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The Trump administration wants to open more than half of North America's largest temperate rainforest to logging and road-building. The Forest Service announced it has completed a draft environmental review that would exempt Alaska's Tongass National Forest from the roadless rule, which has protected intact forests since the Clinton administration.
The Tongass, at 16.7 million acres, is America's single largest national forest, and spawns 40 percent of wild salmon on the West Coast. The proposed rule change would open 9.5 million roadless acres to development.
While politicians in Alaska praised the move, conservation groups vowed to sue, saying the plan would smother salmon streams. Earthjustice attorney Eric Jorgensen noted that courts had previously reinstated the 2001 roadless rule.
“The bottom line is the agency will face a heavy burden to justify this exemption,” Jorgensen told the Washington Post. “President Trump’s attack on the Tongass National Forest threatens an irreplaceable national treasure.”
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They went to the easy places first. Now they’re going to have to build roads to get to the next round of timber. You put the roads in, and that tends to change everything.”
