U.S. Department of Agriculture Releases Final Environmental Impact Statement With Full Exemption Alaska Roadless RuleBy MARY KAUFFMAN
September 27, 2020
After a public process, the Forest Service’s final Environmental Impact Statement identifies its Alternate Six – an unconditional, full exemption – as its preferred alternative. The Record of Decision (ROD) and final Alaska Roadless Rule are expected to be effective immediately after being published in late October. Governor Mike Dunleavy welcomed news the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) calls for a full exemption from the so-called “Roadless Rule” on the Tongass National Forest, saying the action brings Alaska one step closer to opening the door to improved transportation infrastructure and broad benefits to the people and economy of Southeast Alaska. “After conducting a thorough, multi-year public process the Forest Service has once again acknowledged that this onerous rule has imposed an unfair burden on our state,” Governor Dunleavy said. “We thank Agriculture Secretary Sonny Purdue and his team for conducting a thorough evaluation and proposing a reasonable accommodation for Alaska, and we look forward to release of the Final Alaska Roadless Rule.” In 2001, the USDA adopted the Roadless Area Conservation Rule (2001 Roadless Rule). The roadless rule prohibited road construction, and cutting, selling or removing timber within inventoried roadless areas, with certain exceptions. The 2001 Roadless Rule applied nationwide and includes more than 45 million acres of national forests and grasslands. Currently, 9.2 million acres -- around 55% -- of the Tongass National Forest are designated and managed as inventoried roadless areas, which has limited economic opportunities in some areas. In Southeast Alaska, the rule dealt a near-fatal blow to the region’s logging industry, closing sawmills and ending the careers of hundreds of Alaskans. The State of Alaska petitioned the Forest Service in 2018 to free 9.2 million acres of the 17-million-acre Tongass from the previous rule, saying it has unfairly blocked public access, including the roads essential to supporting a vital regional timber industry. In response, the USDA, Forest Service, and the State of Alaska agreed to examine state-specific rulemaking. In June 2018, the Secretary directed the Forest Service to begin evaluating state-specific roadless rule for Alaska. For nearly two years, the USDA Forest Service reviewed citizen input provided through public meetings and subsistence hearings, written public comments, government-to-government consultations with federally recognized tribes and Alaska Native corporations, and engagement with cooperating agencies. Under the proposed rule, projects will still need to go through a formal Forest Service permitting process, but road access will once again be a realistic option to support multiple-use management objectives in the Tongass. “The communities of Southeast Alaska and the State as a whole will benefit from this decision in many ways, including improved access to public lands, and improved economics not only for the many users of the Tongass National Forest, but also those using the state and private lands surrounding the Tongass,” said Corri A. Feige, Commissioner of the Department of Natural Resources. The governor noted that the Forest Service’s rulemaking process gave a voice to all interested parties, including the state-convened Alaska Roadless Rule Citizen Advisory Committee representing the region’s various interests. The state also participated as a cooperating agency, as did several tribal organizations. U.S. Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, and Rep. Don Young (all R-Alaska) issued statements after the U.S. Forest Service (Forest Service) published the final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for a Tongass-specific Roadless Rule. The final EIS includes six alternatives, with a full exemption selected as the preferred alternative. “The Tongass is home to Alaskans who want what most Americans take for granted—the opportunity to live, work, and play in the communities in which they grew up,” Murkowski said. “A full exemption from the Roadless Rule is about access—access to recreation, renewable energy, and more. This puts us on track for a Record of Decision and final rule by the end of the year, in turn opening the door for individuals and communities throughout Southeast to build a more sustainable economy while still ensuring good stewardship of our lands and waters. I thank Secretary Perdue and the Forest Service team for their continued good work on this important rulemaking.” “For nearly two decades, the Roadless Rule has stifled opportunities for Alaskans in Southeast to harvest timber, connect communities, develop minerals and build vital energy projects,” Sullivan said. “With this new Tongass-specific regulation, the Forest Service has struck a better balance between conservation and fostering opportunities for Alaskans to make a living. I thank Secretary Perdue, Chief Christiansen, and the Forest Service team for working with Alaskans and reaching this critical stage on the path to a more responsible and workable Roadless Rule.” “For years, I have said that the one-size-fits-all Roadless Rule was a disaster for Alaska. This Congress, I have been working closely with the President and senior White House staff to secure a Roadless Rule exemption for the Tongass. Not only has the Roadless Rule put an unconscionable economic and social burden on Southeast Alaska, it also violates ANILCA and the ‘no more’ clause by locking up land from the people of Alaska. The release of the final EIS for Roadless Rule is incredible news for our state and our economy, particularly in Southeast. I want to thank the Administration for working with me, our Congressional Delegation, Governor Dunleavy, and, most importantly, for listening to Alaskans. An exemption will not only bring great economic benefit to Alaska, but will also help bolster the long-term health of the Tongass National Forest. This is a good day, and one that has been long in the making. I look forward to continuing to fight on behalf of our state’s right to manage our own resources,”Congressman Young said. In 2018, the Forest Service announced it would develop a state-specific Roadless Rule focused on the Tongass National Forest. The Alaska-specific rule will amend the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which established sweeping prohibitions on road construction, road