Trump Administration Strips Protections from America’s Largest National Forest
Today, the Trump administration announced it would strip protections from the country’s largest National Forest, the Tongass National Forest in Alaska, opening it up to logging, road building, and other intensive development.
The Tongass is the largest intact temperate rainforest in the world. It captures an enormous amount of carbon, making it a crucial part of protecting against even more severe climate change. It’s also home to incredible outdoor recreation, including mountaineering and sea kayaking. Until today, more than half of the forest was protected through the Roadless Rule. Now, the administration has stripped those protections and the Tongass will be open to logging and other development.
What’s the Roadless Rule?
We’ve written about the Roadless Rule a number of times, but it’s a critical, though lesser-known, tool that protects wild landscapes on our National Forests. The Roadless Rule was established in 2001 after enormous public outreach and was intended to “provide lasting protection in the context of multiple-use management” for the 60 million acres of roadless areas on our National Forests and Grasslands. The outdoor community sees great value in the Roadless Rule because it helps to preserve wild lands across the National Forest System while providing opportunities for recreational activities like mountain biking and winter trail grooming that are not allowed within more restrictive conservation designations. The Roadless Rule also provides significant management flexibility for a variety of types of other multiple use activities. The one activity the Roadless Rule fundamentally prohibits is the extensive road building associated with intensive commercial logging, which is in many instances incompatible with the protection of the myriad other values afforded by Alaska National Forests.
What happened today?
Click to read our most recent letter to the USDA.
Today’s decision rolls back Roadless Rule protections on the forest, opening up the Tongass for logging, road building, and other development. In 2018, Alaska petitioned the Forest Service for an exemption from the Roadless Rule. Though thousands of Americans, including thousands of people from the outdoor community, asked the Forest Service to maintain protections for the Tongass, the Trump Administration today announced that it would roll back protections on the forest. This rule will fully exempt the Tongass National Forest from the Roadless Area Conservation Rule of 2001. You can read our comment letters to the Forest Service on these proposals here, here, and here.
While the outdoor community has had some legislative victories over the last two years, the Trump administration has engaged in a continuous assault on environmental protections across land management agencies. Rolling back protections on the Tongass is part of a broader pro-development agenda to stifle the public process, rewrite the rules of the National Environmental Policy Act, roll back protections under the Clean Water Act, and dismantle other key environmental rules.
Today’s decision will have long-lasting effects on outdoor recreation, Alaska’s recreation economy, and the country’s climate. Roadless lands are integral to the outdoor recreation economy around the country, including in Alaska where outdoor recreation directly employs 72,000 people, drives $7.3 billion in consumer spending, supports $2.3 billion in wages, and contributes $337 million in state and local tax revenue (source). Roadless areas on the Tongass are also treasured for remote and adventurous recreation opportunities, like the world-renowned mountaineering routes on the Mendenhal Towers and the Direct East Ridge of Devil’s Thumb, one of the 50 classic climbs of North America.
What’s next?
As outdoor enthusiasts, we know our community cares about both conservation and recreation, and the Roadless Rule is vitally important for both. There are two things we can do now, and we’ve made it really simple with our easy-action tool below.
The Forest Service just published its Final Environmental Impact Statement, and there’s a short public comment period for us to register our concerns about the roll backs. While this is unlikely to change the administration’s decision, these comments build the administrative record, demonstrate public support for the Roadless Rule, and will make it easier to pass the Roadless Area Conservation Act.
The Roadless Area Conservation Act (S. 1311/H.R. 2491). The Roadless Area Conservation Act is a bill lead by Sen. Cantwell and Rep. Gallego to permanently protect the Roadless Rule, protecting backcountry roadless areas and taking us off the merry-go-round of single-state objections. Passing this bill would offer permanent protection for the 30% of National Forest lands that are currently protected under the 2001 Roadless Rule.
The tool below will let you send both a letter to the Forest Service and letters to your members of Congress asking them to support the Roadless Area Conservation Act. Codifying the Roadless rule is in our reach, but it won’t happen without the outdoor community voicing their support for backcountry forests. Take action now: