Carter asks court to defend Alaska's 'unrivaled wilderness'

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Former President Jimmy Carter on Monday took the unusual step of weighing in on a court case involving his landmark conservation act and a remote refuge in Alaska.

Carter filed an amicus brief in the longstanding legal dispute over efforts to build a road through the refuge, worried that a recent ruling in favor of a proposed land exchange aimed at building a road through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge goes beyond this one case and could allow millions of acres to be opened for “adverse development.”

Residents in the community of King Cove want to exchange land to build a gravel road through the refuge to provide access to an all-weather airport in nearby Cold Bay for medical transports.

Carter in 1980 signed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, which established 162,500 square miles (420,873 square kilometers) of national park lands in Alaska. The act, he said, struck a “careful and lasting balance” between development and protection.

Congress created the 486-square-mile (1,258-sq. kilometer) Izembek National Wildlife Refuge that year. Izembek Lagoon holds one of the world’s largest beds of eelgrass, a rich food source for Pacific brant geese, endangered Steller’s eider sea ducks and other migratory birds.

In 2013, then-Interior Secretary Sally Jewell rejected a land exchange. Environmental groups oppose a road for the precedent it would set and for the potential harm to brown bear, caribou, salmon and seabird habitat.

Former President Donald Trump’s first Interior secretary, Ryan Zinke, signed a new land exchange deal, which a federal judge later ruled against. Later, Zinke’s successor, David Bernhardt, agreed to a swap, saying the needs of King Cove residents were more important. However, that agreement was vacated by...