Roads into Alaska’s Tongass can affect climate
By Adam Aton, E&E News reporter (F
The Trump administration is one step closer to carving roads through one of the country’s biggest carbon sinks.
Earlier this week, comments closed on an industry-supported proposal that could reshape the Tongass National Forest, the country’s biggest stretch of woods. The federal plan is advancing as scientists say that forests will help determine what level of damage the world experiences from warming — bad to catastrophic.
Photo by Dominick DellaSala
The Forest Service proposal aims to build roads through the Tongass. But it’s more than a traffic question. Both sides see it as a precursor to logging more old-growth trees. And more broadly, conservationists say it illustrates the gap between what forests need to thrive and what this administration is giving them.
“They refuse to acknowledge what scientists are prescribing as a remedy for forests in the face of climate change,” said Peter Nelson, director of the Federal Lands Program at Defenders of Wildlife.
Top Republicans have embraced so-called active management — like tree thinning and prescribed burns — to counter record-breaking wildfires, mass tree deaths and other woodland ills. Most experts agree that those measures can help under the right circumstances. But some suspect that Trump officials are using active management as a cover to expand logging into lucrative — and sensitive — areas.
To those critics, the Tongass road proposal showcases the emphasis on extraction.
“This is your first line of climate change defense in Alaska, it’s these intact forests. This is your chance for southeast Alaska to have a safe climate. If you continue to log these forests, you’re just contributing to the problem,” said Dominick DellaSala, president and chief scientist at the Geos Institute.
The administration leans on fire and climate science to argue for thinning dry forests in the interior West — and rightly so in some cases, said Mike Anderson, a policy analyst with the Wilderness Society.
But taking the same approach in the Tongass rainforest shows its real goal is logging, he said. Unlike parts of the Lower 48, the Alaska forest isn’t prone to burning, so roads into the woods are less important for tree thinning.
“It’s just crazy,” Anderson said. “Old-growth logging in the Tongass is the last thing the Forest Service should be spending energy on.”
It also hurts other woodlands, he added, because the Forest Service would be spending time and money on the Tongass roads instead of on other needs, like more science-based thinning and prescribed burns in dry forests.
President Trump seemed to acknowledge this week how much work remains in Western forests. In an interview with the Associated Press, he referred to the more than 100 million dead trees standing in California.
“California does a horrible job maintaining their forests. They’re going to have to start doing a better job, or we’re not going to be paying them,” Trump said. He didn’t elaborate on what payments he was talking about.
Former officials under Presidents Obama and George W. Bush have warned that the Trump administration is courting disaster by disregarding the role climate change plays in forest fire planning (Climatewire, Aug. 17). The Forest Service has escaped some of that criticism, but the Tongass fight could change that.
“It’s a study in hypocrisy,” Nelson of Defenders of Wildlife said.
“The rationale for everything they’re doing in forest management is essentially wildfire,” he said, adding that the administration’s policy is the same whether there’s fire risk or not: log more.
Wildfire isn’t a problem in the Tongass — as it’s a temperate rainforest, one expert said, it would be nearly impossible to burn the wet vegetation if you tried. But it does matter to the climate for two big reasons, and conservationists say the road proposal undercuts both.
First, big forests could cushion the effects of global warming by offering shelter to wildlife from climate stresses. But roads fragment habitat, deflating that cushion and potentially offering an entryway for other disruptions, like invasive species.
“Building roads into an intact forest jump starts a death-by-thousand cuts,” more than 200 scientists said in a letter opposing the Tongass road proposal.
Second, the Tongass stores a huge amount of carbon. It’s home to about 8 percent of all the carbon sequestered in American woodlands. The Obama administration sought to transition old-growth logging there to new-growth. That inflamed industry, which called it disastrous to the sector, and irked environmentalists because of how much old growth would still get cut down.
Now, the road proposal foreshadows a bigger change in the Tongass’ land planning. More logging could be part of it, but so could other activities, like mining (Greenwire, Oct. 4).
