Tell the Biden administration to withdraw Trump’s Izembek Refuge land exchange

It was one of the darkest moments for wildlife in the Trump administration: With no authority and no warning, the Department of the Interior gave away globally important habitat in Alaska to let private corporations build a destructive road right through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge.

This backroom deal wasn’t just reckless – it was illegal. Those are Congressionally protected wilderness lands to preserve vital habitat for wildlife. Former Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt had no right to privatize those lands for road builders.

You can help us protect Alaska’s wildlife and wild lands while undoing a horrible precedent!

Add your signature to urge the Biden administration to protect ANILCA and withdraw the Trump administration's land exchange in the Izembek Refuge!

*Defenders will submit your name, city, state and comment. All comments become part of the public record.

Message

President

Joe

Biden

DOW

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Defenders of Wildlife

Dear President Biden and Secretary Haaland,

I urge you to uphold one of our nation’s most important legislative conservation and subsistence protection achievements, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA). ANILCA famously protects over 100 million acres of federal land jewels in Alaska as national parks, refuges, forests, wilderness areas, monuments and wild and scenic rivers, and ensure access to these lands for subsistence uses. It doesn’t allow the Secretary of the Interior to privatize protected lands in the name of roads or economic development.

In 2019, former Interior Secretary Bernhardt, with no public notice or process, traded away Congressionally designated wilderness lands in Alaska’s Izembek National Wildlife Refuge to a private corporation to allow a road to be built through it. No Secretary has the power to do this, nor should they.

The Alaska district court ruled that this action violated ANILCA because it did not further its conservation purposes as required, and because it ignored the statute’s detailed, stringent public process for approving roads in Alaska’s wilderness areas. That process ultimately requires Presidential and Congressional approval. The case is still pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit because the Biden administration has inexplicably continued to defend the land trade in court over the past two years.

This administration should not leave this decision to the courts. The Department of the Interior is charged with managing Alaska’s priceless landscapes and subsistence priority in accordance with ANILCA. It is this administration’s Interior department, in its role as steward of Alaska’s incomparable protected lands, that must unequivocally reject former Secretary Bernhardt’s indefensible abuse of authority and defiance of ANILCA’s purposes and clear intent. Each day that you acquiesce to this backroom deal impugns your integrity as responsible stewards and empowers those who’d like to ignore ANILCA and all it stands for.

Notably, Secretary Haaland need not and cannot make any determination at this point regarding the long-discussed and controversial proposed road. She cannot do so because ANILCA’s required process and findings to support any such decision have not occurred, and because the President and Congress must be involved in that particular decision. But she can and must reject the Bernhardt deal and commit to upholding ANILCA’s text and place in our conservation history.

This request is not just about the Izembek road. It is a plea from Alaska and across the country to uphold our national commitment to conservation and ensure that whatever decision is ultimately reached regarding Izembek follows the rule of law. ANILCA was a spectacular achievement, but the Trump administration defiled it and you must reverse course. We need you to stand up for ANILCA, for its conservation and subsistence purposes, as you are charged to do.

Sincerely, 
{user_data~First Name} {user_data~Last Name}

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