Earth Justice
June 23rd, 2025
JUNEAU, AK (ÁAKʼW ḴWÁAN TERRITORY) —
The U.S. Department of Agriculture today announced plans to strip Roadless Rule protections nationwide, including from Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. The move is particularly significant for the Tongass National Forest, where eliminating the Roadless Rule would remove critical safeguards against industrial logging and damaging roadbuilding from over 9 million undeveloped acres within the 17-million-acre forest.
Eliminating the Roadless Rule from the Tongass would remove protections for about half the forest and add almost 190,000 acres to an inventory of lands “suitable” for timber production — areas of the forest most at risk of being logged. This is triple the acreage the Forest Service estimated would be logged under the forest plan in 25 years. Many of these lands are in parts of the forest where previous clear-cut logging decimated vast swaths of older trees, making the remaining intact stands of mature and old-growth trees particularly valuable as fish, bird, and wildlife habitat, and for Indigenous communities and others who rely on the forest for their livelihood, wellbeing, and spiritual and cultural ways of life.
Tribal leaders, recreational small-business owners, commercial fishing operators and conservationists have fought for decades to ensure Roadless Rule protections remain in place for the Tongass. The coalition vows to continue to defend the forest against this latest attempt to roll back protections.
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