Friday, December 27, 2013

Feds Won’t Let Isolated Alaska Town Build One Lane Gravel Road Through Wildlife Refuge

Feds Won’t Let Isolated Alaska Town Build One Lane Gravel Road Through Wildlife Refuge:
A small Alaska town wants to build a one lane gravel road through a wildlife refuge so residents will have access to things like hospitals. The Obama administration won’t let them because, well, birds.
After four years of study, the Obama administration has decided on that the isolated community of King Cove, Alaska may not build a 22-mile, single-lane gravel road through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge to the town of Cold Bay.
The decision, announced on Dec. 23 by Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, has infuriated the people of King Cove, where the proposed road has been discussed since the 1980s.
The road would have given them access to emergency medical and other services by way of the all-weather airport at Cold Bay.
“Are birds really more important than people? It seems so hard to believe that the federal government finds it impossible to accommodate both wildlife and human beings,” the Associated Press quoted Aleutians East Borough Mayor Stanley Mack as saying.
The proposed deal included a lopsided land swap: In exchange for using 200 acres within the wildlife refuge for road construction, the State of Alaska and the King Cove Corporation offered to add 55,000 acres to the Izembek Refuge. (Read More)
This is the same administration that has no problem with solar panels burning birds or windmills hacking them to pieces.