Tongass Defenders Blast the Trump Administration’s Rollback of Roadless Rule Protections on America’s Largest Forest

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.

Statements from coalition members in response to today’s rulemaking

“Forty-five years ago, my father founded The Boat Company because he couldn’t stand by and watch the Tongass be gutted — clear-cut by a reckless timber industry, fueled by government subsidies that outpaced even agriculture’s biggest players,” said Hunter McIntosh, President and Executive Director of The Boat Company. “He believed this forest was worth fighting for. And now, all these years later, I find myself in the exact same fight. The same threats. The same destruction. The Tongass isn’t a renewable resource — you can’t replant ancient trees or restore what’s been lost to greed. This has to end. Not just for us, but for every generation that comes after.”

“Our forests are just now healing from the extensive clear-cut logging in the past,” said President Joel Jackson, Organized Village of Kake. “Number one is food security, and our deer and moose are rebounding. The remaining old growth timber is so important for providing shelter, the berries, and our medicines. It provides shade for our streams to keep them cool so our salmon can return year after year. We are the people of the forest and salmon people. Salmon has sustained us for thousands of years.”

“The Roadless Rule has worked well for our Tribe and our community by helping to protect customary and traditional uses of our lands and waters, and the fish, wildlife, trees and plants, “ said President Mike Jones, Organized Village of Kasaan. “This helps us honor our ancestors and provide for current and future generations. It would be a grave mistake to roll back these protections. The Roadless Rule must continue to be upheld across the Tongass National Forest.”

“The Tongass National Forest is our home — it sustains our communities, supports our fisheries, our recreation and tourism economy, provides critical climate change mitigation, and nourishes the deer and salmon we rely on for sustenance,” said Maggie Rabb, Executive Director of the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council. “Opening up more of the Tongass to large-scale, clearcut logging is an existential threat to the authentic values of the forest and our Southeast Alaska ways of life.”

“Trump’s plan to revoke protections in the Tongass National Forest is both reckless and ignores the will of the people who will be most impacted by this move,” said Meda DeWitt, Alaska State Senior Manager at The Wilderness Society. “Logging this irreplaceable landscape threatens not only biodiversity and climate resilience, but the cultural survival of communities who have cared for this land since time immemorial. We have to listen to the voices of Southeast Alaska and ensure that this forest is protected — for the preservation of culture, for our climate, and for future generations to come.”

“Removing Roadless Rule protections from the Tongass brings back the risk of clearcutting, which was a mistake of the past,” said Linda Behnken, Executive Director of the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association. “If we keep the forest ecosystem intact, the Tongass will continue to provide its abundant natural resources — wild salmon, clear rivers, clean air — now and for future generations.”

“As forests across the America’s burn, the last thing we need to do is destroy old-growth forests in the Tongass Rainforest — one of the United States’ best defenses against furthering the climate crisis,” said Osprey Oreille Lake, Executive Director for the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN). “Existing within the territories of the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsmishian peoples, the Tongass is a vital ecosystem necessary to the traditional life-ways of local Indigenous communities. Destroying critical old-growth in the Tongass, not only devastates wildlife habitat and harms the climate, but disregards the sovereignty of Indigenous peoples and further perpetuates devastating harms to their communities. We must stand together for our forests, communities and the climate.”

“The Tongass Forest is my home. Home to the ancient Tlingit and Haida Indigenous Nations. It is where my ancestry originates, my bloodline is Indigenous to this land, its DNA is my DNA. The air we breathe, the water we depend on, the land we live upon, all pristine. It is a life to cherish. It is a way of living worth fighting for. The repeal of the Roadless Rule will only lead to the destruction of our homelands, and subsequently the destruction of our communities who depend upon the abundance of the forest. This is an attack on our peoples and the climate. The Trump administration’s decision to open the Tongass to roads, logging, and mining is an underhanded misuse of Congressional authority and the battle will go on — we will continue to rise in defense of our homelands.” Kashudoha Wanda Loescher Culp, Tlingit, activist and Tongass Coordinator for the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN)

“We’ve defended the Tongass before from a similar attempt to roll back these protections and we’ll do so again,” said Earthjustice Attorney Kate Glover. “The vast majority of the public supports keeping the Roadless Rule in place because they recognize the value of intact forests for protecting indigenous ways of life, healthy watersheds, and salmon streams, and defending against climate change. Keeping the Roadless Rule on the Tongass is one of the best ways to ensure the forest remains standing for everyone’s benefit.”

“In its drive to take us back to the bad old days of rampant logging, the Trump administration is once again aiming for the Tongass,” said Garett Rose, Senior Attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “The Roadless Rule remains a conservation keystone, safeguarding the singular natural values of America’s great forests. We’re not going to let them get away with this outrageous effort to strip these vital protections from the country’s largest temperate rainforest and further immiserate Americans now and in future generations.”

Background

The Tongass, sometimes called North America’s Amazon, is the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest and the ancestral homeland of the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian peoples. The inclusion of the Tongass in the national Roadless Rule has long been supported by many Native Nations in Southeast Alaska because the rule helps conserve the forest for food and cultural traditions.

Under the Roadless Rule, the Tongass is healing from decades of past, harmful clearcutting. Logging in Southeast Alaska is now almost entirely replaced by local sustainable economies, namely tourism and fishing, that depend on the forest’s intact ecosystem. Globally, the Tongass also plays an important role in buffering the climate because of the ability of older trees to absorb and store large amounts of carbon dioxide. The Tongass is estimated to store 20% of the carbon within all U.S. forests.

President Trump removed Roadless Rule protections from the Tongass once before in 2020. Alaska Native tribes, small boat tour businesses, fishing and conservation groups represented by Earthjustice and Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) challenged that decision in court. The Roadless Rule was restored to the Tongass in 2023 under President Biden.

In January, on his first day in office, President Trump signaled his intent to once again roll back these protections as part of an executive order aimed at maximizing industrial development in Alaska. The old-growth forests, islands, fjords, glaciers, and muskegs that make up the Tongass provide some of the most rare and intact ecosystems in the world, providing critical habitat for wildlife including salmon, brown and black bears, bald eagles, flying squirrels, goshawks, and Sitka black-tailed deer.

The Trump administration then issued another Executive Order in March, followed by a Secretarial Memo in April, aimed at vastly ramping up timber production across all national forests.

When the Roadless Rule was first adopted nationwide in 2001, the Tongass National Forest was included. Although the George W. Bush and first Trump administrations later exempted the Tongass from the national rule, the Tongass has been protected under the Roadless Rule for most of the two decades it has been in effect.

Roadless protections for the Tongass have long enjoyed broad support from both within Alaska and nationally. During the previous Trump-era rollback in 2020, the public submitted nearly half a million comments. Of those, 96% advocated for keeping Roadless Rule protections in place for the Tongass, and only 1% supported the Trump exemption.

While the Roadless Rule prohibits logging and logging roads, it provides flexibility within the rule for some other development projects, including hard rock mines, federal-aid highways, utility lines, hydropower projects and other energy projects.