David Voigts.

Alaska’s Izembek National Wildlife Refuge – one of the world’s most important migratory bird staging and wintering habitats – is under attack. For many years, a way to connect the remote community of King Cove to Cold Bay, a larger town with an all-weather airport and better medical care has been sought. A 19-mile road through the heart of the refuge’s wilderness area has consistently been rejected in favor of other alternatives. However, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has come up with a new plan of swapping some of the refuge’s wilderness land for other lands that could be turned into a new wildlife refuge. If this happens, for the first time ever, land designated as wilderness would be declassified.

Beyond this precedent, the Izembek refuge provides a unique and vital habitat. Its lagoons have large eelgrass beds that provide food for essentially the entire Pacific Brant migratory population, almost all of the world population of Emperor Geese, and a significant percentage of the threatened Steller’s Eider and other waterfowl. Also, because of our warming climate, about 30% of the Brant are remaining at Izembek for the winter, making the eelgrass beds even more important.

If you care about wilderness and waterfowl, you can provide comments to the Fish and Wildlife Service’s draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement before the February 13, 2025, deadline. Additional information is available at https://ak.audubon.org/news/izembek-at-risk. Included is a sample letter of comment that can be submitted with one click or modified before submittal.

David Voigts is a retired ecologist and the current Conservation Chair for the Prairie Rapids Audubon Society. He is a Tama County native, graduating from Dinsdale High School, and lives in rural Jesup on his wife’s family farm.