Babbitt, who served as the Interior secretary under President Bill Clinton, has signed a letter asking the current occupant of the office, Ken Salazar, to find that a road through the refuge is not in the public interest.
If Salazar agrees to the road, it would the first-ever road authorized in a wilderness area in the 45-year history of the Wilderness Act, Babbitt warned, setting a "dangerous precedent."
The road could "jeopardize all the wilderness lands that we and so many others have worked tirelessly to set aside for future generations: every national park, refuge and wilderness area that the Department is pledged to protect," Babbitt wrote to Salazar.
The Interior Department is reviewing Babbitt's letter, said spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff.
Conservationists fear that if development is allowed at Izembek, it puts at risk other federal areas set aside to protect wilderness and habitat. The refuge, on a narrow isthmus in the Alaska Peninsula, hosts hundreds of thousands of migratory birds as well as caribou, wolves, bears, fox and other wildlife.
"They need to take a comprehensive look at this area," said Maribeth Oakes of the Wilderness Society's refuge program. That includes focusing on potential oil and gas development in Bristol Bay and what it means for the refuge, Oakes said.
The letter was signed by five other former Interior Department officials, including Jerald Stroebele, who was the Alaska refuge supervisor for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from 1991 to 2006.
Legislation signed into law last spring by President Barack Obama authorizes the Interior Department's environmental review of the road proposal. The Interior Department is in the process of determining the scope of the review; whether the road is built depends on the outcome of that review.
For years residents of King Cove have sought the road construction as a safer route to the airport, and have traveled repeatedly to Washington to make their case. Without a road, they must take a short flight across the bay to the airport in Cold Bay. They also have the option of a hovercraft, which local leaders say is expensive to maintain and unreliable in the worst weather.
If Salazar authorizes the single-lane gravel road, it paves the way for a land swap that gives the state an easement through the Izembek refuge to build a road from King Cove to the Cold Bay airport.
In exchange, the refuge would gain about 61,000 acres. If built, the road would have cable barriers on both sides to prevent off-road driving. Besides taxis, the road would be off-limits to most other commercial traffic.
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