Judge vacates 490-acre Izembek land swap, reopening the fight over the King Cove road

A federal judge has voided the land exchange that gave 490 acres of the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge to King Cove Corporation last October, leaving the deal meant to open a road corridor to Cold Bay without legal effect. The ruling does not address when or how title to the acreage reverts. The separate federal wetlands permit for the road is untouched and remains the subject of other pending litigation.

Chief U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason vacated the Interior Department's Oct. 21, 2025, exchange on Aug. 18. She ruled it was subject to Title XI of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, which sets the process for approving road and utility corridors across Alaska conservation lands, and that Interior did not follow it. The exchange, the court held, has no force or effect.

Plaintiffs also prevailed on Endangered Species Act and National Wildlife Refuge System Administration Act claims. The court found mathematical errors in the government's biological opinion serious enough to undercut its determination that the road posed no jeopardy to Steller's eiders. Gleason rejected challenges under ANILCA's subsistence section, NEPA, and an argument that Interior failed to justify reversing prior policy, leaving the agency's subsistence analysis standing.

In return for the refuge acreage, about 336 acres of it designated wilderness, the village corporation gave up 1,739 acres near Kinzarof Lagoon and selection rights to 5,430 acres of wetlands inside the refuge. The 490 acres were the corridor for an 18.9-mile single-lane gravel road between King Cove and the all-weather airport at Cold Bay.

King Cove is an Aleut community of about 800 on the Alaska Peninsula, and its residents have pressed for the road for decades, arguing that overland access to Cold Bay's jet-capable runway can be the difference between life and death when storms ground the medevac flights and boats they otherwise rely on. King Cove's tribal and municipal governments, including the Agdaagux Tribe of King Cove, the Native Village of Belkofski, the City of King Cove, King Cove Corporation and the Aleutians East Borough, have backed the road for years and intervened in the refuge litigation as defendants. The state has committed $18 million toward it. Sen. Dan Sullivan called the decision a betrayal of King Cove residents and said at least 18 people have died for lack of a road. In her ruling, Gleason wrote that she acknowledged "the serious concerns of the residents of King Cove that have sought for decades to have a road," but held that those circumstances could not justify keeping an unlawful exchange in place.

The suit was brought by conservation groups and three Yup'ik tribal governments from the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, hundreds of miles to the north: the Native Village of Hooper Bay, the Native Village of Paimiut and Chevak Native Village. Their stake is the brant and emperor geese that gather at Izembek's lagoons and nest in the delta, where they are a subsistence food. Chief Edgar Tall Sr. of the Native Village of Hooper Bay said his community depends on those birds. "I started learning how to find and save food like the birds, salmon and moose at a very young age from my elders, and that's still how a lot of us get enough food," he said. Rebecca Noblin, Alaska legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity, which represented the tribes, called the ruling "a huge victory for Izembek's wetlands and for all federally protected lands in Alaska."

The fight is decades old and has moved through the courts more than once. A divided Ninth Circuit panel ruled the other way on Title XI in March 2022, upholding an earlier version of the exchange, but the full appeals court vacated that opinion eight months later and ordered a rehearing, and the case was dismissed in 2023 before it was resolved. No binding appellate ruling on the question stands.

The Army Corps of Engineers issued the final federal wetlands permit on July 10, and this month road materials arrived in King Cove and local crews began preparatory work. Gleason's ruling voids the exchange but does not by itself stop work on King Cove Corporation land outside the traded parcel. Conservation groups have asked the court to rule by Aug. 31 on whether that groundwork can proceed, in consolidated lawsuits pending in Anchorage.