EIS to be Prepared for Road Through Alaska Refuge

The Fish and Wildlife Service has announced plans to prepare an environmental impact statement for a land exchange associated with construction of a road through Izembek National Wildlife Refuge and wilderness area.

The road – under consideration for more than a decade - would connect the communities of King Cove and Cold Bay, located on Cold Bay in the eastern Aleutian Islands.

"The exchange would add 56,393 acres to the Izembek and Alaska Peninsula National Wildlife Refuges, designate 43,000 acres as wilderness, transfer 1,600 acres of refuge lands on Sitkinak Island to the State, and create a 206-acre, 9-mile corridor through Izembek Refuge upon which the road would be constructed," according to a FWS press release.

"Scoping comments will be accepted through the scoping period which will extend through the last of the planned public meetings," according to Bruce Woods, with the FWS. "The meetings have yet to be scheduled so it's impossible to set a closing date as yet."

A notice of intent to prepare the EIS was recently published in the Federal Register.

Maps courtesy of the Alaska region office, FWS.