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NEW: Feb 13th Deadline to Protect Izembek National Wildlife Refuge!

UPDATE (as of December 28th): A HUGE THANK YOU to everyone who attended the hearings, either in person or virtually! And an enormous shout out to those of you who have submitted comments.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has extended the deadline for comments until February 13th, 2025. Any comments already submitted will still be considered. 

A proposed land exchange at the end of the Alaska Peninsula threatens wildlife conservation and the protection of public lands in Alaska. Pristine wilderness and high value wetlands within the refuge would be traded away in order to build a road from King Cove to Cold Bay. We need all Friends to speak up and oppose this land swap! Submit your public comment today- the deadline has been extended until February 13, 2025.

The draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (draft SEIS) completed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service selected Alternative 6 as the preferred alternative- to implement a land swap with King Cove in order to build the road along the isthmus through the refuge and designated wilderness.

In person and virtual hearings: 

    These meetings took place in December and  there are  no more scheduled.  Thank you all who participated.  
    Comments 
    We need all Friends to submit comments!! Comments can be submitted online here.regulations.gov. Bullet points for your testimony are below, but we need you to draft your own response– each unique set of comments is counted as one comment, while identical comments (say, if Friends of Alaska National Wildlife Refuges gave out a script for you to copy and paste) are counted as only one comment, regardless of the number of submissions.





























    Map of the Preferred Alternative
    showing road corridor, exchange lands.  Note how the road bifurcates the refuge at the narrowest part cutting between Izembek Lagoon  and Kinzarof Lagoon.  Also note the wetlands it will pass through and all the planned “material sites”.  I imagine it will take a lot of gravel from those material sites to fill in a wetland like that.  Note the significance of that narrow neck for migration.  It is also a “blow hole” with winds howling from the Bering Sea to the north to the Gulf of Alaska to the south.  Preventing drifting snow on this road would be a significant challenge.

    Sample talking points
    for your comments
    :

    The comments taken most seriously by agencies are those in your own words for your own reasons.  But here are some thoughts on why the road is such a terrible idea.

    • Izembek is a world class coastal wetland, recognized as a Wetland of International Importance under the Ramsar Convention.
    • Nearly the entire world’s population of Pacific black brant depend on the Izembek Lagoon complex for migrating and/or wintering as well as hundreds of thousands of other waterbirds.
    • The trade would cause the refuge to lose high value wetlands in exchange for lower value wildlife habitat.
    • The road would affect the migration corridor used by caribou, bear and others by bisecting the narrow neck of land between the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska.  This road would inevitably bring hunters to this narrow crossing.
    • The trade would set a dangerous precedent far beyond Izembek because it would allow lands established as a Conservation Unit by the Alaska National Interest Lands Act (ANILCA) to be taken out of the refuge and lose its conservation status without the approval of Congress.  Congress created the refuge.  If the boundaries are to be changed, Congress should do it.  To allow the Secretary of the Interior to undue Congress’s work in passing ANILCA  threatens all ANILCA Conservation Units – National Parks, National Forests, National Wildlife Refuges in Alaska.
    • The trade would set another dangerous precedent by taking Congressionally designated Wilderness out of the National Wilderness Preservation System to be traded to private ownership.  Again, only Congress should undue a Wilderness designation.
    • Native groups other than King Cove oppose the swap.  Twenty resolutions and a letter representing 78 tribes have been submitted asking for the “no action” alternative.
    • The trade will only harm the refuge and the purposes for which it was Congressionally created.
    • The Izembek National Wildlife Refuge is one of the most ecologically significant wetland areas in the world. The entire population of Pacific black brant and Emperor Geese rely on the refuge’s eelgrass beds. The wetlands themselves are internationally recognized as hugely significant for bird populations. 
    • The draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement disregards years of precedent and work to protect Izembek’s wetlands and lagoons. Everyone involved in conservation work understands that roads bring people and development. Izembek should not face that fate.
    • Over 80 resolutions from Native tribes in Alaska were submitted to Secretary Haaland urging her to choose the “no action” alternative. She disregarded those resolutions. 

    Thank you, and remember to submit your comments by December 30, 2024 February 13, 2025!



