By Sentinel Staff
Today’s Department of Agriculture announcement on restoration of the Roadless Rule on the Tongass drew sharp criticism from Gov. Mike Dunleavy, but was welcomed by a number of national and Alaskan conservation organizations.
Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s office issued a news release saying, “President Joe Biden’s efforts to put Alaska workers permanently into unemployment lines and wipe out small businesses continues with the United States Department of Agriculture’s announcement restarting efforts to shut down Southeast Alaska with the Roadless Rule.”
“The Forest Service has already conducted a thorough analysis and determined that an Alaska-specific exemption from a one-size-fits-all roadless rule was fully justified. Narrow election results and political donations from environmental groups do not justify this federal agency’s policy flip-flop,” Dunleavy states in the release.
But the news on the Tongass drew praise from Dominick DellaSala, chief scientist at Wild Heritage, a project of the Earth Island Institute.
“We welcome the Biden administration’s announcement to protect North America’s rainforest lungs,” DellaSala said in a statement to the media. “The Tongass rainforest stores the equivalent of 44% of all national forests’ carbon, doing its part in keeping the planet from overheating. We now call on President Biden to follow this bold announcement with protecting all mature forests and large trees on public lands in a strategic carbon reserve to compliment US contributions to emissions reduction,” .
Andy Moderow, Alaska Director of the Alaska Wilderness League, also welcomed the news.
“Old-growth forests are critical to addressing climate change, so restoring roadless protections to the Tongass is critical,” Moderow said. “The Tongass alone stores more than 1.5 billion metric tons of CO2-eq and sequesters an additional 10 million metric tons each year. Gutting roadless protections for our nation’s largest and most biologically rich national forest will not only grant American taxpayers the dubious honor of paying hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies for logging road construction, but that money would then fund the destruction of a valuable carbon sink and the benefits it provides in the process.”
The Wilderness Society noted that 98% of the comments submitted to the Forest Service — from both inside and outside of Alaska — overwhelmingly supported keeping the Roadless Rule in place in the Tongass, and testimony given at public meetings and 18 different subsistence hearings in Southeast Alaska saw a ‘vast majority’ of local residents do in fact support keeping the Roadless Rule in place.
Sitka Conservation Society executive director Andrew Thoms said Biden’s decision indicates that the federal government has recognized the changes in the economy of Southeast.
“They’re diversifying their approach to the Tongass, and I kind of see it as the administration catching up with the way the economy in Southeast Alaska has diversified,” Thoms said.
With money possibly in the pipeline for projects that don’t involve clearcutting in the future of the Tongass, he hoped some funding would be used for restoration work.
“Some of the investments that the Forest Service is making in the Great American Outdoors Act projects are a good start and hopefully it’s more initiatives like that and more habitat restorations,” Thoms said. He explicitly mentioned restoration work done near Sitka on Kruzof Island, near Sitkoh Lake, and on the False Island road network.
“Sitka Ranger District is really already in that place,” he said, “but I’m hoping this announcement means more staffing and more resources to the district, so the projects that this ranger district has pioneered become the norm and have as many resources as the timber program has had down on Prince of Wales.”
Thoms noted that today’s announcement won’t preclude small-scale timber sales for local and Native uses. He would like to see the Forest Service continue thinning efforts in formerly logged areas as well.
“I still want to see the Forest Services making their investment in pre-commercial thinning, the transition to young growth… and the small sales and micro-sales that local mills are using… and sourcing cultural use woods for totem poles and canoes,” he said.
Sitka fisherman Eric Jordan also endorsed Biden’s announcement, saying that it demonstrates how public advocacy can work.
“It’s the right decision, and it amplifies that voting counts. It makes a difference. Elections in this country still matter,” Jordan said, “and it’s a hugely correct decision for the Tongass, all the creatures that live in it, the humans that depend on it for fish and wildlife and subsistence. It was outrageous that the Trump Administration rescinded the Roadless Rule.”
Jordan also stressed the role of the Tongass in combating climate change.
“It’s especially important considering the climate catastrophe that we’re going through that has been recognized by our local Fish and Game Advisory Committee… This is the result of a lot of people’s good work, but it’s also a recognition that we need these trees to help us deal with the climate catastrophe that we are facing,” Jordan said. “So I applaud the decision and all the people who worked so hard for it right here in town.”
The administration’s plan was welcome news to Joel Jackson, president of the Organized Village of Kake.
“I’m happy about it, although it won’t be finalized for a while. From my understanding you have to go through a process but they are announcing that that is their intention. That’s good,” Jackson told the Sentinel over the phone.
Jackson worked as a logger around Kake for years, but he has since pivoted, spending recent decades fighting to preserve the Tongass National Forest from industrial logging.
For him, the Tongass is crucial for the Native’s food supply and for mitigating impacts of climate change.
“It means to me a number of things. Number one is the climate, we all see the climate change happening over the years,” Jackson said. “Number two is our salmon. The old growth timber – our streams wind through a lot of it where our salmon return year after year to spawn, and as everybody knows, our salmon are our main staple for our rural communities, our Native communities… So that is important to us that we continue to get our salmon.”
After many years in tribal government, Jackson was glad for the chance to engage in “meaningful consultation” with the government.
“The Biden Administration has instructed the USDA Forest Service to move into meaningful consultation with the tribes,” he said, “which has been a long time coming, because they never did have meaningful consultation with us... I’ve been in the tribal government for over 30 years, and this is monumental for me to be able to get a place at the table and actually have meaningful consultation with any agency, whether it’s state or federal.”
While he’s happy for the announced restoration of the Roadless Rule, Jackson tempered his optimism with caution.
“When we were meeting the other day, one of our tribal leaders, our administrator, he said, ‘It all looks good, it’s all good,’” Jackson recalled, “but he said, ‘The devil is in the details.’ Meaning we’ll have to take a real close look at what they are presenting to us in what they announced.”
