On August 18, thanks to a lawsuit from Wilderness Watch and our allies, a U.S. District Court ruled that the Interior Department violated federal laws when it gave away federally protected public lands to the King Cove Corporation to make way for a 13-mile-long road through the Izembek Wilderness and National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.
If built, the road through the Izembek Wilderness would be catastrophic for the critters that live there and would essentially cut the 307,982-acre Izembek Wilderness in two.
The judge’s decision vacates the land exchange—a hard-earned victory for Wilderness Watch and our allies, as well as for thousands of our members and supporters who have taken action over many years to protect the Izembek Wilderness and its wildlife from this land exchange and road building scheme. “This is a profoundly critical victory for Izembek and all of Wilderness, Refuges and National Parks in Alaska, and for the Alaska Natives who rely on them for subsistence,” said Kevin Proescholdt, Wilderness Watch’s Conservation Director. “Successive administrations have tried to undermine the essential wildland protections in the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, but fortunately those of us who care about these special places and the wildlife that live there have the law on our side.” Located near the tip of the Alaska Peninsula, the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge—over 95 percent of which is designated Wilderness—is a remote stretch of land where a quarter-million migratory birds, including virtually the entire population of Pacific black brant, congregate each fall.
Nearly 7,000 caribou make their annual trek into the Wilderness where they overwinter, and hundreds of sea otters swim with their young in the Izembek Lagoon, occasionally in the vicinity of migrating orcas, gray whales, minke whales, and Steller sea lions. Massive brown bears—as many as nine per mile—lumber through wilderness streams during peak summer salmon runs. The illegal land exchange not only endangered the health of a vast and thriving ecosystem, but would have set a dangerous precedent by allowing an agency appointee to trade away designated Wilderness and circumvent Congress. The land exchange, announced by Interior in October 2025, swapped lands owned by King Cove Corporation for Izembek Refuge and Wilderness lands administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Our lawsuit challenged the agency for violating the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, Administrative Procedure Act, and National Environmental Policy Act. The Native Village of Hooper Bay has long opposed a road through Izembek, and dozens of other tribes and tribal entities in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta have passed resolutions opposing the land swap and road, noting the importance of Izembek to critical food resources and subsistence traditions. The Native villages of Hooper Bay, Paimiut, and Chevak also filed a lawsuit challenging the land exchange, and Defenders of Wildlife had filed a third suit. The judge dealt with all three lawsuits together in this new decision. Wilderness Watch was joined on this lawsuit by Friends of Alaska Wildlife Refuges, the National Wildlife Refuge Association, Alaska Wilderness League, and Sierra Club. Law firm Trustees for Alaska did a great job representing our coalition.
A big thank you to all our members and supporters who have written thousands of letters to decision-makers and contributed to our efforts to protect the Izembek Wilderness and its wildlife over the years—this victory belongs to all of you!
We celebrate this major victory today, but please know that we must also remain vigilant. Whatever twists and turns the Izembek road-building scheme takes, we’ll be ready. |
