To learn more about the work NWF is doing visit their website or contact Kindle at kindle@nwf.org. To get in contact with Jackson or learn more about SEACC, email matt@seacc.org or visit the SEACC website.

Sealaska Corporation is getting out of the logging business after more than 40 years. Southeast Alaska’s regional Native corporation made the announcement on Monday.

The move by one of the region’s economic powerhouses is the latest sign of Southeast Alaska’s economic transition away from logging.

“Logging created value for our Alaska Native shareholders for decades, and it brought us to where we are today. We’re grateful for the commitment and professionalism that led to our success,” Sealaska CEO Anthony Mallott said in a statement. “But we’ve now built an organization that can thrive well into the future, and that means engaging in activities with more enduring benefits for our communities.”

The corporation declined further comment.

The news was welcomed by environmentalists opposed to logging old growth forests.

“We are overjoyed for Sealaska at this incredible decision making by Anthony Mallott and by their board chair Joe Nelson,” Meredith Trainor, executive director of the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, told CoastAlaska on Monday. “And just this visionary leadership of moving Sealaska, away from logging and towards other ways of creating benefit for their people.”

The Juneau-based Native corporation says the transition isn’t expected to affect future profits or dividends. A joint statement says the decision is part of a long-term plan to generate “sustainable value” for shareholders. 

Until now, Sealaska was a major player in the region’s timber economy with more than 360,000 acres in its portfolio. 

In 2015, it began logging lands it received through a transfer by Congress of more than 70,000 acres of Tongass National Forest, largely around Prince of Wales Island. 

The Alaska Forest Association – the state’s timber industry group – declined to comment.

The Native corporation was created by the landmark Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. It has about 22,000 shareholders, most of whom live in or have historic ties to Southeast Alaska.

One of the zines that came out of the workshop. It reads, “Motherhood is in Wild Places.” (Photo provided by Matthew Jackson/Southeast Alaska Conservation Council)

Climate change, like any global crisis, can be hard to wrap your mind around. It is at once abstract and deeply personal, affecting everyone in different ways. One Sitkan thinks art can be a crucial tool in processing those feelings. 

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When it comes to addressing climate change, serious conversations tend to focus on reducing carbon emissions, generating more clean energy, and other big picture issues. Zines, on the other hand, hardly come up at all. 

“Does anyone here know the actual definition of a zine?” asked Ellie Schmidt, addressing a group of fifteen or so people who’d called in to her video conference workshop on art and climate change. “Well it’s a trick question,” she continued. “The whole point of a zine is to be outside of traditional definitions of publications and distributed print.”

In the most general sense, a zine is a homemade publication, often in the form of a little booklet. But it can really be anything you want it to be. The whole point is to get creative, using whatever material you have on hand. 

“So I have some of these sticky notes, I have this like old Rainier box, I have an old textbook,” Schmidt said.

Schmidt put on the workshop in partnership with Matthew Jackson, a climate organizer at the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council. 

“Art’s got power to inspire, to make sense of madness,” Jackson said. “To help us just feel the madness when there’s not sense to be made.”

A page from the Selkie Zine, an ongoing project that Schmidt and a friend publish from time to time. (Photo provided by Ellie Schmidt)

Schmidt, a mixed media artist who works in just about every medium, from painting to underwater photography, says most of her artwork is already about processing her emotions around climate change, and that zines are a particularly compelling way to do this. 

“Because you can pair words and images, and oftentimes you can let the relationship between the words and images be a little bit mysterious,” she said.

Schmidt says it can be hard to come up with the words to describe the grief, anxiety, or fear that climate change can provoke. She thinks that’s partly because so much of literature, poetry, and other forms of art focus on human-to-human relationships. In her work, Schmidt tries to map those human emotions onto the natural world. 

“In my zines I sometimes pair images of something like fishing words from a person in my life,” she said. “And oftentimes those seemingly disparate things can come together to create interesting emotional metaphors.”

