Alaska tribe sues feds to stop logging in Tongass National Forest
Kayvon Bumpus
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (CN) — Significant amounts of old-growth trees in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest are on the federal chopping block, prompting a Thursday lawsuit from the Ketchikan Indian Community and two environmental groups.
In its authorization of the South Revilla project, the U.S. Forest Service cleared the way for future logging in over 40,000 acres of rainforest — a move that Ketchikan tribe president Gloria Ilsxilee Stáng Burns stated would “threaten the lands, waters, wildlife, and traditional ways of life our people have depended upon for generations.”
Existing federal regulations on timber sales prevent the Forest Service from auctioning off the entirety of that land now, but the agency has said it will produce compliant plans for future sales.
The current plan, referred to as Alternative 2, would harvest over 4,000 acres of old-growth and an additional 1,000 acres of rainforest near Revillagigedo Island, known commonly as Revilla.
“Our connection to this forest is not symbolic,” Burns said in June. “It is our food, our medicine, our spirit. If the Tongass falls, so do we.”
Center for Biological Diversity and the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council joined the Ketchikan tribe, which is represented by Earthjustice, in the suit.
The plaintiffs cited an environmental analysis conducted by the Forest Service in January, indicating that the South Remilla project would negatively impact “subsistence, wildlife, old-growth habitat, and other resources” and “authorize the destruction of over 4,300 acres of old-growth forest” in the Tongass, an Alaska landmark and the largest forest in the country.
The Forest Service also found then that native bird, deer and fish species would face adversity from large-scale logging in the area. Sitka black-tailed deer populations, whose habitat would be directly disrupted, could feel impacts for over a century.
“Despite all these harms logging and road building would cause to subsistence, wildlife, recreation, and other forest values, the Forest Service selected the alternative with the greatest harms to subsistence, wildlife, recreation, and scenery,” the plaintiffs wrote, describing Alternative 2 as authorizing logging of “approximately 21 percent of the existing productive old-growth forest in the project area.”
The agency stated that its selected plan provided a greater economic benefit than any alternatives.
Last week, the federal government initiated a proposal to repeal the 2001 Roadless Rule, which prevents logging and other development in over 45 million acres of federal land. In his first term, President Donald Trump had previously targeted the Tongass as an exemption to the Roadless Rule.
The Forest Service did not respond to a request for comment by time of publication.
The environmental groups and Ketchikan tribe say the Forest Service’s approval of large-scale logging in the Tongass violates the Administrative Procedure Act and the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, as the agency came to “irrational” conclusions that the South Revilla project would preserve sufficient bird habitat and that it was necessary despite restricting Alaska Native subsistence.
“This destructive logging project is an assault on the world’s largest remaining temperate old-growth rainforest,” Marlee Goska, a Center for Biological Diversity attorney, said in a statement. “Leaving these ancient trees standing in the Tongass is essential for wildlife like goshawk and wolves, to help fight the climate crisis, and to sustain the cultural well-being and economies of Southeast Alaska communities. We’ve successfully stopped old-growth logging in the Tongass before and we’ll keep fighting to protect these irreplaceable forests.”