OPINION: Destructive court ruling on Alaska wildlife refuge demands review

The decades-long fight over a proposed, precedent-setting road through Alaska’s Izembek National Wildlife Refuge took a disturbing turn in March, when a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals issued a ruling so destructive, it quickly became clear that the full court should review and overturn it.

The ruling would allow the construction of a road through a designated wilderness area and severely undermine the conservation provisions of the historic Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act.

This conflicts with multiple previous court decisions and findings by the U.S. Department of Interior that a road between the communities of King Cove and Cold Bay, Alaska, is unnecessary and would establish a precedent endangering wilderness areas and wildlife refuges across Alaska.

Conservationists have petitioned the Ninth Circuit to request a rehearing of the case, and the court is asking for responses from the government and road proponents to that request. In the interest of more than 100 million acres of protected federal lands, we are calling on the Department of the Interior to recognize the harm this decision poses to all of Alaska’s federal conservation lands and subsistence values.

The decision by a split three-judge panel — with the two majority judges appointed by former President Donald Trump — stated that economic and social concerns can override ANILCA’s purposes. These purposes were established by Congress and include long-established conservation protections for ecologically important wildlife habitat, wilderness values and protection of subsistence uses of public lands. It was so egregious that former President Jimmy Carter, who signed ANILCA into law in 1980, filed an amicus curiae brief to urge the full court’s review.

Izembek is a 315,000-acre refuge on the edge of the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska, with a rich ecosystem that makes it a critical resting and feeding area for millions of migratory birds, not to mention the home of brown bears, caribou and salmon. Nearly all of the refuge is protected as wilderness.

Publicly, the community of King Cove claims the road is needed to transport medical patients to an airport in Cold Bay, but leaders of the road effort have occasionally described the road as aneconomic-development project that would benefit seafood processors by making it cheaper to move their products to Cold Bay. After countless studies, multiple administrations and Secretaries of Interior have rejected the idea of a road.

In a 2003 draft environmental impact statement, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers noted that of all transportation alternatives evaluated, a road would post the greatest threat to subsistence harvests by displacing wildlife and increasing competition for resources between sport and subsistence hunters. A final EIS later incorporated those findings and indicated that a road would have major negative effects on brown bears and migratory birds such as tundra swans and emperor geese.

Such degradation of wilderness protections could adversely impact vital subsistence resources for Indigenous peoples in nearby communities and throughout western Alaska.

Although we respect the need for King Cove’s residents to have safe access to emergency medical care, it has been found that the community’s needs can be met with non-road alternatives and without setting a dangerous precedent for other protected public lands and subsistence resources.

The Corp of Engineers evaluated three modes of emergency medical transportation and issued a report in 2015 showing that there are viable alternatives to a road through Izembek’s designated wilderness area, including a marine ferry with an estimated reliability exceeding 99%.

Put simply, the road isn’t necessary. Alternatives exist to meet King Cove’s needs. And allowing its construction under the Ninth Circuit’s ruling would set a damaging precedent that commercial economic development may overcome subsistence protections on Alaska’s federal lands.

This case is not just about Izembek National Wildlife Refuge. It is about America’s public lands heritage and the 100 million acres of public lands threatened by a ruling that was made by two Ninth Circuit judges.

The Department of Interior must act affirmatively and decisively to protect the future of our public lands.

Karlin Itchoak, who was born in Nome and spent much time in Utqiagvik and the Arctic, is the Alaska state director for The Wilderness Society.

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