Schmidt says she used to approach art as a tool for climate change activism, to try to inspire people to take action. While she still thinks that art can do that important work, in her own practice she’s moving in a different direction. 

“Just wanting to get people to sit for a while and think about how they feel about climate change. Because a lot of times we’re focused on the action, which is good, but I think it’s also meaningful just take some time and feel,” she said.

This workshop was a little bit of both, a time to process emotions through art while also generating some creative lobbying material for the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council to put on lawmakers’ desks. 

The session was originally supposed to be held in person in Schmidt’s studio — before COVID-19 turned everything upside down. But doing it over video conference had some benefits, like allowing people to join in from as far away as Anchorage. 

Schmidt says the forced improvisation of doing the project from home was itself a good lesson. 

“Just affirming that you can make art at home and with any materials that you have at hand,” she said.

Though the subject matter was still focused on climate change, it wasn’t hard to draw parallels with the current stress of living through a pandemic, a different sort of global crisis that is at once abstract and deeply personal, one that brings up a range of emotions for everyone. 

And, coincidentally, zine making is a perfect quarantine crafting project — a celebration of creating something scrappy and beautiful with whatever materials are lying around the house. 

A final digital version of the artwork created from the workshop series can be found here.

Opening unroaded areas of the Tongass to road development — and to logging — has been contentious since roadless policy was established in 2001. (Flickr photo/Joseph)

Ever since the state filed a petition in January of this year for a roadless exemption, opponents have argued that the move reopens a debate that was finally closed in 2016.

The Roadless Rule has been controversial for nearly two decades, at the highest levels of government.

Note: The US Forest Service will share information and take public input on Alaska’s petition to lift the roadless rule in the Tongass, 5:30 – 8 p.m. Monday, September 24, in the Aspen Suites hotel in Sitka.

The Tongass Land Management Plan underwent an extensive overhaul in 2016, and pivoted toward a multiple-use strategy that would rely progressively less on the harvest of old-growth trees, and more on second growth.

US Sen. Lisa Murkowski was never a fan of the updated Tongass plan, and she is fully behind the new agreement between the state and the Forest Service to come up with a roadless rule exemption that is specific to Alaska.

But “roadless exemption” is a hot-button term. In remarks to Sitka media during the congressional recess this summer, Murkowski made it clear that she is aiming for something different.

“It’s not a Roadless exemption,” said Murkowski. “That is something that the (Alaska’s congressional) delegation had asked for, and that the governor had asked for. I had a long sit-down with the secretary (US Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue) and he said, ‘Look, if I were governor I would ask for an exemption too. But I’m trying to be pragmatic here, and seeing that going forward,’ he said, ‘you know we can either set ourselves up for litigation for a long time and hope we win on it, or we can try a more collaborative strategy.’”

Sen. Murkowski favors the state-specific approach to roadless, since — in her words — “It won’t be bunch of people from Washington DC air-dropping in.” A task force of Alaska stakeholders will design the plan, for both the Tongass and Chugach forests.

Note: Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski has been a determined opponent of the “Roadless Rule” in Alaska. She’s recently signed two letters urging an exemption for the state. One to Representative James Costa, the other to the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry.

But that’s exactly what the conservation community believes happened during the 2016 overhaul of the Tongass Land Management Plan. It was a stakeholder-based process that looked at the forest as more than just a place to grow trees.

Southeast Alaska Conservation Council attorney Buck Lindekugel thinks Sen. Murkowski is out of touch with what’s happening on the ground.

“The timber industry makes up less than one-percent of all the jobs and wages in Southeast Alaska,” said Lindekugel. “Why are we perpetuating controversy that isn’t there in order for them to get more subsidized logging? It just doesn’t make sense.”

Following the close of the public comment period on October 15, the Forest Service will begin a complete environmental review as part of the public rulemaking process. It will be fraught with political and legal hazards: The Roadless Rule first went into effect on January 12, 2001, just 8 days before President Bill Clinton left office. The state of Alaska immediately filed a complaint, and won a temporary exemption from the rule in 2003. In 2011 a federal court set aside Alaska’s temporary exemption, and the Tongass and the Chugach were under the Roadless Rule again. After yet one more brief reversal by a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, the full court voted in 2015 voted 6-5 denying Alaska’s complaint, and the state has been under Roadless ever since.

