Fact Sheet: Izembek National Wildlife Refuge

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High Costs, Significant Losses: Proposed Road Doesnt Make Sense

Overview
In 1998, Congress passed a law specifically prohibiting a road through designated Wilderness in the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge. Despite this prohibition, Congress approved a bill in 2009 (P.L. 111-11, the Omnibus Public Land Management Act) that began a process to review a proposed road through Izembeks federally protected Wilderness. The proposed road would have been accomplished through a land exchange that would add some 56,393 acres of non-federal land to the refuge, in exchange for the removal of 206 acres from Wilderness designation in order to build a gravel road from King Cove to Cold Bay. The land exchange has been portrayed by its supporters as a positive proposal, both for the King Cove residents who say it would provide safe, dependable access to the Cold Bay airport, and for the Izembek refuge. However, the exchange lands would add no substantial value to the refuge, while the road would cut through the refuges ecological heart, reducing the value of critical habitat for the very species the refuge was established to protect. At the same time, the road would cost taxpayers tens-of-millions without improving the speed or safety of existing transportation or access to medical facilities and the outside world. Congress has already helped finance a more cost-effective mode of transport A road through the heart of Izembek refuge would destroy between King Cove and Cold Baya state-ofwilderness values and significantly impact wildlife. the-art marine hovercraft-ferry system that carried a fully staffed ambulance from King Cove to Cold Bay in as little as 20 minutes in virtually all kinds of weather.. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently announced their preferred alternative regarding this proposal and rejected the road, determining it is not in the public interest. A road would have incurred significant costs to wildlife, costs to taxpayers, and potential costs to the integrity and protected status of Wilderness lands throughout the nation while not increasing the speed or efficiency of travel to medical facilities.

Costs to Wildlife
In addition to spectacular scenery, and world-renowned bear habitat, Izembek National Wildlife Refuge supports virtually the entire Pacific Flyway black brant population each spring and fall when these birds gather to rest and feed during migration. The refuge is also heavily used by the Stellers eider, a species listed as Threatened under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), and by hundreds of thousands of other migratory birds whose habitat around the world is dwindling, including emperor geese, tundra swans, cackling Canada geese, rock sandpipers, and dunlins. Other rare species found in the refuge include caribou, a population of sea otters listed as threatened under ESA, and the Steller sea lion, which is also threatened. In recognition of its significance for birds in particular, Izembek Lagoon was designated in 1987 during the Reagan Administration

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as a Wetland of International Importance under the Ramsar Convention, and has also been identified as a globally "Important Bird Area." A road would have posed a serious threat to all of these species as a result of habitat degradation and fragmentation, and increased disturbance and disruption of natural processes. A road also would have eliminated other wilderness values identified by Congress and currently protected in the refuge because such impacts would extend miles beyond the road itself.

Costs to Taxpayers
Congress determined that a road through Izembek Wilderness is not in the publics best interest when in 1998 it passed the King Cove Health and Safety Act. With this legislation, Congress addressed King Cove residents health and safety concerns by providing $37.5 million to upgrade King Coves medical facilities, improve the airstrip in King Cove, purchase a hovercraft, construct marine terminals in King Cove and Cold Bay, and build an unpaved road between the town of King Cove and the connecting marine terminal. Several years after passage of the King Cove Health and Safety Act, then Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens sponsored a rider on an appropriations bill that directed a 17-mile road be built from King Cove to a new hovercraft terminal, directly adjacent to the Wilderness boundary. Construction for this road began in March, 2004, and the road remains unfinished. More than $25 million was spent on this road, exhausting the funds Congress appropriated in 1998, and construction was halted when costs continued to escalate as crews confronted numerous obstacles, including unstable volcanic soils and steep slopes. Avoiding the unstable soils meant rerouting this portion of the road onto the sensitive shores of Cold Bay, where winter ice scouring would result in increased maintenance costs. The road proposed in P.L. 111-11, to connect King Cove and Cold Bay, would more than double the burden to taxpayers and it is unnecessary. A marine link provides a more efficient, financially feasible, and practical transportation link between King Cove and Cold Bay. It is not in the public interest to spend additional tax dollars on a damaging road project, when the taxpayer has already funded a viable transportation solution.

Bottom Line:
The proposed Izembek road is incompatible with the purposes of Izembek refuge and is not in the publics best interest. A road would destroy wilderness and wetlands, and create serious threats to sensitive bird populations, brown bears, caribou, and many other species, as well as cut through the ecological heart of the refuge, degrading globally significant habitat. The proposed land exchange would add acreage but not value to the refuge. Further, the value of any exchange lands would be diminished if the heart of the refuge were lost. Finally, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has twice studied a proposed road and rejected it, and Congress rejected a proposed road and instead passed the King Cove Health and Safety Act of 1998, which along with The Wilderness Act, specifically prohibits a road through Izembek Wilderness. For more information contact:

Nicole Whittington-Evans, Alaska Regional Director, The Wilderness Society, Alaska Regional Office, 907-351-8844, nicolewe@tws.org.

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