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📷 Aghileen Pinnacles with Mount Dutton past in Izembek Nationwide Wildlife Refuge, Alaska | Gerrit Vyn
Earlier this week, twenty-two former public officers, together with a number of former Secretaries of the Division of the Inside (Inside), despatched a letter to Secretary Haaland expressing their issues relating to the Inside’s intentions for the Izembek Nationwide Wildlife Refuge (NWR), Alaska. All through their collective tenures in public service, they’ve defended Alaska’s public lands and the conservation and subsistence values protected below the Alaska Nationwide Curiosity Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA).
Earlier this 12 months, Secretary Haaland rescinded a 2019 proposed land alternate that will have allowed a highway to be constructed within the Izembek NWR as a result of the method that licensed the alternate was flawed and never in keeping with Departmental coverage. The proposed highway would join the village of King Cove with an all-weather airstrip in Chilly Bay with the intent to offer an choice for emergency medical evacuations for King Cove residents. Now, the Division has renewed the method to assessment proposals for a land alternate that will permit a highway, utilizing the identical illegal pretense because the earlier administration. The letter was additionally submitted as a public remark to this assessment course of.
The regulation that established the Izembek NWR and over 100 million acres of conservation lands in Alaska, often called ANILCA, permits for land exchanges provided that the aim is to learn the conservation or subsistence values of the realm. ANILCA doesn’t permit for land exchanges to construct roads, and it doesn’t present the authority to the Secretary to authorize a land alternate for this goal. On this renewed effort to authorize a highway, 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 tasks. Such authority would implicate all of Alaska’s conservation lands, setting a precedent that different wilderness areas may be subjected to related trades to permit improvement tasks.
Earlier proposals to assemble a highway via the ecological coronary heart of this distinctive nationwide wildlife refuge have to this point been unsuccessful as a result of vital and irreversible harm it could make to one of many world’s most crucial wetlands and waterfowl habitats. This highway 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 looking and harvesting for Indigenous communities that depend on these sources. Non-road alternate options for transportation between King Cove and Chilly Bay are extra dependable, inexpensive, and gained’t hurt the Izembek NWR.
The letter underscored the significance of defending the Izembek Nationwide Wildlife Refuge, subsistence rights, and the integrity of the Alaska Nationwide Curiosity Lands Conservation Act. It additional urged the Secretary to pursue various non-road choices that will accommodate the current and future wants of all peoples that depend on the subsistence use and conservation values of the Izembek Nationwide Wildlife Refuge. These critically vital wetlands should be protected for future generations. Learn the letter in its entirety right here >>
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