Look West: Public lands and energy news from the Center for Western Priorities
** Forest Service advances old growth logging in Tongass National Forest
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Friday, February 6, 2026
Tongass National Forest, Alaska. Source: Forest Service photo by Wendy Zirngibl, U.S. Forest Service, Flickr ([link removed])
The U.S. Forest Service is moving forward with a controversial plan to log over 5,000 acres of trees ([link removed]) in Alaska's Tongass National Forest. The project would harvest approximately 60 million board feet of old-growth trees ([link removed]) over 15 years. An additional 23 million board feet of young growth would also be cut.
Twelve federally-recognized Southeast Alaska Tribes have formally opposed the Trump administration's broader effort to rescind roadless protections in the Tongass. “For the Tribes of the Tongass, these forests are not merely resources—they are our homelands,” the Tribes wrote in a comment letter last fall. “Our communities rely on them for cultural, nutritional, spiritual, and economic sustenance.”
Nathan Newcomer from the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council says ([link removed]) the project will harm animal populations native to the Tongass, including the region’s world-class salmon runs, as well as Southeast Alaskans who live a subsistence lifestyle. “The average person in Alaska understands that that’s not our economy,” Newcomer said ([link removed]) . “It’s not based on large scale timber production. It might have been at one point decades ago, but we’ve moved on.”
** Quick hits
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Forest Service advances old growth logging in Tongass National Forest
Alaska Public Media ([link removed]) | Alaska's News Source ([link removed])
Trump advances plan to strip job protections from career federal employees
CNN ([link removed]) | Federal News Network ([link removed])
Interior plans oil and gas lease sale in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
Alaska Public Media ([link removed]) | E&E News ([link removed])
Lawsuit filed against Utah BLM for approving highway through threatened tortoise habitat
Courthouse News ([link removed]) | Fox13 News ([link removed]) | ABC4 News ([link removed]) | E&E News ([link removed])
Man who fiilmed himself BASE jumping in Yosemite says it was AI
Los Angeles Times ([link removed])
Death Valley latest battleground in fight over national park signs and exhibits
Los Angeles Times ([link removed])
BLM Colorado offering over 50,000 acres in March lease sale after industry made zero bids in January
Grand Junction Daily Sentinel ([link removed])
Trump's new Wildland Fire Service is failing to ignite
Vox ([link removed])
** Quote of the day
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” The road to a ‘more perfect Union,’ which is enshrined in the Constitution, runs through the past, and it depends on our willingness to confront our history in an honest and thoroughgoing way.”
—Alexander Karn, Colgate University historian, Mother Jones ([link removed])
** Picture This
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@usfws ([link removed])
Looks like the bald eagles at the National Conservation Training Center are expecting… a very large, very luminous egg.
Before anyone calls an ornithologist or an astronomer, this is just a recent full moon rising behind the nest. Nature loves a good visual prank.
Bald eagles do not lay eggs this big. They do, however, build massive nests that can weigh hundreds of pounds. They reuse them year after year, and occasionally provide the internet with moon eggs like the one seen here.
Photo by Dave Smaldone/USFWS
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