Alaska Gov. Challenges Roadless Rule Over Tongass National Forest Impact
Litigation filed in the U.S. District Court in Anchorage last week seeks to have the 2020 Alaska Roadless Rule reinstated as soon as possible.
The complaint filed Friday, Sept. 8, maintains that the state is defending its right to protect the economic and socioeconomic development of Southeast Alaska, which includes Tongass National Forest.
The Tongass, at 17-million-acres, surrounds Alaska’s capital city of Juneau. Each year, an abundance of wild salmon return from the ocean to streams in the Tongass to spawn and die, bringing with them nutrients from the productive North Pacific Ocean to a much less nutrient-rich land.
Currently the Roadless Rule, which prohibits new road construction and reconstruction in inventoried roadless areas on National Forest System lands, protects...