USDA Expands Logging Area in Tongass Forest

The Bush administration Tuesday opened 300,000 more acres of Alaska’s Tongass National Forest to logging by exempting it from a Clinton-era rule that barred road-building in most of the 17-million-acre area, the biggest expanse of temperate rain forest left on the planet.

The widely expected decision by the U.S. Department of Agriculture stemmed from the Bush administration’s settlement of a lawsuit by the state of Alaska. The state charged that the Clinton administration’s 2000 “roadless rule,” which had declared most of the forest off-limits to vehicles, was excessively restrictive and would cause economic hardship.

U.S. Forest Service officials said Tuesday’s action, which was approved by the White House Office of Management and Budget, would bring the total acres exposed to logging to 4% of the forest.

However, conservationists noted that it lifted the road-building restriction on a much larger area -- 9.3 million acres -- and argued that it would clearly lead to roads through a much greater portion of the forest as loggers pushed to reach the most desirable old-growth trees.

“The Bush administration claims this only affects the 300,000 acres, but that is the part of the forest they actually intend to log -- the biggest and best trees on the Tongass,” said Nicole Whittington-Evans of the Wilderness Society. “What they don’t mention is that to get to those areas, they will allow roads to be built through 9 million acres.”

The decision was applauded by Alaska’s politicians, who had argued that the Clinton decision had hamstrung efforts to manage the forest in a way that protected its assets but also allowed communities to benefit from its resources. The Tongass Land Management Plan, a protection blueprint adopted in 1997, still protects most of its acreage from development and logging, they noted.

Forest Service officials said Tuesday that 32 communities within the forest rely on it for economic sustenance, and many now lack basic roads and utilities.

“This was the best outcome for the health of both the forest and the Alaskans who depend on the renewable timber resource for their livelihoods,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said in a statement. “It ends the last impediment to the resumption of a sufficient timber harvest to keep the remaining timber mills in the region alive. It also provides hope that the jobs of more than 1,000 Alaskans in the southeast can be saved.”

The Clinton roadless rule, which banned road building on 58.5 million acres of national forestland, generated a political backlash in many of the states where the forests were located, and seven states wound up challenging it. In response to the same lawsuit, the Bush administration is widely expected also to open Alaska’s Chugach National Forest to increased logging.

“This is a working forest; it is not a park, and for many years, it has supported the local communities,” Ray Massey, a spokesman for the Forest Service’s Alaska region, said of the Tongass. “We have been managing this forest for over 100 years, and we want it to be something families will look forward to in the next 100 years.”