Biden administration proposes protections for Alaska’s Tongass
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration announced sweeping protections for Alaska’s Tongass National Forest on Thursday, including an end to large-scale old-growth logging and a proposal to bar road development on more than 9 million acres.
The changes mark a major shift for a region that has relied on felling massive trees for more than a century, reversing one of former President Donald Trump’s biggest public land decisions and halting a significant source of future carbon emissions. The Tongass, part of one of the world’s last relatively intact temperate rainforests, is the only national forest where oldgrowth logging still takes place on an industrial scale.
The 16.7 million-acre forest — which once boasted major pulp mills but is now targeted for its fine-grain, centuries-old trees that are coveted for pricey musical instruments, expansive outdoor decks and elegant shingles — has been a political flashpoint for two decades. The administration’s moves to scale back logging go further than any previous president’s efforts.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said the proposal would provide $25 million for community development and would allow Alaska Natives and smallscale operators to continue to harvest some old-growth trees. But Mr. Vilsack said it’s time to focus on other economic activities, such as fishing, recreation and tourism.
Although timber operations felled large swaths of its largest trees between the 1960s and the 1980s, about 5 million acres of prime oldgrowth habitat remain, according to the Forest Service.
There were plans for three major old-growth harvests of more than 15,750 acres on Forest Service land. Since the environmental analyses were not complete and final decisions had not been made, administration officials said, these sales would not take place.
Scientists have identified logging in Tongass as a future driver of planetary warming because its ancient trees — many of which are at least three centuries old — absorb at least 8% of the carbon stored in the entire Lower 48 states’ forests combined.
“This is the most important thing that can happen in terms of preserving forests,” Beverly Law, a professor emeritus of global change biology at Oregon State University, said in a phone interview.
She noted the carbon stored in old-growth trees can stay out of the atmosphere for about 1,000 years if they remain uncut, while research has found about 65% of the carbon held by trees that are felled is released in the ensuing decades.
Alaska’s statewide elected leaders, including Gov. Mike Dunleavy, Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan and Rep. Don Young, all Republicans, have consistently opposed restrictions on logging. Last October, Mr. Trump exempted the state from the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which President Bill Clinton enacted in 2001.
Mr. Dunleavy said in a statement the Forest Service had already concluded exempting the state from the roadless rule “was fully justified.”
“Narrow election results and political donations from environmental groups do not justify this federal agency’s policy flip- flop,” he said. “Our state’s southeast communities need fundamental access, like roads, and the economic and resource development opportunities roads provide.”
Some local officials have also pressed to build more roads in order to extract other resources, such as gold and rare-earth metals.
Tim O’Connor, mayor of the town of Craig on Prince of Wales Island, said in an email curbing development would undercut the local tax base. “If we don’t have access to the road systems due to the roadless rule, it affects our ability to hunt food and resources for subsistence,” he said. “Also we will not be able to develop mines, hydro projects and minerals needed by our country for strategic needs.”
But a broad coalition of Alaska Native leaders, environmentalists, commercial fishing operators, anglers and tourism companies have argued protecting southeast Alaska’s rugged terrain represents the best way forward.