More than 9 million acres of the Tongass National Forest could soon be opened to logging under a US Forest Service proposal to repeal a decades-old protection.
This week, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) released a draft environmental impact study (EIS), the second step in the federal repeal process of the “Roadless Rule,” a federal policy protecting nearly 60 million acres of National Forest Lands from road construction and large-scale resource development.
The first formal step came last September with a letter of intent that kicked off a 30-day public comment period. The results of this comment period were clear: 99% of the more than 625,000 comments submitted were in opposition to the repeal.
The USDA proceeded despite that opposition, claiming in a press release this week that it’s replacing an outdated, one-size-fits-all forest management strategy with one that puts local land managers at the helm to better mitigate wildfire risk. But the DEIS directly contradicts that claim, making clear the intention to log.
The release says the repeal “does not mandate timber cutting,” while the DEIS itself justifies the repeal as a means to increase timber harvest, saying that with the Roadless Rule removed, suitable old growth timber in the Tongass National Forest would increase by 168,000 acres and greater harvests could be made in remote areas.
“In the agency’s own words, they’re saying that this decision would expand suitable areas for greater timber production,” said Nathan Newcomer, Tongass campaigner with the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council.
“This is literally their words: ‘Removing the Roadless Rule would have the highest effects on scenery in most viewsheds … There would be an increased risk to cultural resources with the removal of the Roadless Rule.’ And then they admit this: ‘Subsistence use of fish and wildlife has been and continues to be an important component of the economies of Southeast Alaskan communities. Removing the Roadless Rule could have impacts in the amount and distribution of subsistence resources.’”
How to fight back to protect Alaska’s forests
Though the USDA ignored the near-unanimous opposition to repealing the rule, Newcomer said getting public comments submitted on the current draft EIS is crucial to the future of the Roadless Rule. After this point, there will be no more public comment periods.
“If you submit comments during the Draft Environmental Impact Statement and the Notice of Intent processes, then you have legal standing to object to the final decision,” Newcomer said.
The policy has ping-ponged into and out of federal law so many times that even if it’s successfully repealed before 2028, a new administration could theoretically reinstate it upon taking office before too much damage is done.
Based on the rule’s tumultuous history, public comments could be essential to this longer-term strategy of restoring its protections. Public comments were a driving force in the Biden administration’s reversal of the first Trump administration’s Tongass exemption from the Roadless Rule. Underwriting that decision were 112,000 public comments, most of which were in favor of restoring protections.
As evidenced by that public comment period, one of the few things Alaskans can agree on is that industrial-scale logging in Tongass National Forest is not wanted. Between the lack of infrastructure, distance from markets, and costs associated with road construction, road maintenance and transportation of lumber, the Tongass timber industry is far from lucrative. According to the Taxpayers for Common Sense, over the last 40 years, Tongass timber sales have lost $1.7 billion, the industry inching forward heavily subsidized by taxpayer dollars.
Worse, the little economic benefit that does come is squeezed out of the state immediately.
“The insult to injury is that these entities are largely not local,” Malachi Thorington, an avid hunter and candidate for Juneau City Assembly, said of the large-scale companies that will have the capacity to take advantage of the repeal. “The majority of the workers will not be even local residents, and the timber that they are going to be cutting down is going to be shipped overseas. I would challenge anybody to find a stick of that in any hardware store across the country. We cut this stuff down and it gets shipped overseas for processing.”
Thorington has watched how clear cut lands negatively impact his annual deer harvest. After an initial bounce back period following cuts, rebounds of low-lying brush and berry bushes create a false perception of increased deer populations.
“It’s not until after a lot of those trees start to come up and grow so close together that they become a barrier – impassable for humans, let alone deer,” said Thorington. “Over time, a great number of them basically choke light to the forest, create a bed of pine needles devoid of forage for deer and are so close together that you can’t actually fit between them. It’s more like trying to get through prison bars than an actual forest.”
Plans for local land management strategy remain unclear
One major question mark at the foundation of this rescission process is what the practical plan for land management will look like post-repeal.
“The land is federal public land, so when they say local land managers what do they mean?,” asks Newcomer. “It’s federal property that belongs to every single citizen in the United States. Are you going to go to the State of Alaska to manage it? … They’ll just go out there and clear cut everything.”
Thorington posed the same question to Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, who is in support of the repeal, while in Washington D.C. last spring. According to Thorington, Murkowski nodded in lieu of an answer and said there’s no management plan in the works that she’s aware of.
“I just can’t underscore the importance of the public engaging in the process,” said Newcomer. “These are federal public lands that belong to each and every single citizen of the United States. If you want your voice heard, get it on the public records so that we can point back to it and say, ‘Look, American citizens said we are opposed to getting rid of the Roadless Rule. Keep it in place, it’s important to our culture, our quality of life, our tourism economy, our recreation economy, and all these other issues.’ Get engaged.”
The comment period ends on September 21st. To leave a public comment, visit https://www.regulations.gov/document/FS-2025-0001-223869.
Rachel Levy is a Juneau-based photojournalist whose work culminates at the intersections of environmental justice, arts and culture, and sustainable tourism. A 2022 graduate of Harvard University's Environmental Policy program, she is also the director of the award-winning documentary "Hidden in Plain Sight" that exposes the labor exploitation and colonial framework burdening Tanzania's safari industry.
