A federal judge in Alaska this week struck down the Trump administration’s decision to green-light a land exchange that had paved the way for a 10.5-mile road to be blazed through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge.
Judge Sharon Gleason, an Obama appointee for the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska, said in a Monday decision the administration committed several unlawful errors in its land-swap approval last year.
The deal was prompted by a decades-long push from locals in the remote coastal region to build a road from the community of King Cove to the town of Cold Bay, more than 18 miles away, where an all-weather airport could ferry sick or injured people to hospitals.
Gleason acknowledged the “hardships” that the lack of a road represents to local residents but said “those circumstances cannot justify keeping in place an unlawful land exchange that would allow road construction to proceed.”
