and other waterfowl.


Izembek is recognized as a Wetland of International Importance, and Izembek lagoons are also considered an Important Bird Area (IBA) of global significance.


A 2013 Record of Decision on a Final EIS that reviewed the potential impact of the road concluded:” Construction of a road through the Izembek NWR would lead to significant degradation of irreplaceable ecological resources.”


However, some native groups in Alaska have recently come out in opposition to the road. Other Alaskan native groups support the land exchange, likely because they believe they could use the precedent to further their economic interests.


Local governments support it, including the Agdaagux Tribe of King Cove, as does the King Cove village corporation. The National Congress of American Indians, the statewide Alaska Federation of Natives, Alaska’s Congressional delegation, and the state of Alaska favor the road.

Some native groups support the construction of a 211-mile road to mineral deposits they own along the Koubk River in northern Alaska. Some fear that the Izembek issue could become a precedent that would permit the Sec of Interior to bypass Congress to authorize roads across federally protected lands without Congressional oversight. Photo George Wuerthner


For instance, NANA Corporation, representing native people in Northwest Alaska, is currently trying to obtain permission to build a 211-mile road across the southern Brooks Range, including through the Gates of the Arctic National Park, to its mining claims in the Ambler Mining District. NANA filed a brief prepared by Lewis and Clark Law School’s Western Resource Law Center to support the land exchange.


The Lewis and Clark Law School’s support for the road, which was previously strongly aligned with environmental protection, is an excellent example of how WOKE politics has infected traditional allies of wildlands protection. (I use the term WOKE to designate policies that put Identify ahead of all other considerations, though initially, I recognize it meant being aware of inequities in society)

The Pipeline Haul Road, now known as the Dalton Highway, passes through the Brooks Range. The road was originally closed to public use but was eventually opened to all uses. Many believe the argument that the Izembek Road will only be used for medical emergencies will be quickly amended to allow commercial transport. Photo George Wuerthner


The Biden Administration says the new agreement requires that the road be closed to commercial use. However, the same ploy was used to garner support for the Pipeline Haul Road (now known as the Dalton Highway).


This land exchange and road construction are much bigger issues than this proposal. I am confident that the decision if a road is built will be used in many future attempts to open designated Wilderness to road access. For instance, access to “critically important minerals” or to permit “fire management” and any other excuses could be used to degrade wilderness preservation values.


The decision by the Biden administration feeds into the growing effort by lefty WOKE academics and some organizations (formerly known as wilderness advocates like the Sierra Club, The Wilderness Society, and many others) to denigrate wilderness as “cultural genocide,” colonialism, and other canards that put human interests, especially if it involves tribal concerns, ahead of ecological integrity and wildlands preservation,

Comments

  1. Jeff Hoffman Avatar
    Jeff Hoffman

    This is a perfect example of why it made little difference to the natural environment that Trump won the election. People who freaked out about Trump’s victory obviously have no clue about how awful the Democrats also are regarding the environment.

    1. easternsierraheidi Avatar
      easternsierraheidi

      “…has sided with some Alaskan Natives and the PREVIOUS TRUMP ADMINISTRATION…..” (emphasis is mine)

      “It doesn’t take much imagination to see how a Trump Secretary of Interior might use this precedent (if allowed to stand) to authorize roads in many designated wilderness areas.”

      I guess you missed those parts.

      1. Ralph Maughan Avatar
        Ralph Maughan

        In years past I held many positions in the Sierra Club, both statewide — Idaho — and regionally. I gave it up and all the similar groups when they decided supporting indigenous groups instead of nature. There already were groups to help advance these people. This was the flat out takeover of a grand tradition and movements that saved so places in the West and beyond.

        It was result of growing large professional staffs and taking money from “public interest” interest groups.

        Sellouts, though they became, and bad as Biden and his token Indian at DOI have been, we must not delude ourselves that Trump could not be worse, although I should add that Trump himself likely knows nothing, or would care about these issues.

        Pray, or whatever, to save our wildlands, our public lands, the Earth’s surface as a whole from these ignorant and grasping people. Groups need to be revived, re-enforced, and/or created to do this. I’m now too old to help much, but that was always inevitable. You are not.

      2. Ida Lupine Avatar
        Ida Lupine

        We wouldn’t have expected that the Democrats would have ‘paved the way’ to make it easier for the Trump Administration, and to threaten the integrity of all of the national parks, forests and other protected wilderness areas!

        They’ve been a big disappointment.

  2. Fred K Avatar
    Fred K

    If the justification was medical evacuation then why didn’t they restrict to emergency vehicles only? Because it stinks of dead fish. Biden and Haaland have been so disappointing but Trump team will be much worse. And this is just one more in a growing list of over-woke reaction to the historic wrongs of Indigenous people. So much for a rational set of contemporary ethical values toward humans and other-than-human animals.

  3. Ida Lupine Avatar
    Ida Lupine

    I don’t know if a take and switch for more land is understood by the wildlife or adaptable? When will it end? Or as George says, what else will come in once the door has been opened?

    In any case, Biden and Haaland are handing it over to the Trump Administration on a silver platter:

    https://www.webcenterfairbanks.com/2024/11/14/biden-administration-gives-support-controversial-land-trade-alaska-wildlife-refuge/

  4. Ida Lupine Avatar
    Ida Lupine

    The Trump administration is all ‘drill baby drill’ again, Lisa Murkowski is happy, and The Aleut Corp., a for-profit corporation will have the subsurface rights to the entire land swap – minerals and fossil fuels. I think we can do the math here. So the damage could be much more than a gravel road.

  5. Ida Lupine Avatar
    Ida Lupine

    Aha –

    “The lands proposed for exchange are not equivalent in conservation value. (emphasis mine) The land exchange as proposed would swap lands within the Refuge with lands currently owned by the King Cove Corporation. Dozens of native tribes and tribal entities, including the Native Village of Hooper Bay and its village corporation, have opposed this land exchange.”

    https://alaskarefugefriends.org/izembek-seis-released/

Leave a Reply

Author

George Wuerthner is an ecologist and writer who has published 38 books on various topics related to environmental and natural history. He has visited over 400 designated wilderness areas and over 200 national park units.

Subscribe to get new posts right in your Inbox

George Wuerthner
×