Trump Administration Set To Lift Protections On Alaska’s Tongass National Forest

One of Alaska’s most beloved tourism destinations—the old-growth, wildlife-rich Tongass National Forest—edged one step closer to losing protections last week. On Friday, the U.S. Forest Service released its final environmental review on plans to lift all roadless restrictions from the forest to open up millions of acres to logging. At 16.7 million acres, the Tongass is the nation’s biggest national forest, and part of the largest intact temperate rainforest in the world.

The decision threatens the region’s robust tourism economy. From wildlife watching, hunting, fishing and sight-seeing on the Inside Passage to cultural experiences offered by the indigenous tribes who’ve called the area home for thousands of years, the Tongass region hosts the highest number of tourism-related jobs in Alaska: 48% of the state’s total, generating $761 million annually in labor income.

“The Tongass is where many Americans come to see Alaska, to experience abundant wildlife in an intact, wild landscape,” said Andy Moderow, Alaska director for Alaska Wilderness League.

The move also endangers some of the last productive wild salmon runs in the world; threatens traditional ways of life; and paves the way to eradicating one of America’s greatest resources in the fight against climate change. A 2019 scientific analysis showed that the Tongass absorbs more carbon than any other national forest, on a level with the world’s most dense terrestrial carbon sinks in South America—illustrating why many scientists call the Tongass the “lungs of the country.”

“The largest intact temperate rainforest left in the world, the millions of salmon, 650 million tons of carbon storage, and the people, businesses and jobs that depend on an intact Tongass National Forest are too important to throw away for a politically-motivated industry handout,” said Tim Bristol, executive director of the Alaska-based group SalmonState. “This reprehensible move disregards years of collaborative work in favor of money-losing taxpayer giveaways to an industry that was shutting down before the Roadless Rule went into place.”

The roadless rule has been in effect since 2001, when President Clinton barred the construction of roads in 58.5 million acres of undeveloped forest across the country, which applied to more than half of the Tongass. In 2018, then-Alaska Governor Bill Walker initiated the lengthy process through USFS to plan modest changes to the roadless rule specific to the Tongass. But after a brief private meeting between President Trump and Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy aboard Air Force One in June 2019, Trump ordered his administration to lift all protections from the forest. The release of Friday’s final environmental review green lights that plan. The final Record of Decision, the last step in the process to lift restrictions, is expected to come down from the administration in early October.

The administration’s decision ignores overwhelming local sentiment for keeping protections on the Tongass; several tribes in the region, whose cultural and subsistence ways of life depend on the forests’ resources, and Tongass communities from Ketchikan and Petersburg, west to Sitka, and north to Skagway had passed resolutions against lifting the rule. It also ignores 96% national public comment in support of leaving protections in place on the forest. Lastly, the decision ignored a petition from Southeast Alaska tribes to create a new public lands rule to identify and protect traditional cultural use areas of the Tongass. They hoped, the tribes wrote in their petition to USFS, “to save their ancestral lands in the Tongass National Forest from destruction at the hands of the agency itself. All other avenues to protect our homelands have been exhausted, to little avail.” 

“Americans overwhelmingly want to see roadless areas within the Tongass National Forest protected,” said Nicole Whittington-Evans, Alaska program director for the national environmental group Defenders of Wildlife. “Clear-cutting ancient forests is bad for fish and wildlife, bad for the region’s tourism and fishing industries, expensive for taxpayers and makes no economic sense.”

“We should conserve our remaining roadless areas instead of rolling back the protections for fish and wildlife that make businesses like mine possible,” agreed Keegan McCarthy, owner of Coastal Alaska Adventures and Custom Alaska Cruises. “Our livelihoods and the future of our families depend on this forest. Sacrificing more of the Tongass to expanded and unsustainable clear-cut logging ignores the economic and social realities of today, and threatens to destroy thousands of jobs and hundreds of businesses just like mine.”