An old airstrip and work camp are being used in the effort to develop mineral deposits at Icy Cape. The Alaska Mental Health Trust Land Office owns the land and mineral rights and is overseeing exploration. (Photo courtesy Alaska Mental Health Trust Land Office)

Developers are optimistic about the potential for a beach-sand-mining operation in northern Southeast Alaska.

The Alaska Mental Health Trust Land Office claims good results from its second season of exploring Icy Cape, on the Gulf of Alaska between Yakutat and Cordova.

When mountains erode, they shed tiny particles of rock. They’re washed into streams to be deposited in lakes, deltas or the ocean.

In the Gulf of Alaska, strong waves toss them back on shore to help form beaches.

When those mountains contain veins of rare minerals, those sediments may have enough value to be worth mining.

That’s what’s happening at Icy Cape, where crews are drilling into the beach to see what – and how much — is there.

“There is gold, there’s zircon, there’s garnet, there’s epidote, there’s some platinum,” said Wyn Menefee, acting executive director of the land office of the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority.

Its Icy Cape property includes about 25 miles of beach, plus forested uplands as wide as 2.5 miles. Those forests cover layers of sand and could be developed.

It’s an isolated area, about 75 miles west-northwest of Yakutat and nearly twice that distance east-southeast of Cordova.

“Right now, we’re in the exploration phase, which is determining what the resource is now, the lay of it … and we’re not at the point of identifying how we’re actually going to mine it,” he said.

About a year ago, the trust’s board allocated $2 million toward the project.

Officials said the new source of income could surpass all of its other efforts, bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

A work crew of about 16 spent last summer drilling cores from the sands, which stretch as far as 100 feet below the surface in some areas. Menefee said those samples are being analyzed.

The results have caught the attention of potential investors.

“We already have international companies that are interested in the project. They’ve already been visiting the site. They’ve already been trying to check out the resource and trying to see what quality it is,” he said. “This is a continual process.”

Land trust officials will discuss their plans for mining Icy Cape at meetings in two nearby communities.

The first is 6:30 p.m. Nov. 1 at Yakutat High School. The second is 6:30 p.m. Nov. 2 at the Cordova Center.

Gold and platinum’s value is obvious.

The other minerals have industrial uses as sand-sized particles.

The Trust Land Office manages its property to support mental health services for Alaskans.

It usually does that by leasing property or selling resources, such as timber, for others to harvest or extract.

But in this case, the agency is putting its own money into exploration and – possibly – development.

“We could potentially lease it out to an entity. We could lease it out to multiple entities. We could potentially go into a joint venture with entities,” he said. “There’s a lot of options that could be on the table.”

Menefee said further exploration is needed to determine whether there’s enough value to develop.

He expects that to take several more years.

The Alaska Mental Health Trust Land Office is developing its property at Icy Cape, which runs from the beach to the mountains. Logging will begin next year and and a mining project is in the exploration phase. (Photo courtesy Alaska Mental Health Trust Land Office)

Menefee said it will be a placer-mining operation, which sifts through material near the surface, which would impact the environment less than mining into bedrock. It will also take advantage of existing roads, left over from earlier development.

But the potential project still raises concerns, especially about salmon habitat.

“Virtually every river and creek within the proposed area is listed on the anadromous streams catalog,” said Guy Archibald, staff scientist for the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council.

He worries, because a dozen streams and rivers flow through the land that could be mined. Like most nearby waterways, they’re short and their mouths are sometimes protected by sandbars or spits.

Archibald said they’re susceptible to the gulf’s frequent heavy winds and waves.

“I’m just concerned if they start removing these barrier sands, basically strip-mining them, that it’s going to expose the foot of these rivers to massive erosion during the winter storms and create a barrier to fish passage,” he said.

