Local and national environmental groups are working just as fiercely to block the road.

The road would connect King Cove, with a population of about 800, and the airport at Cold Bay, population 87, some 25 miles away.

The proposed exchange includes a total of 61,000 acres, which includes nearly 43,000 acres of state land plus more than 18,000 acres of land the village corporation King Cove Corp. selected under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.

That acreage would be traded for 206 acres that would allow for a road easement, measuring between 100 feet and 150 feet wide.

The refuge is not unmarred. Several dirt and gravel roads and various trails already snake through the area, remnants of activities that date back to World War II, and are used today.

“There was a network of outposts through the Izembek area during World War II and the roads connected those outposts with the main base at Cold Bay,” Mack said. “There are still remnants of those outposts in the wilderness.”

Many of the trails and roads were in continuous use after the war years by sport and subsistence hunters, and up until 10 years ago that was not a concern, Mack said. Now the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in an effort to shut down some of those traffic arteries, is maintaining roads in the refuge only up to the wilderness boundaries, he said.

Area residents meanwhile continue their legal subsistence hunting and gathering throughout the entire area, he said.

Meanwhile, environmental groups, including the National Wildlife Refuge Association, argue that the road threatens vital habitat for Pacific black brant geese, Steller's eiders, Emperor geese, tundra swans and the southern Alaska Peninsula caribou herd.

“We are definitely not going to change our opinion of the road,” said Desiree Sorenson-Groves, vice president of government affairs for the Washington, D.C.-based Wildlife Refuge Association. “We feel it would harm a national wildlife refuge. If we feel something would be detrimental to a national wildlife refuge, we have to speak out.”

Local village officials argue that the road would provide ground access from King Cove to Cold Bay to get emergency medical cases to Anchorage. They cite numerous fatalities from small plane crashes that have occurred as a result of King Cove residents trying to reach Cold Bay's airport in emergencies when the weather was questionable.

When stormy conditions or poor visibility prevented small aircraft from leaving the ground, residents have risked crossing the rough waters to Cold Bay by boat, a trip that takes about three hours.

“We had a situation where an elderly lady with a heart condition died at the dock at Cold Bay after being transported by boat from King Cove in bad weather,” said Della Trumble, president of the King Cove Corp., an Alaska Native firm based in King Cove.

Sorenson-Groves said she is sympathetic to the village's medical needs. When her organization met in Washington, D.C., in late September with officials from King Cove and the Aleutians East Borough, the environmental group offered to help find additional funds to operate hovercraft and to help find a physician to staff the King Cove clinic, she said.

“We even broached an idea for a satellite field station for the Coast Guard at Cold Bay,” she said. “None of us want the people of King Cove not to have medical facilities. I'm from a small town in Iowa, I know what that's like.”

Nicole Whittington-Evans, speaking for the Wilderness Society in Alaska, also opposes the road.

“We believe that the compromise was reached in 1998, when Congress passed the King Cove Health and Safety Act,” she said.

The federal legislation allocated $37.5 million to address health and transportation needs in King Cove. Money went to such items as upgrading the health clinic, purchasing a hovercraft and improving the Cold Bay airport.

“Compared to so many other communities, King Cove has a pretty good situation” with state-of-the-art telemedicine and a hovercraft that can transport them most of the time, Whittington-Evans said.

The King Cove road issue first came before Congress nine years ago. In 1998, a road plan between King Cove and the Cold Bay airport, located 25 miles away, was rejected after conservation groups opposed it.

As a compromise, Congress appropriated $37.5 million under the King Cove Health and Safety Act for improvements to King Cove's medical clinic, airport and a road/marine transportation system link between the two communities.

A 17-mile road was built from King Cove to the border of Izembek National Wildlife Refuge. A multi-million dollar hovercraft was purchased to ferry residents from King Cove to the Cold Bay airport. Now in operation less than a year, the hovercraft is operating at a deficit and can't be used when winds exceed 50 miles an hour, officials said. According to the National Weather Service, winds in the area exceed 50 miles an hour about 30 days of every year.

Mack said the $37.5 million allocated in the compromise legislation came with problems of its own.

“When they put the (money) in, they said, 'You have 15 minutes to decide if you want the money or not,' so they took it,” Mack said. “They didn't realize there were strings attached.”

For example, the package included $2 million for the health clinic, but to meet Indian Health Service requirements for the money, the city of King Cove had to find another $3 million.

The land exchange would add thousands of acres to the wilderness, which would benefit wildlife, said Mack, the village corporation's Trumble and King Cove Mayor Ernest Weiss.

“It's a tremendous amount of land that we're putting on the table,” Trumble said. “It's tough when I think that we're giving this land back to the government in order to have access to this road. That land represents who we are as a people.”

Under the proposal the state of Alaska would foot the bill for the road construction, including a cable barrier on each side to keep off-road vehicles from accessing the refuge.

Most residents of King Cove are Aleuts, descendants of the indigenous people of the region. The Aleuts have lived on the Alaska Peninsula for more than 4,000 years. When a major portion of land between King Cove and Cold Bay was designated as wilderness in 1980, it was done without any consultation of the Native people who live here, Weiss said.

Mack, himself a subsistence hunter, also argues that the land exchange would provide valuable wetlands for trumpeter swans and other waterfowl. He added that the road would be three to four miles from the eel grass beds, which are critical feed to Pacific black brant and would not affect their feeding.

“The major impact on black brant is the sports hunters, who go in skiffs and hunt them,” he said.