A view of the Tongass National Forest. (Courtesy of Bjorn Dihle /)
I was four or five when I first encountered a brown bear in the Tongass National Forest. I still remember it clearly: a mostly-eaten young bear lying dead in a small stream, surrounded by hundreds of spawning pink salmon, beneath a wall of giant trees and salmonberry bushes. Even then, I understood that I was witnessing something powerful and unique. After three more decades spent working, living, hunting and fishing in the Tongass, my awe and appreciation of my home has only deepened.
Today, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, under orders from President Donald Trump, announced the agency is axing the Roadless Rule and opening up more than 9 million currently protected acres of the Tongass for industrial development, including clearcut logging of old growth trees. At 16.7 million acres, and encompassing nearly all of Southeast Alaska, the Tongass is viewed by many as a vast, untouched temperate rainforest wilderness. But much of its old-growth forest has already been clearcut logged. The aftermath of these cuts has degraded, even destroyed, habitat critical to salmon, Sitka blacktail deer, mountain goat, and brown bears.
A brown bear in the Tongass National Forest. (Bjorn Dihle /)
In 2001, after Southeast Alaska’s logging industry collapsed, the Roadless Rule was established in those 9 million acres. That section included most of the remaining productive old-growth forest habitat, stopped corporations from clearcutting those forests, and prevented the building of new logging roads.
The vast majority of Southeast Alaskans saw the establishing of the Roadless Rule as a step in the right direction to preserving our economy, which is heavily dependent on tourism and commercial fishing, and our lifestyle, which is rooted in hunting and fishing. The significantly subsidized logging industry, on the other hand, amounts to less than 1 percent of Southeast Alaska’s economy. On a global level, the Tongass, besides being a mecca for the visiting sportsman and woman, is now being recognized as a vital piece of minimizing the effects of climate change. As the world’s largest relatively intact temperate rainforest, the Tongass stores 650 million tons of carbon and acts as spawning grounds for 25 percent of the West Coast’s salmon catch. More than a million visitors come here each year, on average, to experience the Tongass' natural beauty.
The author with a Sitka blacktail. (Bjorn Dihle /)
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the majority of Southeast Alaskans are angered by the Forest Service’s announcement. There’s been no shortage of irrationality and other forms of insanity in the agency’s decision-making process. During the comment period, 96 percent of testifiers said the Roadless Rule works and should be kept in place. More recently, five Southeast Alaska Native tribes sent a letter to Sonny Perdue, Secretary of Agriculture, and Victoria Christiansen, Chief of the U.S. Forest Service, “formally revoking our cooperating agency status in the Alaska Roadless Rule process,” due to being ignored during the Final Environmental Impact Statement for the Alaska Roadless Rule process. None of the tribes wanted a full exemption from the Roadless Rule.