    Black Brant, Izembek National Wildlife Refuge, PC: USFWS/Kristine Sowl




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    Our Gifts to the Refuges: Friends in 2024

    By Poppy Benson, Vice President for Outreach

    How did we fulfill our mission of supporting the Alaska National Wildlife Refuges through 1) direct support both financial and with volunteer time, 2) outreach and education and 3) advocacy?  Our outreach and education programs were better than ever but budget uncertainty and staff loss made it difficult to develop volunteer projects.  Our advocacy efforts faced very stormy weather.

    Fairbanks Friends member Gail Mayo (l) with refuge volunteer at the Arctic Interagency Visitor Center in Coldfoot.

    Volunteering: 
    More than 50 Friends volunteered on eight different refuges.  Selawik offered projects for the first time in memory – office and maintenance help and help with camps for village kids.  Also, significant this year was the amount of help refuges were requesting with visitor centers.  Friends went to Kodiak and Tetlin for month assignments as well as a few weeks for Arctic at the Interagency Visitor Center in Coldfoot.  Public events required the most volunteers with Friends helping at the Kachemak Bay Shorebird Festival, Kenai Riverfest, Kenai Sportsman Show, Migratory Bird Days at Creamer’s Field, Seabird Fest in Seward, Bethel Ducks Unlimited Banquet, and Walks for the Wild at Kenai, Alaska Maritime and Anchorage.   Numerous Friends volunteered at Kodiak, Kenai and Alaska Maritime refuges to staff visitor center desks and refuge special events.  Izembek and Tetlin needed biological help with brant surveys and duck banding.  With the exception of two volunteers that we had travel funding for, all other volunteers paid their own travel although refuges provided housing.  For three projects we were unable to help because no one applied.   Take a look at the project photos and stories on our volunteer activities page

    In 2024 we had less volunteer requests than we could have because Congress failed to pass a budget until late into the year causing refuges to avoid committing to projects.  In addition, some refuges have lost so many staff that there is no one to plan or supervise a project.  These conditions are likely to persist in 2025.  To have any kind of a volunteer program, we need a volunteer coordinator to help develop opportunities and match members to jobs.  See the article below.  Interested?  Write us at volunteer@alaskarefugefriends.org.

    Funding:  About $16,000 was approved by the Board to support refuge projects which includes half of our unrestricted funds plus some designated funds for specific refuges which come from bequests, donation boxes and other sources.  Some projects are annual such as interns at Arctic Refuge’s Canning River Research Camp, school bus reimbursements for Kenai Refuge field trips, and support for the Migratory Bird Calendar.   New this year was support to bring an Unangan artist to Homer for bentwood hat making workshops, support for a scoping meeting in Anchorage for the Alaska Maritime’s rat eradication proposal and for Koyukuk/Nowitna’s river management planning meeting, and a tablet for Innoko.  We paid travel for the Friends volunteer to Izembek, a very expensive place to get to, and used some of our funds and a small grant from the Fish & Wildlife Retirees Association to pay the way of an environmental educator to Kotzebue for Selawik Refuge’s art and science camp.  We contributed funds to a variety of refuge community events from Christmas bird count activities at Togiak, to the 20th Anniversaries of the Arctic Interagency Visitor Center and the Alaska Maritime Refuge’s Visitor Center and an art opening at Selawik Refuge. We received an additional Fish & Wildlife Service Retiree’s grant of $1600 which paid for seven urban youth to attend the Kachemak Bay Shorebird Festival. A $5000 grant from the Sam and Mary Lawrence Foundation partially paid for four Native student interns with the Kodiak Refuge and a student intern at Innoko.  A $6000 designated gift from the Safari Club is purchasing steel shot to trade out with lead shot and has paid for shipping lead shot off  the Yukon Delta Refuge. 

    Friends has long supported the Migratory Bird Calendar contest with prizes for the many winners from refuge villages.  This charming calendar featuring the drawings and writings of village children can be picked up from refuge offices throughout Alaska.  If you are a member and not near a refuge office, contact us and we will send one.