The Mental Health Trust Land Office plans to harvest more than minerals from the site.

It’s sold roughly 50 million board feet of timber to Sealaska Corp., Southeast’s regional Native corporation.

Menefee said he expects Sealaska to begin logging next year.

The property is within the boundaries of the Yakutat Borough. Officials there did not respond to requests for comment by deadline.

A somewhat similar proposal was made by an out-of-state company for mining beach sands in and near Yakutat about six years ago. That effort ended after initial mineral values could not be confirmed.

Editor’s note: KTOO’s building sits on land leased from the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority. KTOO has also applied for and received occasional grants for special reporting projects from the authority.

At 17 million acres, the Tongass National Forest, pictured here near Sitka, is the country’s largest. (Photo by Mike Hicks)

What is the future of the Tongass National Forest? Will there be a timber industry, and what will it look like in five, ten, fifty years?

Those are the daunting questions before the Tongass Advisory Committee, which is meeting for the fifth time in Juneau this week (wk of 1-20-15). The committee is tasked with hammering out how the Forest Service should handle the Obama Administration’s “transition” away from old-growth logging and to a new focus on younger trees.

But for some people both on and off the committee, the most important questions are the ones the committee isn’t supposed to address.

Downloadable audio

If you want to know how it feels to be on the Tongass Advisory Committee (TAC), the key word seems to be: risky.

“This is kind of the moderate group, and that was by design,” said committee member Wade Zammit, former president of the Sealaska Timber Corporation, speaking at the last meeting, in Sitka. “But there is tremendous pressure [on] every single person sitting at this table from influences in their constituency, about the direction they need to take this. And that — that’s risk. I mean, they are out on the limb on some of the things we’re about to tackle.”

Those things include how soon the Forest Service should taper off old growth timber sales, and how quickly it can ramp up sales of younger, second growth trees.

The Tongass committee is made up of over a dozen representatives from timber and conservation groups, local communities and Native organizations. And they are haunted, in part, by the history of past stakeholder groups who couldn’t hammer out a “made in the Tongass” solution.

But, said Zammit, “I think this group is different. I really feel strongly about this group and what it can accomplish.”

It’ll soon be clear whether that’s true. The committee has to come up with recommendations for the upcoming amendment to the Tongass Forest Plan by late February — though they’ve asked for more time.

That Forest Plan is a sort of zoning map for the entire Tongass — essentially, what can happen where.

And for now, everyone agrees on one thing: the current situation is untenable.

“We can’t go on like what’s been going on,” said committee member Eric Nichols of Ketchikan, owner of Alcan Forest Pro  ducts and Evergreen Timber. “The industry is devastated, a lot of these communities are devastated. Something has to change. ”

For the timber industry, lawsuits have made it impossible to get a sale out on any reliable timeline. For conservationists, there’s still too much old growth slated for logging. And for communities across Southeast, the long, slow decline of the timber industry has left a major economic hole.

Robert Bonnie, U.S. Department of Agriculture Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment, attended the last committee meeting in Sitka.

“I think everybody recognizes that we can’t just flip a switch and immediately begin to bring second growth online,” Bonnie said. “That’s because there’s not a whole lot of second growth out there, and because there’s some constraints on the Forest Service’s ability to do that…What we’d like to do is, over time, decrease the amount of old growth timber and increase the amount of second growth, and that’s the opportunity here. Now, the faster we do that from the standpoint of the conflicts we’ve seen, the better. But we also have to give the industry time to adapt.”

But for many of those watching the process, the biggest questions on the Tongass are outside the committee’s timber-only assignment.

Fishing and recreation groups, in particular, want more attention from the Forest Service. During public comments at the TAC’s last meeting, people said over and over again that the Forest Service — and the committee — need to move beyond a single-minded focus on timber.

Malena Marvin is the executive director of the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council.

