Bush Offers Roadless Tongass National Forest to Logging

Bush Offers Roadless Tongass National Forest to Logging

Feb, 2008  - Today, the Bush administration 
put a "for sale" sign on trees in pristine roadless areas of the Tongass 
rainforest in Alaska - America's largest national forest. 
This move by Bush officials to reverse roadless area protections parallels 
two others made recently in national forests located in Idaho and 
Colorado. 
Conservationists from across the country are indignant that roads will be 
punched through some of the nation's last, best roadless areas to allow 
private corporations to log America's public lands. 
"The few remaining roadless areas of our national forests are some of the 
only safe harbors for America's wildlife," said Mary Beth Beetham at 
Defenders of Wildlife. "As global warming threatens to dramatically change 
the landscape we must have the foresight to preserve these last remaining 
pristine forests for future generations. It's folly for the Bush 
administration, in its last few months, to work to destroy these areas." 
In December 2003, Bush officials "temporarily" exempted Alaska's Tongass 
rainforest from the Clinton era Roadless Rule, designed to protect 58 
million acres of roadless wild forests in 39 states. 
The Bush administration's new management plan for the Tongass National 
Forest will raise no revenue for the U.S. government, as the U.S. 
taxpayers will have to pay to build the roads the timber companies need to 
access the forest. 
"With so much of our forest heritage already lost, every roadless acre 
counts. The spectacular roadless areas in Alaska deserve as much 
protection as those in every other state," said Larry Edwards with 
Greenpeace in Sitka, Alaska. 
"The Roadless Rule and the courts have sheltered many of the last, best 
places in our national forests, even during an administration hostile to 
forest protection. Now, with one foot out the door, Bush officials are 
looking for whatever way they can to give away the family silver," said 
Franz Matzner at the Natural Resources Defense Council. 
Tongass logging fell dramatically in the 1990s, and for years now has 
existed at levels that do not require slicing roads and clearcuts into 
virgin old-growth forests, as the Forest Service itself has acknowledged. 
"The new plan suffers from the same central problem as the old plan. It 
leaves 2.4 million acres of wild, roadless backcountry areas open to clear 
cutting and new logging roads," said Earthjustice attorney Tom Waldo. "The 
Tongass is worth a whole lot more to the American people as a standing 
forest than it is as a sea of stumps and logs." 
The land management plan released today was ordered more than two years 
ago by a federal court which concluded that the old plan justifying 
opening Tongass wildlands for development was invalid due to several 
factors, including a gross overestimation of demand for Tongass logs. 
Congress also has expressed concern with Tongass wilderness logging. The 
House of Representative has voted three times to stop taxpayer dollars 
from funding new logging roads there. 
In September 2006, the federal District Court of Northern California 
ordered the Bush administration to reinstate the 2001 Roadless Area 
Conservation Rule to protect almost 50 million acres of National Forests 
and grasslands across the lower 48 states and Puerto Rico from road 
construction, logging, and other harmful development. 

Judge Elizabeth Laporte ruled that the Bush administration violated both 
the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act by 
when it repealed the Roadless Rule and put into place another rule without 
any substantial analysis or need. 
But the long term status of the roadless areas in the Tongass National 
Forest in Alaska was not settled by Judge Laporte. In 2003, the Bush 
administration exempted the Tongass from the roadless rule by creating a 
separate amendment that was based on the validity of the Tongass Land 
Management Plan. 
"The Forest Service is losing money hand over fist on roads that Americans 
don't even want," said Christy Goldfuss of Environment America. 
"Today," said Caitlin Hills with American Lands Alliance, "the federal 
government, in defiance of the facts and the strongly expressed sentiments 
of the American people to protect all roadless areas, has answered 'fire 
up the chainsaws.'" 
"The Tongass is the crown jewel of our nation's roadless wildlands," said 
Trish Rolfe at Alaska Sierra Club. "Wild salmon, bears, eagles, and wolves 
thrive there among moss-draped ancient trees, along crystalline fjords and 
untamed rivers. It has nine million acres of roadless areas that lack 
permanent protection. The Bush administration has just put some of the 
best of them on the chopping block." 
"All over the Tongass there are roadless wildlands that local people and 
visitors hold dear, jeopardized by this new plan," said Gregory Vickrey 
with Tongass Conservation Society. 
"These are special places critical to the region's incredible fish, deer 
and other wildlife, world-famous recreational opportunities, cherished 
subsistence practices, and the businesses and jobs that depend on the 
region's natural treasures," said Vickrey. "These are the very things that 
make Southeast Alaskans most want to live here." 

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