You may recall that Wilderness Watch and allies filed a lawsuit last August challenging the construction of a 12-mile-long road through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge and Wilderness in Alaska. Our fight to protect the spectacular Izembek Wilderness spans years and two previous successful lawsuits. In January we filed our opening legal brief. In March, we filed our reply brief. The refuge is 95 percent Wilderness, contains critically important wildlife habitat, and is a major crossroad for migrating birds. A road slicing through this wild place would be an unspeakable travesty. Under the previous administration, former Interior Secretary Sally Jewel rejected the road in 2014 due to “significant degradation of irreplaceable ecological resources” and availability of transportation alternatives. We intervened to support Jewel’s decision in a lawsuit filed by King Cove Corporation, the State of Alaska, and others to overturn it. A federal court ruled in our favor in 2015. Interior did an about-face under the Trump Administration though, and in January 2018 former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke pushed through a closed-door land exchange to try to make an end-run around the court’s ruling. We went to court soon after to fight Zinke’s agreement and won a second legal victory in March 2019 when a federal judge ruled that the administration had unlawfully ignored former Secretary Jewell’s findings. That victory was interrupted when in July 2019 Interior Secretary David Bernhardt signed yet another closed-door land swap agreement. Bernhardt’s agreement even outdoes Zinke’s. It fails to limit the allowed use of the road, and it trades away even more land within the Izembek Refuge and Wilderness. Once again, just like Zinke’s agreement, Bernhardt’s agreement fails to justify Interior’s reversal on the road, despite legal requirements that it do so. We are optimistic about securing another good court ruling. Thank you to our attorneys at Trustees for Alaska and to all of you. Together, we’re going to win. | 