“We want to see the Forest Service redirect its budget to prioritize the industries that most Southeast Alaskans depend on,” Marvin said. “That’s everything related to salmon: commercial fishing, sport fishing, subsistence, personal use. And  visitor industries, tourism. Those are our economic power-houses, and so many people really feel that those should be the focus of Tongass management.”

A recent report from Rain Coast Data found that in 2013, the timber industry directly employed 325 people in Southeast Alaska. Together, the seafood and tourism industries employed nearly 11,000 people.

So, commenters asked, why is there a special committee to address timber industry needs, and not for fishing, or recreation?

Joel Hanson is the conservation director for The Boat Company, which runs small cruise ships in Southeast.

“I just wanted to let you know that we at the Boat Company feel both irrelevant to the process and threatened by it, and that’s not a good place for us to be,” Hanson told the committee. “So for those of you hoping the TAC would bring about some changes which might actually reduce the amount of controversy over timber sales on the Tongass, and result in fewer lawsuits: I suggest that you either don’t get your hopes up, or try like hell to find a way to reduce the threat that this transition process poses to recreational  interests.”

“I think we understand that criticism,” Bonnie said.  “Clearly, recreation, salmon are vitally important to the economy here.”

But, he said, the Tongass committee’s charter is deliberately narrow. “I think it’s also important to recognize that we need to move to a place around forest management where there’s more of a shared vision.”

In other words, he said, timber is the most controversial piece of the Tongass puzzle, and the Forest Service worries that giving the committee too much to do might undermine its ability to get anything done at all.

In its meetings so far, the committee has found common ground: there is agreement that the timber industry needs a steady supply of young growth into the future, and that even after the transition, some old growth should be available for niche industries.

But the big, thorny issue before the committee remains how quickly to scale back industrial old growth logging, and how much will get cut in the meantime. And those questions  may be more than enough for one committee to handle.

The Tongass Advisory Committee is meeting through Friday (1-23-15) in Juneau. You can find the meeting agenda here, and instructions on how to submit public comment here.

Oxidized rock colors a valley where one of Seabridge Gold’s KSM project’s open pit mines will be dug in British Columbia. (Photo by Ed Schoenfeld/ CoastAlaska News)

One of 2014’s largest Southeast Alaska issues didn’t even start in the state.

It happened just across the border, in British Columbia. There, mining companies were searching for gold and making plans to dig it – and other valuable metals – out of the ground.

Annita McPhee is a tribal activist critical of mining near her Northern B.C. home.

“We don’t want our livelihood destroyed. We don’t want our watershed destroyed. It’s a very sacred place to us,” McPhee said.

She joined Southeast tribal leaders in a spring forum raising the profile of transboundary mine threats.

Concern spread on this side of the border, as fisheries, environmental groups and some cities lobbied for action against the mines.

But developers said they’d be careful.

“The guiding principal behind the design of the KSM project was the protection of the downstream environments,” said Brent Murphy, president of Seabridge Gold. Seabridge owns a large exploration site northwest of Ketchikan.

At year’s end, the only mine close to opening was the Red Chris, upstream from Wrangell and Petersburg. Its start was delayed after a dam break at its sister mine, the Mount Polley, to the east.

2014 saw several major developments in the timber industry.

Clearcuts and old-growth forests are part of the view of Indian Valley on Prince of Wales Island. The Forest Service just announced three more timber sales in the Island’s Big Thorne area. (Nick Bonzey, Flick Creative Commons)

The Forest Service began the year by forming a citizens’ committee to help map a transition from logging older trees to younger stands of timber. The fall brought a large timber sale, Big Thorne, on Prince of Wales Island. That of course is tied up in the courts.

The industry got a huge boost in December, when Congress passed a bill transferring 70,000 acres of the Tongass National Forest to the Sealaska regional Native corporation.

Most of the land is for logging, which brought opposition from fishing, conservation and other groups concerned about impacts.

During a congressional hearing, General Counsel Jaeleen Araujo said the corporation would take care of the land.

“My people have loved this place, lived in this place, savored this place for longer than your lifetimes, and mine,” Araujo said.

