*Alert*Yukon Flats Refuge Land Trade*Alert*

Comment Period Re-opens!

Submit written comments by May 19, 2008:

Yukon Flats EIS Project Office

c/o ENSR 1835 South Bragaw, Suite 490

Anchorage, AK 99508

OR use the internet comment form:

http://yukonflatseis.ensr.com/Yukon_Flats/Comments.aspx

Please Support Alternative 3, “No Action.”

Bush Administration Fast Track Deal:

Thanks to many requests from tribes, conservation organizations and the public, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is taking public comments for another 30-days on the controversial Yukon Flats Land Trade draft Environmental Impact Statement.  If you already commented, please do so again and raise new issues.  If you haven’t commented yet, here is your opportunity. Explain why you care about the Issue. Please help stop the Yukon Flats land trade.

THE ISSUE: A proposed land swap between U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and for-profit Doyon Ltd. would remove 110,000 acres of critical and irreplaceable wildlife subsistence habitat from the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to allow oil and gas development on the land. It also threatens Beaver Creek National Wild River and Victoria Creek in White Mountains National Recreation Area with an oil pipeline and haul road corridor. The Refuge would obtain scattered parcels of land nearer to villages which are not currently threatened by development, but now would be at risk of contamination from operations upstream in the watershed and eventual industrial sprawl. Yukon Flats communities and communities on the Yukon River subsistence way of life is under threat by this land trade.

Local communities are seriously concerned with the proposed land exchange and potential human and ecological impacts, as well as impacts to their subsistence way of life. Please see the following websites for more information on local opposition:

·         Learn more concerns from Fort Yukon tribal government: http://www.fortyukon.org/

Visit the REDOIL website for documents on the issue:

·         http://www.ienearth.org/redoil-up/redoil.html

What is Proposed?

Phase I: The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) has proposed to give Doyon a total of 210,000 acres of oil and gas lands (110,000 acres in fee title plus 97,000 acres of subsurface oil and gas rights).  In exchange, Doyon has committed to trade 150,000 acres of scattered parcels of land.  

Phase II: If Doyon produces oil or gas on the exchange lands, the FWS will receive a production payment of 1.25-1.5% of the resource value at the wellhead and Doyon has agreed to sell up to another 120,000 acres of land, although funds could be used throughout the state.

Yukon Flats Refuge Purposes:

·         Conserve fish and wildlife populations and habitats, including migratory birds, sheep, bears, moose, wolves, wolverines, caribou and salmon.

·         Fulfill international treaties on fish and wildlife and their habitats.

·         Provide for continued subsistence uses by local residents.

·         Ensure water quality and quantity.

How are Tribes impacted?

·         All Tribes that are located on the Yukon River and rely upon Yukon River Salmon for their subsistence needs ought to be concerned about this issue and request Government to Government Consultations.  There are Salmon Treaty issues at stake as well as subsistence issues. The DEIS does not address impacts of a major Yukon River Spill for instance.

·         Alaska Tribes that are near or within Refuge systems, ought to be concerned about the potential buyout of Native Allotments within Refuges by USFWS that this deal sets precedent on.  Keep Native Lands in Native Hands!

·         This Land Exchange sets dangerous precedent for future development within other Refuges throughout the State of Alaska.

Other Points to consider for your comments:

The primary beneficiaries of this proposed land trade are Doyon, Limited, an Alaska Native Regional Corporation who will acquire what are now refuge lands to contract with multi-national oil companies for oil and gas development, and the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) who will acquire Native lands around Gwich'in villages through the trade from wellhead taxes once multi-national oil companies are invited to lease and contract and production of oil and gas development begins on what today are refuge lands within Gwich'in traditional ancestral territory. The FWS will also be able to purchase native lands in other wildlife refuges within the State with the proceeds, so this land trade is detrimental to other Native communities in the State of Alaska as well.

There really would be little or no genuine long-term benefits for the Gwich'in people within this deal, and the overall direct and cumulative impacts will be largely detrimental to lands that Gwich'in rely upon to meet subsistence needs. The Gwich'in people will be impoverished over time as their land base dwindles and they lose ownership and control within their ancestral territories, the resources they depend upon are irreparably damaged, their health and well being is compromised and overall they bear the brunt of all the negative consequences and suffer disproportionate harmful impacts from this proposal.

In traditional values, Gwich'in hold their lands in high respect, the land is there to provide for all time, the western value system of selling and buying land is a foreign concept that Native peoples in Alaska were forced into realizing when the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) went into effect. As Gwich'in elders have simply put it: "Our land is forever, money is short term"

Gwich’in Key Concerns: subsistence resources and rights (loss of habitat, hunting and fishing), water and air quality, roads and pipelines (access and competition for resources, loss of local control, introduction of alcohol and drugs) human and ecological health, socio- effects, land title, jobs, and Climate Change among other issues.