T R A N S P O R TAT I O N
The latest backspin for the Tongass National Forest By Isaac Stone Simonelli
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alf of Southeast Alaska has no road access to its natural resources. During the 20th century, this fact was a consequence of slow development in a thinly populated territory. As the 21st century dawned, however, whether to allow or forbid roads in the wildest parts of the Panhandle became a political tennis match. The outgoing Clinton administration served the first volley in 2001 with the Roadless Rule, which banned road building in areas of national forests without road access. This policy has the greatest impact in the nation’s largest forest, the Tongass in Southeast Alaska, where 9.4 million of its 17 million acres lack roads. “Tongass National Forest has motivated people for a very, very long time. It's the crown jewel of the National Forest system. It's worth fi ghting for,” says Kyle Moselle, executive director of the Alaska Department of Natural Resources Offi ce of Project Management & Permitting. “I think that you're always going to have a spectrum of opinions about how the Tongass should be managed.” Alaskan officials protested immediately that the rule conflicted with the management plan already in 92 | J u l y 2 0 2 2
place for the Tongass. By 2003, the Tongass was exempt, but in 2011 the ban was reinstated. Then a smash in 2020, when US Forest Service adopted the Alaska Roadless Rule, exempting the Tongass from the ban on road building, with limited exceptions. However, the Alaska Roadless Rule has never been implemented in any meaningful way, arriving amid a change in presidential administrations. A Forest Service spokesperson says a new final rule is expected by the end of the year. Heavily involved in developing the Alaska Roadless Rule, Moselle says he’s disappointed in the Biden administration's proposal to repeal it. “They are simply reverting back to the national rule that I think is a poor fit for the Tongass,” he says. His view is in step with the Alaska Congressional delegation. “Southeast Alaska deserves a sustainable economy, but the one-sizefits-all Roadless Rule works against that. It should never have been applied to Alaska, and it should not be re-applied this year or any other,” the delegation wrote in a joint statement in January.
The Salmon Forest The back-and-forth stems from a fairly simple conflict: the timber Alaska Business
industry needs logging roads to access resources on public lands, whereas intact trees have value for other interests. “It's all one ecosystem,” says Alaska Longline Fishermen's Association Executive Director Linda Behnken, “and you can't have healthy fisheries without a healthy forest.” Behnken says the Roadless Rule is vital to the Southeast commercial fishing industry. “Our membership is dedicated to sustainable fisheries and healthy fishing communities,” Behnken says. “ The health of the forest and the fisher y is tightly connected, as is the economy of Southeast Alaska to the fisheries and to healthy forest.” The streams and rivers of the Tongass produce 95 percent of the salmon caught in Southeast Alaska, Behnken explains. She goes on to note that sablefish utilize the nearshore areas, bays, and estuaries during their first year of life, and halibut feed on nearshore salmon during the summer months. What happens inland affects those waters. Behnken points out that more than 250 miles of salmon spawning streams in Southeast have been w w w .a k b iz m a g .c o m
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To Road or Not to Road
