Submit Feedback on the Izembek Nationwide Wildlife Refuge Discover of Intent — The Nationwide Wildlife Refuge Affiliation

The Izembek Nationwide Wildlife Refuge wants your voice! The Division of the Inside is at present within the strategy of as soon as once more probably permitting a street to be constructed by the center of this internationally-renowned wilderness. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) is accepting public feedback from people and organizations on this course of no later than June 20, 2023.

Earlier this 12 months, Secretary Haaland rescinded a 2019 proposed land alternate that will have allowed a street to be constructed within the Izembek NWR as a result of the method that approved the alternate was flawed and never according to Departmental coverage. The proposed street would join the village of King Cove with an all-weather airstrip in Chilly Bay with the intent to offer an possibility for emergency medical evacuations for King Cove residents. Now, the Division has renewed the method to assessment proposals for a land alternate that will enable a street, utilizing the identical illegal pretense because the earlier administration. 

The legislation that established the Izembek NWR and over 100 million acres of conservation lands in Alaska, the Alaska Nationwide Curiosity Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA), permits for land exchanges provided that the aim is to profit the conservation or subsistence values of the realm. ANILCA doesn’t enable for land exchanges to construct roads, and it doesn’t present the authority to the Secretary to authorize a land alternate for this function. On this renewed effort to authorize a street, the Biden Administration perpetuates the suggestion that the Secretary of the Inside has the authority to commerce away congressionally designated wilderness to non-public events to permit roads or different improvement initiatives. Such authority would implicate all of Alaska’s conservation lands, setting a precedent that different wilderness areas may be subjected to comparable trades to permit improvement initiatives.

Earlier proposals to assemble a street by the ecological coronary heart of this distinctive nationwide wildlife refuge have thus far been unsuccessful because of the important and irreversible injury it might make to one of many world’s most crucial wetlands and waterfowl habitats. This street would have devastating impacts on greater than half 1,000,000 Pacific brant, emperor geese, swans, and different wildlife, leading to habitat fragmentation, disturbance, and air pollution. These impacts on wildlife would additionally inevitably influence subsistence searching and harvesting for Indigenous communities that depend on these sources.

These critically essential wetlands should be protected for future generations. Izembek NWR is one in every of America’s most ecologically important nationwide wildlife refuges and should be safeguarded from these continued threats. Please be a part of us in urging the USFWS and Secretary Haaland to decide on a non-road various moderately than execute a land alternate for a street by the Izembek Nationwide Wildlife Refuge. 

Public feedback are due June twentieth, 2023. If you need to submit a customized remark, you possibly can submit it right here.

Thanks to your continued help in defending our planet’s valuable wildlife and the Nationwide Wildlife Refuge System.