"If Interior Secretary Ken Salazar balks at overruling the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's myopic decision blocking a short, one-lane road between King Cove and Cold Bay - and it stands - there is a single certainty. Someone will die.

There is no maybe. Sooner. Later. Someone will die.

King Cove is the poster village for the disconnect between Alaska and a contemptuous federal government; illustrative of an imperial bureaucracy that values a duck above a human life; a victim of special interest payoffs and forgotten federal trust responsibilities for Native Alaskans.

Salazar? He sees blocking the road through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge as balancing the scale for the Obama administration's allowing increased drilling offshore in Alaska; a tit for tat payoff to his green pals who view the road as the devil's work."

Get the Story:
Paul Jenkins: King Cove should get its road (The Anchorage Daily News 2/9)

Related Stories:
Editorial: Road through wildlife refuge benefits Native village (2/6)
Alaska Native village won't get road through wildlife refuge (2/5)