    Outreach and Education:
      This was a very successful year for our meetings with more attendees than ever.  Archaeology in the Aleutians with 200 people had the highest attendance ever and a new watch party in Dutch Harbor that attracted 18.  The three meetings this fall averaged 150 attendees between in person, watch parties and zoom.  We learned about the Koyukuk/Nowitna/Innoko Refuge complex, the Fish and Wildlife’s new initiative to save salmon – “Gravel to Gravel”, winter recreation on the Kenai Refuge, float hunting on interior refuges, migratory bird work on all the refuges and the Porcupine caribou herd of the Arctic Refuge.   Our programs are recorded and you can view those you missed here.  Speaker watch parties resumed in Anchorage for the first time since the pandemic.  We partnered for some meetings with Backcountry Hunters & Anglers for the Float hunting talk, Campbell Creek Science Center for Porcupine Caribou and REI for Flying Wild.

    We Friends were the only ones representing Alaska Refuges at the Migratory Bird Day Festival in Fairbanks.  No refuge staff were available due to budget cuts.  This is likely to get worse making our role in refuge outreach more critical.  Tom Chard, Fairbanks Friends Board member, helping a child with a wildlife game.

    Advocacy:  This has been an extraordinarily challenging year for advocacy.  Although we signed on with a number of other Alaska conservation groups to letters opposing bad Congressional legislation and continued to intervene in Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority’s (AIDEA) lawsuit to reinstate their Arctic Refuge leases, we have lost some major battles to protect refuges.  We commented on the Arctic Refuge’s Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) on an oil and gas leasing program in the Refuge and signed on to extensive comments by the Arctic Coalition spearheaded by Trustees for Alaska. The No Action alternative was, unfortunately, not a legal alternative because the 2017 Tax Act requires this lease sale.  We supported the alternative with the greatest, but still inadequate protective measures for the Refuge resources and the original purposes for which the Refuge was created. The final SEIS was issued on November 8 and selected this alternative. These protections will guide the second oil and gas lease sale scheduled for January 9.   

     As I write, the Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) for Izembek Refuge is out for review with a preferred alternative selected by the Fish and Wildlife Service of trading away high-quality refuge wetlands and designated Wilderness to provide for a road through the heart of the refuge.  This was a huge blow after the years we have been fighting this through lawsuits and letter writing.  See the advocacy section for more on this and how to comment.

    In November the Fish and Wildlife Service proposed a land exchange to accomodate a road through the wetlands and designated Wilderness of the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge.  PC Cindy Mom, Seldovia Friends volunteer on Izembek Brant Project.

    Friends leadership met with the FWS Alaska Regional Director in May to discuss our concerns about reduced staffing at refuges. Unfortunately, things got even worse as more budget cuts were applied. By the end of January there will be only seven refuge managers left for 16 refuges.  Kodiak has lost three out of four of its outreach staff and the visitor center has closed for the winter for the first time in my memory. We have also recently heard that none of these positions will be filled in the foreseeable future.  The last Trump administration instituted a six-month hiring freeze. The three refuges in Fairbanks have dropped all their public programs except fulfilling their obligation to partner with BLM and NPS on the Coldfoot Interagency Visitor Center during the summer.  The 19-million-acre Yukon Delta Refuge lacks a pilot or a public use person.  This is a thorny problem at the Washington and state level and I don’t see that we have made any progress advocating for budgets. 

    All this reminds us of the quote by noted author and conservationist Rachel Carson, “Conservation is a cause that has no end. There is no point at which we will say our work is finished.”  Details and numerous other issues which caught our attention in 2024 are described in our Advocacy Reports here.

    This was only our second Friends sponsored Discovery trip this time to the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge.  Eight Friends got to see for themselves how special this refuge is.  Refuge staff spent a full day with us at headquarters in Bethel outlining their programs and challenges and exploring ideas for Friends help. Our first trip was in 2023 to the Arctic Refuge.

    Thank you all for your support that allowed us to accomplish these things.  Sixteen refuges and 75 million acres requires all of us pulling together to give refuges the help they need.  It is hard to be hopeful looking at 2025 and the change in administration.  We need to up our game.




    Open post

    November Advocacy Update

    By Caroline Brouwer, Advocacy Committee Chair

    Alaska’s refuges are taking a hit this month, between the decision by the Biden Administration to propose a land swap with the King Cove Corporation in order to build a road through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge and the announcement that 400,000 acres of land in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge will be auctioned off for oil and gas leases.

