Scientist urge Congress to back off roadless rule
By Kevin Gullufsen
Originally published January 28, 2018 05:58 am at the Juneau Empire
Tongass old growth, aquatic life put at stake by spending bill, they say
A group of 220 natural resource scientists urged Congress with a joint letter Friday not to eliminate the so-called “roadless rule” on Alaska’s Tongass and Chugach national forests.
The letter comes in response to two proposed changes U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, attached to an Interior Department spending bill in November that hasn’t yet passed. One provision exempts the Tongass and Chugach from prohibitions on road construction and timber harvesting in certain areas of the national forests.
Another section overturns protections in the Forest Service’s Tongass Management Plan for valuable old-growth timber. The plan instead charts a path toward logging younger tree stands.
Overturning these protections, the scientists write, would threaten salmon runs and the Tongass’ ability to store carbon and mitigate climate change.
200+ scientists urge vote against Tongass rider
By Marc Heller, E&E News reporter
More than 200 scientists urged Congress in a letter today to protect the Tongass National Forest in Alaska from increased logging of old-growth trees, an issue that’s in the background of budget negotiations in the Senate.
The 220 researchers, mainly from universities and nonprofit organizations, spoke out against proposals by Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) to exempt the Tongass and Chugach national forests from rules limiting road construction in national forests and to slow the Forest Service’s transition to younger-growth timber in the Tongass.
Scientists speak out for Tongass roadless and old growth protections
For Immediate Release January 26, 2018
Contact: Dr. Dominick A. DellaSala, Geos Institute, (541) 482-4459 x 302 or (541) 621-7223 cell, dominick@geosinstitute.org
ASHLAND, OR – 220 leading scientists, researchers, and university professors spoke out in unison today in support of protecting the Tongass National Forest from rollbacks to roadless area and old-growth forest protections proposed by Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski (attached letter).
Dr. Dominick A. DellaSala, Chief Scientist of the Ashland-based Geos Institute, author of “temperate and boreal rainforests of the world: ecology and conservation,” and co-author of the scientist letter, said “The Tongass is the crown jewel of the national forest system and one of the world’s last remaining intact temperate rainforests. Alaska is on the front lines of climate impacts from melting glaciers, rapid thawing of permafrost, and rising temperatures. It makes no sense to open up old growth logging wounds when the Forest Service can be transitioning to more climate friendly young forest logging.”
DellaSala added, When old-growth rainforests are cut down up to two-thirds of their stored carbon is released to the atmosphere as a global warming pollutant. Old-growth logging on the Tongass is estimated to release the carbon dioxide equivalent of adding over 2 million vehicles per year to Alaska’s climate impacts (See: https://geosinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/tongass-report-emissions-2016-01.pdf).
The Tongass is the only national forest still clearcutting old-growth forests. Most have moved on to logging smaller less controversial trees.
Old growth, new fight: Tongass timber slows wildfire bill
By Marc Heller, E&E News reporter
Originally Published: Friday, January 26, 2018, E&E Newswire
The old-growth timber industry’s fight for survival in Alaska may be complicating congressional efforts to reach a long-term solution to costly wildfires.
Senate aides and lobbyists told E&E News that Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s focus on protecting southeast Alaska’s shrinking old-growth timber business is one potential wrinkle as lawmakers balance environmental and forest industry interests in search of a compromise, possibly in a spending bill covering the rest of this fiscal year.
As the Republican chairwoman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and often a swing vote on issues in the Senate, Alaska’s senior senator is a key player in the wildfire and forest management debate. She told E&E News on Wednesday she’s still working toward including a wildfire measure in a broader bill but didn’t elaborate.
Murkowski targets roadless rule in spending talks
Marc Heller, E&E News reporter
Originally Published by E&E on Wednesday, December 6, 2017
A fight over road construction in the Tongass National Forest may flare up in spending negotiations.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) sponsored a provision in draft Senate appropriations legislation for Interior and related agencies that would exempt Alaska from federal rules that restrict building of roads in national forests.
