On December 23, 2003, the Bush administration issued a decision removing protection provided under the Roadless Area Conservation Rule for over nine million acres in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. The decision paves the way for fifty logging projects and road building in remaining pristine rainforest areas. The Tongass in the first casualty in the Bush administration’s efforts to gut the enormously popular “Roadless Rule” that was designed to safeguard large tracts of unroaded and unlogged areas in National Forests nationwide. Removing protections from roadless areas in the Tongass will allow clearcutting of over 300,000 acres of the best remaining old growth forest with associated road building affecting more than 2.5 million acres.

The pre-holiday decision puts the Tongass National Forest under an indefinite “temporary” exemption from the Roadless Area Conservation Rule. The Forest Service has also begun the regulatory process of making the exemption permanent and extending it to include the Chugach National Forest, the second largest National Forest, where over five million acres are currently protected.

The Bush administration is also expected to propose revisions to the entire Roadless Rule. That proposal is expected to include finalization of the Tongass and Chugach exemptions as well as detailed alternatives on allowing governors in the lower-48 states to apply for exemptions from the Roadless Rule for National Forest lands in their states.

Background
The Roadless Area Conservation Rule was set in place in 2001, following two years of study and historic levels of public involvement. It protected remaining roadless areas on America’s national forests, about 58.5 million acres, from most logging and road building. The Rule's immediate effect in Alaska was to halt agency plans to clear-cut 175 million board feet annually from roadless areas on the Tongass National Forest.

In a proposed settlement with the State of Alaska, which filed a lawsuit challenging the Roadless Rule, the Bush Administration (which refused to defend the Rule in court), is seeking to exempt the Tongass and Chugach National Forests from the Roadless Rule. These exemptions would put at risk nearly 10 million roadless acres on the Tongass National Forest and another five million acres on the Chugach National Forest.

The Forest Service received more than a quarter of a million comments last summer in opposition to the proposal to exempt the Alaska’s rainforests from the Roadless Rule. Fully one-quarter of the lands protected by the Rule are located in the Tongass and Chugach, America's largest and wildest national forests.

For More Information

• Alaska Rainforest Campaign 
• Laurie Cooper, Alaska Coalition, 202-266-0441
• Emily Ferry or Aurah Landau, Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, 907-586-6942
• Lexi Keogh, Alaska Wilderness League, 202-544-5205
• Michael Finkelstein, Alaska Rainforest Campaign, 202-550-5613 
• Nicole Whittington-Evans, The Wilderness Society, 907-272-9453