Tell President Biden and Secretary Haaland to stop the road through Izembek Wilderness!

Dear Friends of Wilderness,

The action I’m asking you to take right now might be the most important you’ll ever take on behalf of Wilderness, National Parks, and National Wildlife Refuges in Alaska.

You might recall that during the Trump administration, the Department of Interior twice signed illegal land exchange agreements that would give away a strip of land across the entire Izembek Wilderness and National Wildlife Refuge so the State of Alaska could build a road connecting the small town of King Cove and its large commercial seafood cannery with an airport in Cold Bay. Wilderness Watch and our partners sued in federal court to stop the exchanges, and both times we won.

But just before the Trump administration left office, it appealed the district court ruling to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Disappointingly, the Biden administration chose to continue the appeal, and a three-judge panel, two of whom were Trump appointees, overturned the district court on a 2-1 split decision. Most troubling, their ruling did more than approve the Izembek land exchange. It essentially rewrote the law (Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act--ANILCA) that established more than 100 million acres of Wilderness, National Parks, National Wildlife Refuges, and National Monuments in Alaska, including Izembek.

The two Trump judges made the outrageous determination that in protected areas in Alaska, social and economic interests had equal footing with conservation, preservation, and access for subsistence. It was a remarkably bad opinion that put all conservation lands in Alaska at grave risk. 

We petitioned the Ninth Circuit to take the rare step of rehearing our case en banc, meaning a larger panel of 11 judges would rehear it. Fortunately, the court agreed and in so doing rendered the previous panel’s decision null and void.  We were elated, and not just because our case would be reheard, but because the court had provided the Biden administration and Secretary Haaland another chance to withdraw the land exchange agreement and uphold the integrity of ANILCA.  Inexplicably, the Biden administration and Secretary Haaland chose not to. Then bad news struck again.

When the court convened in mid-December to rehear the case, the randomly drawn panel of 11 judges (out of 30 total) included six Trump appointees; an incredibly bad draw given they make up only one-third of the court! While our legal arguments are certainly strong, the political bent of the panel creates the real likelihood that the land exchange agreement will be upheld, the Izembek Wilderness and Refuge will be devastated by a road, and a terrible precedent affecting all protected areas in Alaska will be set.

There is one way—perhaps the only way—to ensure this never happens, and that is for the Biden administration and Secretary Haaland to withdraw the land exchange agreement before the Ninth Circuit panel issues its ruling.

And that’s where you come in. President Biden and Secretary Haaland need to hear from you that they must withdraw the land exchange agreement before it’s too late! The catastrophic consequences of a road through Izembek’s internationally renowned wetlands and other critical wildlife habitats threatens the wellbeing of caribou, brown bears, wolves and hundreds of thousands of migratory birds and aquatic species. The area is ecologically critical, categorically irreplaceable, and urgently threatened. The agreement also sets a terrible precedent—it allows shifting political administrations to cut roads through designated Wilderness without any Congressional oversight. Even more critically, an adverse ruling from the court puts at risk all of our protected Wildernesses, National Parks, and National Wildlife Refuges in Alaska far into the future. There is simply no way to downplay the threat.

Please tell President Biden and Secretary Haaland that they must immediately withdraw the Izembek land exchange. The fate of America’s wildest landscapes and most intact ecosystems is in their hands, and we’re watching.

For the Wild,