Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland withdrew the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge land exchange between King Cove Corporation and the Interior Department after the department determined the 2019 land exchange contained procedural flaws and was inconsistent with its policy.
The land exchange was approved in 2019 by then Secretary David Bernhardt, according to a March 14 news release. The Interior Department cited procedural flaws and inconsistency with policy in rescinding the exchange. It lacked public participation and failed to analyze potential effects on subsistence uses and habitat.
“The debate around approving the construction of a road to connect the people of King Cove to life-saving resources has created a false choice, seeded over many years, between valuing conservation and wildlife or upholding our commitments to Indigenous communities,” Haaland said in the release. “I reject that binary choice. I am a lifelong conservationist, and I believe deeply in the need to protect our lands and waters and honor our obligations to Tribal Nations.
"Respecting Tribal sovereignty means ensuring that we are listening – really listening – to Tribal communities," Haaland added, according to the release. "I have instructed my team to immediately launch a process to review previous proposals for a land exchange, rooted in a commitment to engagement in meaningful nation-to-nation consultation with Tribes, to protecting the national wildlife refuge system and to upholding the integrity of ANILCA’s subsistence and conservation purposes.”
The Trump-era decision to uphold the land exchange that would make way for a road through Izembek National Wildlife Refuge was thrown out in November 2022 by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Previously, two Alaska District Court decisions rejected the land exchange, according to a statement from the Defenders of Wildlife.
In March, a three-judge panel in the Ninth Circuit ruled 2-1 that the land exchange provision of ANILCA could be used by the Interior Secretary “to gut a National Wildlife Refuge and congressionally designated wilderness area without congressional approval,” Defenders of Wildlife’s President and CEO Jamie Rappaport Clark said in the statement. The panel found ANILCA’s purposes include providing economic benefits to the state and corporations within it, contrary to its language that it should protect conservation and subsistence.
The refuge is home to more than 200 species, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reported. The Izembek Lagoon and associated state-owned tidal lands have been protected by the state of Alaska since 1960 as the Izembek State Game Refuge. The state designated most of the refuge as Wwilderness in 1980.
The land exchange’s history goes back to 2009, the release reported. Approximately 200 acres within the refuge would have transferred to the state for a road north of Kinzarof Lagoon between King Cove and Cold Bay, Alaska, that would be used for noncommercial purposes, primarily for health and safety.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would get 43,000 acres of state land and 13,300 acres of land from King Cove, which would relinquish 5,430 acres within the Izembek Refuge and Izembek Wilderness boundary, according to the release. An exchange was declined in 2013.
