A U.S. District Court judge in Alaska ruled against the Trump administration and the U.S. Forest Service’s plan to open 1.8 million acres of the Tongass National Forest to logging. Judge Sharon Gleason ruled, the plan violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which gives people a say in government actions that will affect their communities.
Along with violating NEPA, Judge Gleason ruled the plan also violated the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act.
“By not developing actual site-specific information, the Forest Service limited its ability to make informed decisions regarding impacts to subsistence uses and presented local communities with vague, hypothetical, and over-inclusive representations of the project’s effects over a 15-year period,” wrote Gleason.
The ruling has at least put the government and the U.S Forest Services plans on hold. The logging would also have opened up the loggers to plow 164 miles of roads through the forest, as part of a 15-year logging scheme.
Larry Edwards from the Alaska Rainforest Defenders organization commented on the ruling:
What the court has cut short is flagrant attempts by the Forest Service to trample not only the remaining old-growth forest on Southeast Alaska’s most heavily-logged major island but also NEPA, which is America’s bedrock law for protecting the environment from contrived decision-making.
This was set to be the largest timber sale of any national forest in 30 years, equal to cutting forest three times the size of Manhattan. More than half of the planned logging included cutting down old-growth trees. Scientists have said for many years that the “logging of old-growth forests triggers a cascade of negative effects on wildlife.”
Conservation scientist Dominick DellaSala from the Geos Institute has been a research ecologist since the late 80s. He calls the Tongass “a national champion” capturing 8% of all carbon that stored by U.S. national forests. By cutting down old-growth forests it not only has a negative effect, but it turns the forest into a carbon emitter.
The Trump administration is currently trying to make changes to the NEPA policy that was started in 1970. These changes would weaken the environmental law, exempt certain deforestation projects from any reviews, and give power to the federal government to ignore any adverse effects the projects would have on our climate.
Kristen Miller from the Alaska Wilderness League said this ruling shows the importance of NEPA in an Earthjustice press release:
The Prince of Wales project would’ve been the largest logging project that we have seen anywhere in our national forests in decades, and it would have destroyed thousands of acres of irreplaceable old-growth forest in the Tongass National Forest. Today’s ruling is a win for Southeast Alaska’s billion-dollar fishing and tourism industries, and a reminder as the Trump administration tries to significantly weaken the National Environmental Policy Act of the critical role NEPA plays in allowing the public to meaningfully weigh in on issues impacting their public lands.
Natalie Dawson the Executive Director of Audubon Alaska summed up what this decision means not just for Alaska, but for the planet:
This is a huge win for wildlife, climate, and all people’s voices on the most biologically diverse and vulnerable island on the Tongass National Forest. This ruling protects ancient forests that are crucial to mitigating climate change impacts in Alaska and across the globe.