2014 saw some changes in Southeast’s legislative delegation.

Ketchikan Independent Dan Ortiz narrowly won a House seat that had been held for years by a Republican.

And Juneau Democrat Sam Kito III won one of the capital city’s House seats after being appointed to fill in for a retiring lawmaker earlier in the year.

Among other top regional news of 2014:

• Juneau’s Byron Mallott, a Native leader and former mayor, became Alaska’s first Tlingit lieutenant governor.

• Work began in Ketchikan on new ferries that will sail northern Southeast.

• New leaders took the helm at Sealaska, Tlingit-Haida Central Council and the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council.

• And, cruise-ship tourism remained about the same, with about a million people sailing through Southeast waters.

Sport fishermen cast lines at Blind Slough, a Tongass National Forest site near Petersburg, in August 2013. A lawsuit challenging the Forvest Service’s roadless rule, which includes the Tongass, is back in court. (Ed Schoenfeld/CoastAlaska News)

Alaska will continue its court battle against a U.S. Forest Service policy that blocks logging in undeveloped areas of national forests.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled Friday that the state can resume legal action against what’s called the roadless rule.

A lower court had thrown the case out, saying the state missed a key deadline.

Tom Lenhart, the state attorney involved in the case, says it’s back on track.

“The Circuit Court of Appeals agrees that our case was filed timely and they have remanded it back to the District Court. So basically, we pick up our challenge where we left off, in the District Court,” he says.

Logging opponents say the Clinton-era roadless rule should remain on the books. It’s been in and out of court several times.

The Tongass National Forest, in green, includes most of Southeast Alaska. (U.S. Forest Service).

Buck Lindekugel is attorney for the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council.

“We’re confident that the D.C. circuit will ultimately find the roadless rule valid, just like both the 9th and 10th circuits have already concluded. We are also taking a hard look at whether or not to seek a full court reviewing of last week’s decision,” he says.

Roadless Rule supporters say it’s needed to protect old-growth forests and salmon habitat. State officials say it’s hurting the timber industry by blocking logging and road-building.

The suit was filed in 2011.

The state filed a separate lawsuit against the Forest Service that same year. It attempted to resurrect a Tongass exemption from the rule.

State attorney Lenhart says oral arguments are scheduled for mid-December.

He says the case the D.C. court acted on last week is larger.

“It is actually challenging the validity of the entire roadless rule, where as our case in Alaska, in the 9th Circuit, is only about a special exemption for the Tongass,” he says.

The state has intervened on the side of the Forest Service in a separate lawsuit trying to block the Big Thorne timber sale on Prince of Wales Island.

That suit was brought by environmental and fisheries groups objecting to the sale’s impacts on fish and wildlife habitat.

A clearcut north of Angoon is green with small second-growth trees. Environmental groups are calling for an end to old-growth clearcuts. (Ed Schoenfeld, CoastAlaska)

The Tongass National Forest is in the crosshairs of environmental organizations again. Two large coalitions are pressuring the Obama administration to stop all old-growth logging, in part to fight climate change.

The Sierra Club, Alaska Wilderness League and Natural Resources Defense Council are among the groups calling for an end to old-growth clear-cutting in the Southeast Alaska forest.

At the same time, 60 organizations acting as the Federal Forest Carbon Coalition are calling for changes in forest management to address what they call “the climate crisis.”

“It turns out that the Tongass is a globally significant carbon storage reserve,” says Malena Marvin, executive director of the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, one of the groups involved in the issue.

She says the Tongass is important on a global scale.

The Tongass National Forest includes most of Southeast Alaska. (U.S. Forest Service).

“It turns out that big, wet forests store more carbon than any other type of forest. So the Pacific Northwest and Alaska rain forests really do more to combat climate change than any other forest in the country,” Marvin says.

SEACC and the other groups say logging should be better balanced with the needs of tourism, fishing and recreation.

