Senators Murkowski, Sullivan: Tongass not a political football
Alaska U.S. Senators Lisa Mur - kowski and Dan Sullivan have object - ed strongly to the recent USDA Forest Service repeal of the Tongass Nation - al Forest’s exemption from the 2001 Roadless Rule. That decision reinstates the 2001 rule, ignoring requests from the State of Alaska and data and analysis from the last administration that supported the 2020 exemption. “The Roadless Rule should never have applied to the Tongass, and the Biden administration’s decision to reinstate it is federal paternalism at its worst. Roughly 80 percent of the Tongass is already protected through existing law, land use designations, and the forest planning process, and there is no threat of large-scale de- velopment from timber harvesting or any other activity,” Murkowski said. “With this decision, the Biden ad - ministration is turning the Tongass into a political football, where access changes with each new President and creates whiplash for those who might want to invest or build in Southeast Alaska. We should see this for what it is: a regulation in spite of reality that will only serve to make it take longer, cost more, or outright impossible to develop the limited infrastructure — including renewable energy — neces- sary for a sustainable regional econ- omy.” Sullivan, a former Alaska Attorney General and Commissioner of Natural Resources, concurred. “The Biden Administration has now unleashed 42 executive orders or actions targeting Alaska and the economic well-being of our citizens. No other state in the Union is getting such targeted and unwanted attention from the Biden administration. I have repeatedly called on President Biden for a ceasefire in his war on Alaska’s working families, but to no avail,” said Senator Sullivan. “Alaskans in Southeast — like any Americans — have a right to con- nect their communities, sustain local economies, build renewable energy projects, and responsibly harvest re-
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sources. But the Forest Service’s re - turn to the overly-burdensome 2001 Roadless Rule totally undermines all of those. My message to hard-work- ing Alaskans who are being crushed and utterly disregarded by this Ad- ministration: I will fight this and oth - er Biden Administration anti-Alaska actions with everything in my pow- er.” The Tongass National Forest spans nearly 16.7 million acres, covering nearly all of Southeast Alaska, and is home to 32 islanded communities. For decades, successive layers of federal law and regulation, including the Roadless Rule, have continually restricted access needed for timber, mining, tourism, recreation, and the development of renewable resources such as hydropower. Separate and apart from the Road - less Rule, the Tongass is well protect - ed under existing law. Some 80 per - cent of the forest is already conserved in Congressionally-designated Wil-
derness, National Parks and National Monuments, or other natural setting land-use designations — meaning only ten percent of the Tongass is available for any kind of development. In 2018, the Forest Service an - nounced it would develop a state-spe- cific Roadless Rule focused on the Tongass. The Alaska-specific rule, finalized in October 2020, exempted the Ton- gass from the one-size-fits-all Road - less Rule, which established sweeping prohibitions on road construction, road reconstruction, and timber har- vest on inventoried roadless areas on National Forest System lands begin - ning in 2001. The 2020 rule came in response to a petition from the State of Alas - ka requesting a full exemption for the Tongass, and helped restore balanced management and reasonable eco- nomic prospects within the Tongass.
KINY contributed to this story
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The Alaska Miner
Winter 2023
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