Anchorage Daily News

WASHINGTON -- The Senate has approved a bill setting aside more than 2 million acres in nine states as protected wilderness.

The 73-21 vote today came after days of partisan wrangling over one of the largest expansions of wilderness protection in 25 years. Land to be protected includes California's Sierra Nevada mountain range, Oregon's Mount Hood, Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado and parts of the Jefferson National Forest in Virginia.

The Alaska portion of the bill authorizes a controversial land swap that gives the state a seven-mile easement through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge. The easement allows the state to complete a 25-mile gravel road that will link Cold Bay with King Cove. In exchange, the state is expected to transfer more than 61,000 acres to the federal government. Much of that land would go to the Izembek refuge; part would be designated as wilderness.

The community of King Cove has sought the road for the past decade as an alternative to the hovercraft used now to travel across the bay to get to the airport in Cold Bay. The World War II-era airport is home to the third-longest runway in the state and open in nearly all weather conditions, unlike the smaller King Cove airport across the bay.

Residents have access to a hovercraft to cross the bay, but say they need the road to evacuate people with health emergencies during inclement weather.

Some conservationists are calling the Izembek road a "road to nowhere." They say that it is unprecedented to allow a road through a wildlife refuge, and that cars and trucks on the road will disrupt migratory birds in the refuge as well as other wildlife that pass along the narrow isthmus.

However, the bill does requires an extensive federal environmental review before it can be built.

The bill now goes to the House.

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