The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has killed a controversial land swap with an Alaska Native regional corporation.

The agency was considering swapping land inside the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge with Doyon Ltd. Environmentalists and Native villages opposed the transfer, due the impacts from proposed oil and gas development.

"We still live a subsistence way of life out here and we would like to keep it the way it is," Mike Peter, the first chief for the village of Yukon, told The Anchorage Daily News. "We'd like (our children) to have what we had when we grew up. Clean water, clean air, clean land,"

Despite the end of the deal, Doyon plans to develop its land around the refuge. Estimates from the U.S. Geological Survey indicate some promising returns for the corporation.

Get the Story:
Yukon Flats land trade for oil exploration is no deal (The Anchorage Daily News 7/20)

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