The groups say old-growth timber cuts should end within five years, rather than the 10 to 15 years the Forest Service plans. They also say second, or young, growth could better serve smaller mills producing lumber and other wood products.

“It’s really unsustainable and incompatible with other uses of the forest. And (it’s) really more akin to mining than it is logging in the sense that it’s not a sustainable way to form the base of a timber economy that benefits local people,” Marvin says.

“It’s very disappointing that they’re finding more ways to stop progress in Alaska,” says Shelly Wright, executive director of the Southeast Conference, which advocates for economic development in the region.

She says the remaining mills – one medium-sized and a couple that are smaller – employ a fraction of the number of people working during the Tongass timber boom.

But there are still some jobs with wages that can support a family.

“Pretty soon there’s going to be nothing. All of the infrastructure is failing. It’s very, very expensive right now because we don’t have the volume for transportation. So, it’s going away. It’s rapidly going away,” Wright says.

The Southeast Conference and SEACC are among groups wanting change as Tongass managers rethink their forest plan.

Fifteen people were recently named to an advisory committee assisting with those changes. But shortening the transition time, as the environmental groups want, may not come up.

“I’m sure it’s possible. The question will ultimately be, are people comfortable with the consequences of that,” says Tongass Deputy Forest Supervisor Jason Anderson, federal liaison to the advisory committee.

“That 10- to 15-year time frame is the direction that the secretary (of agriculture) has provided. If there are those who wish to see it sooner, I’m not sure if the (committee) will grapple with that dilemma or not,” he says.

The panel’s first meeting is Aug. 6-8 at the Best Western Landing Hotel in Ketchikan. It will mostly be organizational, but about a half-hour of public comments will be taken at the start of the Aug. 7 session. (Read the agenda.)

The Tongass National Forest could resume allowing logging in roadless areas under a court ruling. But it won’t happen immediately — or at all. (U.S. Forest Service Image)

A federal appeals court issued an opinion Wednesday, March 26, saying the roadless rule should not apply to Alaska’s Tongass National Forest.

The rule was enacted nationwide more than a decade ago. It prohibits logging and other industrial activity in national forest lands without roads.

The Tongass forest, the nation’s largest, was later granted an exemption. That was struck down three years ago in U.S. District Court and the rule was re-imposed.

The Forest Service did not appeal that decision, but the state of Alaska did. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals granted its request. (Read the decision.)

Tom Lenhart is the state attorney involved in the case.

“Removal of the roadless rule won’t in and of itself increase timber harvests or mining or anything like that. But it will take down the barriers that are preventing some things from happening,” he says.

The 9th Circuit Court’s decision does not immediately lift the rule. It sent the case back to the lower court to decide whether additional environmental review is needed.

http://www.kcaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/26Road-PKG.mp3

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Buck Lindekugel is attorney for the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council. It’s one of a dozen groups that sued to bring back the roadless rule.

“The reality is the decision does not immediately reinstate the Tongass exemption. And the Forest Service’s actions have shown it has no desire to go back to the damage, expense and controversy associated with roadless area logging on the Tongass,” he says.

Forest Service officials referred calls about the ruling to the Department of Justice. The staffer handling the issue could not be reached for comment by this report’s deadline.

Plaintiff’s attorney Tom Waldo of Earthjustice says the decision won’t change much. That’s because the Forest Service is already moving away from the type of timber sales the roadless exemption allows.

“I think that’s where the future direction of the policy debate is going to lie, rather than trying to turn the clock back in time to fight the battle of the 1990s over whether we should be logging in roadless areas of old growth on the Tongass,” he says.

The state has a different view.

“We’re hoping the Forest Service will meet its obligations to seek to meet timber demand. And we feel that some sale from roadless areas is necessary to do that. I’m sure the state will continue to use every means available to encourage the Forest Service to take actions that will further a certain level of development,” says attorney Tom Lenhart.

The state, the timber industry and other development groups have been pressuring the Forest Service to allow more logging.

That includes a proposal for the federal government to turn over or sell some Tongass lands.