On Tuesday, Secretary of Interior Deb Haaland announced she took back land that her department had traded with the King Cove community — land that was needed for an 18-mile, one-lane gravel road to the Cold Bay airport, where people of the village could be evacuated if injured or sick.
Immediately, Alaska’s Sen. Dan Sullivan issued a statement: T”his decision is the latest act in Secretary Haaland’s disingenuous playbook: Tell Alaskans, particularly Alaska Native people, that you support something, like Native veteran allotments or the King Cove Road, then purposefully delay it for years so it can never actually happen.”
Gov. Mike Dunleavy also quickly responded to the take-back: “While Secretary Haaland claims that she wants to consider alternative land exchanges, that will push the entire process back to square one and place the lives of King Cove residents at risk today,” Dunleavy said. “The fact is her decision to halt the land swap increases the likelihood that a resident in King Cove won’t be able to receive life-saving medical treatment in time due to bad weather at the villages airstrip. The 11-mile road from King Cove to Cold Bay would connect residents in King Cove to an all-weather airport in Cold Bay and would save lives. It makes zero sense that Secretary Haaland would want to deprive Alaskans of the life-saving services the road would provide access to.”
The following day, Sen. Lisa Murkowski issued a statement: “For years, the people of King Cove have heard false promises that brought them empty hope for a life-saving road. That’s why this announcement – that the Department of the Interior will withdraw from the 2020 land exchange agreement to facilitate that road – is so disappointing. My message is no more false promises. No further delay. I will be watching and doing everything I can to hold the Secretary to her word. And I know Della Trumble, Etta Kuzakin, and her daughter, Sunny Rae—who is now a beautiful 10-year-old, thanks to an emergency Coast Guard medevac—will be right there with me, along with all who live in King Cove.”
But three days later, Rep. Mary Peltola has only given a statement to reporters who asked for it. She appears uncomfortable criticizing Halaland for her double-cross and has tried to fly under the media radar and put a positive spin on Haaland’s theft of land that belongs, by agreement, to King Cove Corp.:
“It is unclear to me why the (Interior) Department decided that the existing proposal, which they had previously defended in court, is now seen as deficient,” Peltola said to a reporter in a statement not posted anywhere on her social media feed or at her congressional website. “However, I am glad that the Secretary has stated her support to the people of King Cove for a road and other land exchange proposals, and I encourage the Department to rapidly begin their process for doing so, in order to minimize the effects of this disruption. The people of King Cove have waited too long for the basic right of access to life-saving medical evacuation, and they cannot afford more unnecessary delays.”
The land exchange was negotiated because the federal government didn’t want a road through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge. As far back as Interior Secretary Sally Jewell in the Obama Administration, the animals were prioritized by administrations over the health of the majority native population of King Cove.
In 2014, Jewell told the people of King Cove, Alaska, that she cared more about animals than she cared about the human health and that was why she was refusing their request for the land swap. The land needed for a road is less than 1 percent of the Izembek refuge.
“She stood up in the gymnasium and told those kids, ‘I’ve listened to your stories, now I have to listen to the animals,” said former Democrat state Rep. Bob Herron, describing the meeting to a reporter in 2014. “You could have heard a pin drop in that gymnasium.”
Under President Donald Trump, Secretary of Interior David Bernhardt made a different choice in 2019, and allowed the land swap to take place.
But Haaland and the Biden Administration have taken back the land, which represents less than 1 percent of the Izembek refuge. Haaland said she wants to go through the review process for the deal that was made four years ago.
Her review of the sealed exchanged is, Haaland said, “rooted in a commitment to engagement in meaningful nation-to-nation consultation with Tribes, to protecting the national wildlife refuge system, and to upholding the integrity of ANILCA’s subsistence and conservation purposes.”