    The only comforting news is that the announced acreage for oil and gas leasing in the Arctic Refuge is the smallest amount allowable by law. The Administration is required by law (the 2017 Tax Act) to hold a lease sale, so they have chosen to put the smallest acreage possible up for auction. This second Arctic Refuge lease sale will take place January 9, 2025. During the first lease sale in early 2021, there was very little interest from lease purchasers. We will see what happens in January.

    The Izembek announcement (as part of the draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement) was just baffling in its absurdity. Refuge Friends and other public lands advocates have fought this potential road for decades, and now all of a sudden the Biden Administration decides to go forward with a road that will carve a path through one of the most remote and protected lands in the Refuge System, and for what? A supposed medical evacuation path in one of the most difficult terrains in the world to traverse in the winter. It’s nonsensical.

    Friends sent out an action alert last week regarding the Izembek road, and a hearing was held in Anchorage on December 9th. Many, many thanks to those of you who attended! Please let us know if you went, and what your thoughts were on the hearing- you can email me here.

    You can still comment online, at the remaining public meeting or at the virtual meetings this week.  Each of the virtual meetings are tailored for an Alaska Peninsula community but they have been very clear that anyone can attend and testify at these virtual hearings.

    A  FWS web page.on the project has a great deal of background information.

    • Bethel, Thurs, Dec. 12, 6 – 8, Yupiit Piciryarait Cultural Center,  420 Chief Eddie Hoffman Hwy  

    • Virtual – Register online at the links below

    Please take action by December 30th! The link to comment is here.

    Map of the road the FWS proposes to allow in Alternative 6, the preferred alternative. Note the wetlands and the narrow neck of land between the two highly productive lagoons – Izembek and Kinzarof Lagoons – that will be bifurcated by the road.  Note also the intent to take gravel from numerous sites along the road.  Source: Draft SEIS




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    “The Trip of a Lifetime!”  Surveying Brant on the Izembek Refuge

    By Cindy Mom, Seldovia Friends member

    I had the privilege to volunteer on the brant survey at Izembek National Wildlife Refuge this fall. Afterwards, it took me two days to get home from Cold Bay to Seldovia, and even when my cargo was unpacked and put away, I felt like my mental and emotional experiences from Izembek were still very present – not unpacked yet at all. What a beautiful and wild place! I still see the thick luscious eelgrass in my mind’s eye, and all those brant slurping it up with pure delight. The raucous sounds of thousands of happy geese can’t help but make you happy, too.

    The Refuge staff and visiting biologists welcomed me to the Brant crew, and made it easy to explore and enjoy the Refuge. Our six-person crew (usually split into two groups of three) visited the brant goose habitat, the incredibly extensive eelgrass bed of Izembek Lagoon. To get to our observation points we hiked across the tundra or boated in inflatable skiffs to shallow waters or shorelines. Once there, we set up spotting scopes and counted flocks of brant, using clickers to tally adults vs. juveniles. While one or two people scoped and counted, one person recorded data and watched for bears.


    The Izembek Lagoon is one of the very few places on earth that I have visited that feels still intact, and complete, and of-itself.   Pc Cindy Mom

    As the entire population of Pacific black brant, about 150,000 birds, stages for about eight weeks in the Izembek Lagoon Complex, Izembek’s Brant Age Ratio Survey provides an estimate of the age composition of the entire arctic and subarctic breeding populations. This survey provides the only measure of annual productivity for the brant and an index of recruitment as most first-year mortality occurs between hatch and fall migration.   

    The absolute best part was getting to work with an amazing crew of wildlife biologists, who know how to efficiently get the job done and still have fun while doing it. Everyone had such obvious and infectious enjoyment in the work and the beautiful wild Refuge, it made it easy to deal with the discomforts of field work in wet, windy, and cold conditions. I truly feel this was the trip of a lifetime, and appreciate the opportunity to explore the Izembek Refuge, learn about eelgrass and brant, see walruses and several life birds, and contribute something to this important study. My travel expenses were covered by the Friends, which made this trip possible; otherwise, it would have remained an unreachable dream. Thank you, Friends!



    Wet, windy and cold.  It was October out there!  We only lost two survey days to extreme weather.  I organized the refuge library on those days.  PC Randall Friendly.