Road Threatens Izembek Refuge

Izembek National Wildlife Refuge and Wilderness was established to protect globally significant wetlands habitat, and an abundance of rare wildlife. Hundreds of thousands of waterfowl and shorebirds utilize the refuge, including the entire world population of Pacific Black Brant. The refuge is also home to brown bears and caribou. All of these species and more may be at risk if a proposed road is built through the very heart of this rich habitat.

>> Get the complete scoop on Izembek

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
This incomparable wilderness is habitat to more than 250 animal species, including wolves, grizzlies, caribou.and millions of migrating birds. It is also the subject of an intense lobbying campaign by the oil industry. Unless we stop them, this world-class wilderness will become a vast oil development field.
>> Full Story

These Canada geese are among the hundreds of thousands of migrating waterfowl that rest and feed at the Izembek Lagoon and wetlands complexes of Izembek National Wildlife Refuge. Photo by John Sarvis.

Tongass National Forest

The Tongass forest is a national treasure indispensable to commercial fishermen, hunters, native cultures, and local economies.  The natural beauty and resources of the region have the potential to sustain diverse ways of life for generations to come, but the Forest Service's latest management plan for the Tongass threatens that future by proposing to open many roadless areas to logging.

The Tongass is America's only national forest that allows commercial logging in roadless areas.  The Wilderness Society is working to reverse this policy, and is urging the Forest Service to protect the wilderness values that make the Tongass a globally rare resource.
>> Read more about the future of the Tongass

Oil and Gas Development
Iconic of both Alaska’s wildness and its fragility is the 1.5-million-acre coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The Refuge is at the center of the long debate over oil and gas development in Alaska. But it is not only the Refuge that is in grave danger. The Bush Administration’s frantic emphasis on oil drilling on the nation’s public lands has put a number of other valuable areas in the state at risk.
>> Comments from The Wilderness Society on the Administration’s Most Recent Inventory of Onshore Oil & Gas Resources
>> Oil and Gas in depth

Pristine watersheds like this one in the Tongass may be at risk from logging. Photo by John Schoen.

Tongass and Chugach: Wilderness for America’s Largest National Forests
The largest remaining temperate rainforest in the world is in Alaska, stretching over 1000 miles of coastline. Most of it lies within the 22 million acres of the Tongass and Chugach National Forests. Legislation to designate the best of it as wilderness gained 126 cosponsors in the House during the last Congress. Alaska conservationists expect the bill to be reintroduced early in the 108th Congress.
>> Full Story

The Roadless Rule and Alaska’s Forests
The Bush Administration's reworking of the Roadless Rule puts the Tongass and Chugach National Forests square in the sites of the timber industry.
>> More

Transportation, Access and Off-Road Vehicle Abuse
Perhaps as much as to any other single thing, Alaska owes its wildness and the splendor of its wildlife resources to its roadlessness. The clamor to change that grows and off-road vehicle users are behind most of it. Motors invade roadless areas, wilderness-quality lands, even designated wilderness and National Parks. The Wilderness Society believes that in Alaska, as elsewhere on America’s public lands, areas must be closed to dirt bikes, snowmachines and all-terrain vehicles unless opened and opened only after careful planning and analysis of environmental consequences.
>> Full Story

Planning the Future of Alaska’s Wildlands
The Department of the Interior, which has responsibility for National Parks, National Wildlife Refuges and the national heritage lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management, will develop plans for many of these lands in the years ahead. The Wilderness Society and its partners will be part of this process, working to ensure that wilderness quality lands remain wild and that designated wilderness is managed such that its values endure.
>> Full Story

The Unfulfilled Promise of ANILCA
If Alaska is one of a kind, so is the legal framework for management of its public lands. The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980 (ANILCA) is remarkable for its emphasis on protecting intact wilderness ecosystems in their entirety, including wildlife populations. The law also sought to provide for traditional human uses. Exactly what those provisions mean, though, is far from settled.
>> Full Story