The King Cove road is under construction, but the refuge corridor is still blocked

Construction is underway on the first 2.8 miles of the King Cove road, after a federal appeals court declined to stop it — even as the corridor through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge that would complete the road remains blocked by a separate ruling.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Sept. 16 denied Defenders of Wildlife's request to halt work on the segment, which runs on land owned by King Cove Corp. inside the refuge's outer boundary. The state Department of Transportation announced two days later that construction had begun.

The same day the court ruled, federal highway regulators approved $18 million for the road in an amendment to Alaska's 2024-2027 transportation program. The state's draft 2027-2030 plan, out for comment through Oct. 29, describes the full project as an 18.9-mile single-lane gravel road connecting King Cove to Cold Bay's all-weather airport, for medical evacuations. King Cove's airport is unusable in bad weather for roughly 120 days a year.

The middle of that road is where the fight is. On Aug. 18, U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason vacated the land exchange between the Interior Department and King Cove Corp. that would have handed the corporation a 10.5-mile corridor through the refuge in return for 1,739 acres, ruling that the department had not followed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, the Endangered Species Act and the refuge system's governing law. Without the exchange, the state has no land to build the middle section on.

The 2.8-mile segment doesn't need that exchange, because the corporation already owns the surface. Defenders of Wildlife argues it still can't be built without a valid refuge compatibility determination and has sued over that separately. The state maintains the segment needs no Army Corps permit because no fill will go into wetlands.

Environmental groups and tribal governments from the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, whose subsistence bird harvests depend on populations that stage at Izembek, are also challenging the wetlands permit the Army Corps issued in July for the larger road.

The state has intervened in the litigation on the road's side. King Cove residents have sought the road since the refuge was created in 1960.