A judge let Alaska start 2.8 miles of the King Cove road with the land swap vacated

A federal judge declined to block Alaska from beginning work on a 2.8-mile segment of the King Cove road, clearing the way for construction to start even as the land exchange needed for the full route through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge remains void.

Senior U.S. District Judge H. Russel Holland's ruling, in a case Defenders of Wildlife filed Aug. 17, turned on a narrow question: whether to halt work breaking ground on King Cove Corporation land while Defenders challenges a compatibility determination the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued Aug. 14. That determination is the finding required before an activity may proceed inside a refuge boundary. Defenders said the same day it would appeal immediately.

King Cove is reachable only by sea or air and has no all-weather airport. Cold Bay does. Court records in the land exchange case show King Cove and its related entities have pushed for a road for decades, citing the need for reliable airport access and particularly for medical evacuations. King Cove Corporation spokeswoman Della Trumble called that access "truly a matter of life and death for us" in a 2019 statement, after a court ruled against an earlier land exchange.

On Aug. 17, U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason vacated Interior Secretary Doug Burgum's October 2025 land exchange, finding the department violated the federal law governing transportation routes across conservation lands, the Endangered Species Act and the law administering the refuge system when it approved transferring roughly 490 acres of federal land to King Cove Corporation. Two-thirds of that acreage, 336 acres, is designated wilderness. The exchange created the corridor for the full 18.9-mile road connecting King Cove to the Cold Bay airport, and it is still vacated.

Separately, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers suspended the wetlands permit it issued July 10 for the 18.9-mile project. A signed Corps letter dated Aug. 26 directed the permittee to stop activities the permit had authorized while the Corps evaluates the effect of Gleason's ruling. The State of Alaska had asked for the voluntary suspension.

The 2.8-mile segment sits on King Cove Corporation land, not on the federal land in the vacated exchange. A provision of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act keeps refuge rules in force on Native corporation land inside the boundary, which is why the segment needed a compatibility finding at all. Fish and Wildlife found that building it, including a bridge and parking area, is compatible with refuge purposes, and said work could begin as early as Sept. 1.

That finding does not extend to the full road, and it does not address construction of the entire route as a consequence of the 2.8 miles. The agency said the segment could be built on its own to extend the existing King Cove road system.

The Aug. 14 determination leans on mitigation from the October 2025 exchange decision and the biological opinions that went with it, the formal Endangered Species Act findings. Three days later Gleason vacated that exchange and found legal defects in the biological consultation. Holland's case will decide whether a compatibility finding can rest on a decision a court has since voided.

Alaska had equipment staged and had told the court that road construction would not begin before Sept. 1. The state maintains that its 2026 work on the segment requires no discharge into waters of the United States and therefore does not depend on the suspended Corps permit. That is the state's legal position, not a finding by either court.

Three separate tracks now govern the project: the vacated land exchange before Gleason, the suspended Corps permit in consolidated cases before U.S. District Judge Aaron Christian Peterson, and the 2.8-mile compatibility determination before Holland.