Murkowski’s move against the “roadless rule” marks another line in a battle that’s been playing out, mainly in federal courts, since the Clinton administration handed down the regulations in 2001.
A U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia judge in September dismissed a lawsuit by Alaska seeking to overturn the rule.
Murkowski, chairwoman of the Interior and Environment Appropriations Subcommittee, is also pushing a provision that would slow the Forest Service’s transition from old-growth logging to young-growth logging in Tongass and Chugach national forests.
Old-Growth Logging’s Last Stand?
Clearcutting ancient trees in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest makes little sense—ecologically, climatically, even economically. So why is it so hard to stop?
“I am sensitive to the fact that these are rural communities where every job matters,” said Dominick DellaSala, president of Geos. “That’s why we said, ‘If you go this way, you get a wall of wood. If you go this way, you get a wall of litigation.’ We were trying to help.”
Keep reading the article by Sarah Gilman at bioGraphic
Final Tongass logging plan draws mixed reaction
By Scott Streater
Reposted from E&E News on December 9, 2016
The Forest Service has formally approved a much-debated land-use plan amendment that calls for phasing out clearcutting of old-growth trees over a 16-year period in Tongass National Forest.
Some environmentalists criticized the move as not going far enough to protect the nation’s largest forest, while the timber industry is likely to object, as well.
Tongass National Forest Supervisor Earl Stewart has finalized a record of decision (ROD) that calls for shifting to young-growth trees in areas that have been previously logged in the nearly 17-million-acre forest in southeast Alaska, according to a notice published in yesterday’s Federal Register.
High Country News Op-Ed: Clearcutting the Tongass National Forest is dead wrong
To avert the worst climate change impacts, old forests and their massive carbon reserves must be protected.
By Thomas E. Lovejoy
Originally published in High Country News on November 17, 2016
In Paris last December, the world turned a major corner on climate change. Some 195 nations agreed on the urgency of the threat. They also agreed to take steps to combat it, including promoting forest protection and reforestation — steps that are necessary, though not in themselves sufficient, if we are to avoid consequences as extreme for our economies and health as they are for the environment.
Tongass Downloads
Tongass Second Growth Transition Project
At a Glance Summary (15 pages)
An End to Old-Growth Logging in Alaska’s Tongass?
By Elizabeth Shogren
Twenty years ago on a beautiful November day, Robert Bonnie and Dominick DellaSala got an unexpected and unforgettable opportunity to play hooky. Both were working for environmental groups, Bonnie for the Environmental Defense Fund and DellaSala for the World Wildlife Fund. But when they arrived at Yellowstone National Park for a meeting about large carnivores, they learned that the park was closed and their meeting had been cancelled: The federal government had just shut down over a budget battle between President Bill Clinton and Congress. Somehow, they talked their way into the park anyway and hiked through Lamar Valley, peering through binoculars at newly reintroduced gray wolves and distant grizzlies and watching a peregrine falcon circle overhead.
Many years later, Bonnie recalled that adventure when he and DellaSala met at the Agriculture Department’s Washington, D.C., headquarters to discuss the fate of the Tongass National Forest in southeast Alaska, the nation’s largest national forest and the last where large-scale clear-cutting of old-growth trees is permitted. Bonnie, now the undersecretary of Agriculture who oversees the Forest Service, said that day had been one of the best of his life. DellaSala challenged Bonnie to top it by saving the Tongass. “That would be a conservation legacy,” DellaSala, 59, recalls.
Now, however, three years later, Bonnie and DellaSala are on opposite sides of a battle over climate change and the Tongass.
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Samantha Medlock is President of Climate Risk Advisors, helping communities and organizations advance equity, sustainability, and resilience. Her career began chasing floods as a local official in Texas Flash Flood Alley—a hands-on experience that still shapes her approach to climate and disaster risk management.
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Frank is the former President of the Reinsurance Association of America. Frank currently serves on the Advisory Board of the OECD’s International Network for the Financial Management of Large-Scale Disasters, the RAND Center on Catastrophic Risk Management and Compensation, and the University of Cincinnati’s Carl H. Lindner III Center for Insurance and Risk Management Advisory Board.
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