reconstruction, and timber harvest on inventoried roadless areas on National Forest System lands. The new rulemaking came in response to a petition from the State of Alaska requesting a full exemption from the 2001 Roadless Rule for the Tongass. The Tongass spans nearly 16.7 million acres, covering almost all of southeast Alaska, and is home to 32 islanded communities. For decades, successive layers of federal regulation, including the 2001 Roadless Rule, have continually restricted access needed for timber, mining, tourism, recreation, and the development of renewable resources such as hydropower. The result has been a weaker regional economy that is largely seasonal in nature, with local communities facing fewer employment opportunities and higher energy costs. The final EIS is a key milestone in the rulemaking process to restore balance in federal management on the Tongass. Inventoried Roadless Areas comprise about 9.5 million acres of the forest (an area three times the size of Connecticut). Combined with other federal protections, none of which will be affected by this rulemaking, nearly 80 percent of the Tongass is currently off-limits to most forms of development or required to be managed as roadless. According to the Forest Service, 96% of commenters on the proposal want to see the Roadless Rule remain in place. But despite this overwhelming support for protecting our national forest lands, the agency has decided to ignore the public and pave the way for more logging and roadbuilding in the Tongass. SalmonState condemned the announcement in a press releases saying, the decision continues several years of ignoring Tribes, Southeast Alaskans and Americans who have commented on this issue. It also endangers food security and salmon runs; threatens $2 billion, on average, in economic benefit from fisheries and tourism in the Inside Passage; threatens traditional ways of life; and paves the way to eradicating one of America’s greatest resources in the fight against climate change. “It’s clear that the decision-making process for America’s largest national forest is broken. We need a new approach that actually heeds Tribes and Southeast Alaskan stakeholders,”said SalmonState Executive Director Tim Bristol.. "This move represents a focus on the p ast, not the future; is deeply disappointing; is wildly unpopular; and is likely to be overturned in the courts." Bristol said, “This reprehensible move disregards years of collaborative work in favor of money-losing taxpayer giveaways to an industry that was shutting down before the Roadless Rule went into place.” “The largest intact temperate rainforest left in the world, the millions of salmon, 650 million tons of carbon storage, and the people, businesses and jobs that depend on an intact Tongass National Forest are too important to throw away for a politically-motivated industry handout,” said Bristol. “This reprehensible move disregards years of collaborative work in favor of money-losing taxpayer giveaways to an industry that was shutting down before the Roadless Rule went into place.” In a prepared statement, Andy Moderow, Alaska Director, Alaska Wilderness League said, “The Tongass is where many Americans come to see Alaska, to experience abundant wildlife in an intact, wild landscape. But instead of addressing maintenance backlogs and permitting issues that would benefit tourism and recreation, or stream restoration that would boost Southeast Alaska’s billion-dollar fishing industry and protect long standing Alaskan traditions, this administration has opted to take the road well-traveled by continuing to spend tens of millions of dollars every year to expand logging roads for a dying old-growth timber industry. This is bad for people, bad for a sustainable economy and bad for wildlife. Put simply, we should stop spending our taxpayer dollars to destroy public lands and all they provide for us in the Tongass National Forest." Moderow said, “The Tongass is an unmatched treasure and with smart action now we can properly manage it for future generations. But those generations will never experience some of the most intact expanses of temperate rainforest or see some of the largest concentrations of wildlife like brown bears found anywhere in the world if forest management continues to operate like it’s the 1980s instead of 2020." Nicole Whittington-Evans, Alaska program director, Defenders of Wildlife, also issued a statement saying, “Americans overwhelmingly want to see roadless areas within the Tongass National Forest protected. Instead, the U.S. Forest Service is selling out our precious old-growth forests to be shipped as raw logs to Asia at taxpayer expense. Clear-cutting ancient forests is bad for fish and wildlife, bad for the region’s tourism and fishing industries, expensive for taxpayers and makes no economic sense. At a time when Southeast Alaska communities are reeling from the effects of COVID-19 on the local economy, more clear-cuts that undermine the fishing and tourism industries only add insult to injury.” Part of this evaluation is governed by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which requires federal agencies to analyze significant environmental impacts of proposed actions through a thorough and public process. The specifics of the NEPA process vary according to the circumstances, but federal agencies solicit public involvement at significant steps in the process, which begins with determining the scope of the analysis and ends with publishing the final decision. The NEPA process began in August 2018, when the Forest Service published a Notice of Intent to conduct an environmental impact statement on a potential roadless rule exemption for the Tongass National Forest and solicited public comments on the scope of the analysis. In October 2019, the Forest Service published a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) and proposed Rule for a 60-day public comment period. The Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) responds to substantive public comments to the draft, contains additional analysis of management options and identifies the preferred alternative to fully exempt the Tongass National Forest from the 2001 Roadless Rule. The 30-day waiting period will provide time for the Secretary to consider the purpose and need, weigh the alternatives, balance objectives and issue a record of decision on the final rule. Any record of decision on the final rule will not directly authorize any ground-disturbing activities.
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