“We don’t need 90 percent of the Tongass National Forest to be ‘protected’ from the Alaskans who live in Southeast Alaska,” said a letter signed by the leaders of the Alaska Miners Association, the Alaska Forest Association and other industry groups.
“We believe that tourism, fishing, mining, energy development, and a renewed timber industry can coexist to the benefit of all in the region,” the letter said.
A proposed environmental impact statement for the road plan is expected in summer 2019, with the final rule following in 2020.
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.
Arsum is the Senior Adaptation and Coastal Resilience Specialist for the National Wildlife Federation’s Southcentral Region. In this role, she advances climate adaptation efforts, with a focus on nature-based approaches to address the impacts of climate change and extreme events across the Gulf region. She has authored and co-authored numerous publications on climate impact assessments and adaptation solutions. Additionally, she regularly participates in state-based coastal resilience and hazard mitigation planning across the Gulf, collaborating with regional and local stakeholders.
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.
Jim is a multilingual world traveler. Based in Bavaria during the 1970s, Jim spent most of this period in India, Afghanistan and Nepal, where he founded and operated a charitable medical clinic serving Tibetan Refugees. He settled in Oregon in 1983 on a forested ranch in the Umpqua National Forest.
Dr. Micah Hahn is an Associate Professor of Environmental Health in the Institute for Circumpolar Health Studies at the University of Alaska-Anchorage. She received her joint PhD in Epidemiology / Environment and Resources from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her MPH in Global Environmental Health from Emory University. Subsequently, she was a postdoctoral fellow for the CDC Climate and Health Program, and in this position worked collaboratively with the CDC Division of Vector-borne Diseases and the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Her research focuses on understanding the health impacts of climate change and working with communities to develop locally-relevant adaptation and resilience-building strategies. Dr. Hahn is also on the Management Team of the Alaska Climate Adaptation Science Center.
Michael is a former Founding Principal of Resilient Cities Catalyst, a global non-profit helping cities and their partners tackle their toughest challenges. He is currently the Executive Director of Climate Resilience Academy at the University of Miami.
Dr. Quintus Jett is a consultant, educator, and strategist for public causes. He has a doctorate in Organizations & Management from Stanford University, and a two-decade faculty career which spans schools, departments, and programs of business, engineering, liberal studies, divinity, and public and nonprofit management. Following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Dr. Jett launched a volunteer project in New Orleans, which enlisted residents, students from over a dozen colleges and universities, and hundreds of others to field map the city’s Gentilly district, Lower Ninth Ward, and New Orleans East. Dr. Jett is an innovator in higher education, bridging the divide between academic research and the other priorities of the modern university, including student access and diversity, community engagement, and providing foundations for life-long learning in today’s rapidly changing world.
Scott is Monfort Professor of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University. He has written about 100 publications in the peer-reviewed climate literature, is a former editor of the Journal of Climate, and served for five years as founding Science Chair of the North American Carbon Program.
Linda has many years of experience in disaster preparedness and resilience. She has been an elected official on the Linn County Iowa Board of Supervisors, Chair of the Metropolitan Planning Organization, the East Central Iowa Council of Governments, the statewide Mental Health Developmental Disability and the Linn County Board of Health. Langston is a former president of the National Association of Counties (2013-2014).
Ken works with families and organizations as a mediator, organizational consultant, trainer and facilitator. Along with his passion for helping people prepare for and reduce climate change, Ken also volunteers as a mediator through Mediation Works and is passionate about supporting youth through mentoring with Boys to Men of Southern Oregon.
Matthew is a retired high school teacher who was once honored as Oregon High School Social Studies Teacher of the Year. Before his teaching career he was in the restaurant business in Portland. He is also a lawyer who has been a member of the Oregon State Bar Association since 1980.
Andrea is the Resilience Policy Advisor for the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency. She works across state agencies and with local governments to increase the state’s resilience to the impacts of climate change.