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The U.S. Forest Service is moving forward with a controversial plan to log over 5,000 acres of trees in Alaska's Tongass National Forest. The project would harvest approximately 60 million board feet of old-growth trees 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 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. “It’s not based on large scale timber production. It might have been at one point decades ago, but we’ve moved on.”
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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.”
