(CN) — The Biden administration will restore full environmental protections to the Tongass National Forest, reversing the Trump administration’s efforts to allow logging and mining in one of the globe’s largest temperate rainforests.
Tom Vilsack, the Agriculture Secretary, announced the move on Thursday after the Biden administration has signaled it would repeal Trump administration actions since the early days after the inauguration.
The moves will effectively end large-scale logging of old-growth forests in the 16.7-million-acre preserve in Southeastern Alaska that features a wide range of unique plants and animals in a landscape dotted by archipelago’s, pristine forests and sequences of glacier-filled fjords. The new fuling will also prevent road development on 9 million acres, including on the Alexander Archipelago, home to a species of a rare wolf.
“Fully undoing Trump’s attack on the Tongass and reinstating the Roadless Rule’s protections is the only acceptable path forward for America's climate forest, and we are excited the Forest Service has committed to protecting these majestic trees,” said Abbie Dillen, President of Earthjustice, on Thursday.
Fights over the fate of the Tongass have been ongoing for two decades. Once a thriving timber enterprise, conservationists claim the myriad endangered species and the forest’s action as a vast carbon sink outweigh any economic considerations.
“The Biden administration should be celebrated for taking a critical step in our international climate fight; the towering giant trees in the Tongass are ancient and sacred, and they are also one of the best solutions we have to climate change,” Dillen said.
But local operators claim the environmental restrictions have had a detrimental effect on the local economies, plunging timber companies into bankruptcy and robbing the local workers of good, high-paying jobs. While some local tribes want to see the forest preserved, others are interested in economic development.
Vilsack said the Biden administration will inject $25 million into a local community development program and will allow small-scale operators and select tribes to harvest old-growth trees. But Vilsack said alternative economic drivers like tourism, fishing and other forms of recreation remain a more viable path forward for local communities.
“This approach will help us chart the path to long-term economic opportunities that are sustainable and reflect southeast Alaska’s rich cultural heritage and magnificent natural resources,” he said.
Tourism does create more jobs than natural-resource extraction industries, but they tend not to pay as well.
Alaskan lawmakers had lobbied President Joe Biden to restore protections to the more pristine portions of the national forest, but leave some of the more recently developed parts more open to some resource extraction activity.
Logging in the forest began in the 1960s and picked up in pace throughout the 1970s. The timber there is special and provides raw material for expensive musical instruments, decking and elegant shingles. In the 1980s, environmentalists began protesting the logging of old-growth forests, pointing to the impingement upon the habitat of more than 400 species of wildlife, including the endangered bald eagle.
President Bill Clinton instituted the roadless rule, which effectively ended logging in several portions of the forest, as logging companies could not build the roads necessary to reach certain stands and send the harvested timber back toward pulp mills.
Trump rescinded that rule in the waning days of his administration, which some construed as a gift to Lisa Murkowski, the Republican Senator from Alaska who has long advocated for opening up at least a portion of the forest to development.
Murkowski is a key figure in Biden’s attempt to pass a bipartisan infrastructure bill and speculation runs that the $25 million toward community development while allowing small-scale logging represents appeasement toward her camp.
The Tongass is the largest national forest in the United States.
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