Action Likely Soon to Exempt Tongass From ‘Roadless Rule’
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The end of October should mark a historic end to the Roadless Rule that has limited timber harvest and resource development in the Tongass National Forest for decades. This could have long term implications for other development including mining in Southeast Alaska. The Trump administration has continued to open more federal lands in Alaska to development activity Sept. 25 with a recommendation for a full exemption from the Roadless Rule for the Tongass National Forest. The Roadless Rule forbids road building and industrial activity — with some exceptions — in areas that do not already have them. It covers nearly 9.4 million acres or just over half of Southeast Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. Under the federal government’s rulemaking process the Secretary of Agriculture has to wait 30 days from releasing its formal “record of decision.” The current draft EIS lists six potential options and selects Alternative 6, a full exemption of the Tongass National Forest from the Clinton-era 2001 Roadless Rule as the preferred option. Alternative 6 is fully responsive to the State of Alaska’s petition to completely remove the Tongass National Forest from the Roadless Rule. This USDA preferred alternative removes all 9.2 million roadless acres and reclassifies 165,000 old-growth acres and 20,000 young-growth acres to suitable timber lands. The draft EIS only applies to the Tongass National Forest. Alaska Gov. Michael J. Dunleavy has praised the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s draft EIS. “Today’s announcement on the Roadless Rule is further proof that Alaska’s economic outlook is looking brighter every day,” said Governor Dunleavy in a September release. “The ill-advised 2001 Roadless Rule shut down the timber industry in Southeast Alaska, wiping out jobs and economic opportunity for thousands of Alaskans. “ Dunleavy, the Trump administration and Alaska’s congressional delegation have worked together to get the change made. At the Southeast Conference in September, Sen. Lisa Murkowski praised the federal government’s decision.
“The Roadless Rule is not just about timber,” Murkowski said via videoconference link. “It is about reasonable access for a wide variety of users, whether it is for renewable energy that we work so hard to build, whether for recreation, whether for mineral — it is for all pieces of the Southeast economy.” Alaska’s congressional delegation has long opposed the 2001 rule. So has the state of Alaska, which sued and settled with the feds to win an exemption that lasted about seven years. Fully repealing the Clinton-era prohibition on new roads across much of the national forest system would open all 9.2 million acres currently classified as roadless in the Tongass to potential mining, logging, and energy development, all of which are made much easier with road access in the forest’s predominantly mountainous terrain. At roughly 17 million acres, the Tongass covers the vast majority of Southeast Alaska and is by far the largest national forest in the country. The Alaska Forest Association — a timber industry group — applauded the federal government’s decision. “Application of the Roadless Rule to the Tongass was never appropriate and has stifled the timber industry, and the larger Southeast economy,” AFA Board President Bert Burkhart said in a statement. Commercial fishing, conservation and some tourism groups insist Southeast’s economy has moved on from its heavy reliance on the timber industry to rely on tourism and fishing. According to a Forest Service report detailing the nearly 270,000 comments the agency received late last year on the draft plan to repeal the Roadless Rule, 96 percent of the 15,909 unique letters supported maintaining the rule in full. Trump administration agencies have similarly advanced broad rollbacks of development prohibitions on federal lands in Alaska including opening federal land on the North Slope to oil exploration, approving the Ambler Road to open up interior mining and opening more Federal offshore waters to oil leasing.
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November 2020 I The Alaska Miner I www.alaskaminers.org
www.alaskaminers.org I The Alaska Miner I November 2020
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