Editing Tongass National Forest (section)

==History==
The '''Alexander Archipelago Forest Reserve''' was established by [[Theodore Roosevelt]] in a presidential proclamation of 20 August 1902. Another presidential proclamation made by Roosevelt, on 10 September 1907, created the Tongass National Forest. On 1 July 1908, the two forests were joined, and the combined forest area encompassed most of [[Southeast Alaska]]. Further presidential proclamations of 16 February 1909 (in the last months of the Roosevelt administration) and 10 June, and in 1925 (by [[Calvin Coolidge]]) expanded the Tongass. An early supervisor of the forest was William Alexander Langille.<ref name=nps>[http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/sitk/adhi/adhi1c.htm Indian River protection] (accessed 8 July 2010).</ref>

On September 4th, 1971, [[Alaska Airlines Flight 1866]] crashed in the Tongass National Forest, killing all 111 people on board.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/AAR7228.pdf|title=Aircraft Accident Report Alaska Airlines, Inc. Boeing 727, N29696, Near Juneau, Alaska September 4, 1971|date=13 October 1972|publisher=[[National Transportation Safety Board]]|id=NTSB-AAR-72-28|access-date=15 May 2019}}</ref>

===Aboriginal title===
After the creation of the Tongass National Forest, the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska formed to challenge the federal government's rights to the land in 1935.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.ccthita.org/about/overview/index.html|title=Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska: About Us|publisher=Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska|access-date=26 June 2020}}</ref> In ''Tlingit and Haida Indians of Alaska v. United States'', the court found Alaskan natives held established aboriginal title by their "exclusive use and occupancy of that territory from time immemorial".<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://openjurist.org/389/f2d/778/tlingit-and-haida-indians-of-alaska-v-united-states|title=The Tlingit and Haida Indians of Alaska and Harry Douglas et al., Intervenors, v. The United States. No. 47900. United States Court of Claims. January 19, 1968.|publisher=Open Jurist|access-date=26 June 2020}}</ref> The court found the [[Alaska Purchase|Alaska Treaty of Cessation]] between Russia and the United States did not extinguish aboriginal title to the land, and that the creation of the Tongass National Forest constituted a taking of land from the Tlingit and Haida. The case was finally settled in 1968 with a $7.5&nbsp;million payment that valued the Tongass at about 43 cents an acre. The value was based on land value at the time of the taking in 1902, without the inflation or interest accrued in the past 66 years.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.juneauempire.com/news/important-alaska-native-settlement-case-started-as-grassroots-movement/|title=Important Alaska Native settlement case started as grassroots movement|publisher=Juneau Empire|access-date=26 June 2020}}</ref>

===Logging===

[[File:Tongass NF - map of wilderness areas.jpg|upright=1.4|thumb|[[US Forest Service|Forest Service]] map of the Tongass, with [[US national monument|National Monuments]] and [[U.S. Wilderness Areas|Wilderness Areas]]]]
[[File:MapAlaska-1940-1323.jpg|alt=Alaska: Tongass National Forest. F.I. Shafer. 1940|thumb|Alaska: Tongass National Forest. F.I. Shafer. 1940]]
Timber harvest in Southeast Alaska consisted of individual handlogging operations up until the 1950s, focusing on lowlying areas and beach fringe areas. In the 1950s, in part to aid in Japanese recovery from [[World War II]], the Forest Service set up long-term contracts with two pulp mills: the [[Ketchikan Pulp Company]] (KPC) and the Alaska Pulp Company. These contracts were scheduled to last 50 years, and originally intended to complement independent sawlog operations in the region. However, the two companies conspired to drive log prices down, put smaller logging operations out of business, and were major and recalcitrant polluters in their local areas. Ultimately, virtually all timber sales in the Tongass were purchased by one of these two companies.

In 1974, the exclusive KPC contract for 800,000 acres of old growth forest on Prince of Wales Island was challenged by the [[Point Baker, Alaska|Point Baker]] Association led by Alan Stein,<ref>[https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8n01d2n/entire_text/ Finding Aid to the Alan Stein papers]</ref> Chuck Zieske and Herb Zieske.  [[United States District Court for the District of Alaska|Federal District Court]] judge [[James von der Heydt]] ruled in their favor in December 1975<ref>ZIESKE v. BUTZ, 406 F.Supp. 258 (1975), United States District Court, D. Alaska. Decision of 23 December 1975. {{cite web |url=http://174.123.24.242/leagle/xmlResult.aspx?page=1&xmldoc=1975664406FSupp258_1640.xml&docbase=CSLWAR1-1950-1985&SizeDisp=7 |title=ZIESKE v. BUTZ - December 23, 1975 |access-date=2012-01-03 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120527012451/http://174.123.24.242/leagle/xmlResult.aspx?page=1&xmldoc=1975664406FSupp258_1640.xml&docbase=CSLWAR1-1950-1985&SizeDisp=7 |archive-date=27 May 2012}}</ref> and March 1976,<ref>Zieske v. Butz, 412 F.Supp. 1403 (1976), United States District Court, D. Alaska. Decision of 5 May 1976. [http://www.leagle.com/xmlResult.aspx?page=2&xmldoc=19761815412FSupp1403_11615.xml&docbase=CSLWAR1-1950-1985&SizeDisp=7]</ref> enjoining clearcutting of over {{convert|150|sqmi|km2}} of the north end of Prince of Wales Island. The suit threatened to halt clearcutting in the United States. In 1976, Congress removed the Zieske injunction in passing the [[National Forest Management Act]].<ref>Parent, S. 1992. The National Forest Management Act: Out of the Woods and Back to the Courts? Lewis & Clark Law School. [https://litigation-essentials.lexisnexis.com/webcd/app?action=DocumentDisplay&crawlid=1&srctype=smi&srcid=3B15&doctype=cite&docid=22+Envtl.+L.+699&key=72bb1d985b65e94148ba0ed8833851ef][</ref> Over half the old growth timber was removed there by the mid 1990s.<ref>Lab Bay 1979-94 Environmental Impact Statement USDA Forest Service 1989</ref>

The battle for buffer strips, to protect salmon streams from logging, which began in the ''Zieske v Butz'' lawsuit, continued through comments submitted to the major US Forest Service Environmental Impact Statements issued in subsequent five-year intervals starting in 1979,<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oaM2AQAAMAAJ&q=alan+stein+tongass&pg=PA146|title=Tongass National Forest (N.F.), LPK Timber Sale Plan, 1979-1984: Environmental Impact Statement|date=1979|language=en}}</ref> and continuing in the 1988 EIS.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vYc2AQAAMAAJ&q=alan+stein+tongass&pg=PA272|title=Tongass National Forest (N.F.), Ketchikan Pulp Company Long-term Timber Sale Contract, 1989-94 Operating Period, Ketchikan Administrative Area: Environmental Impact Statement|date=1989|language=en}}</ref>

In 1990, a Federal District Court in Alaska, in a case called ''Stein v Barton'', held the US Forest Service had to protect all salmon streams in the Tongass with buffer strips.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/740/743/1952466/|title=Stein v. Barton, 740 F. Supp. 743 (D. Alaska 1990)|website=Justia Law|language=en|access-date=2019-09-09}}</ref> One of the claims in ''Stein v Barton'' for protection of the Salmon Bay Watershed was partially enacted into law when Congress Passed the Tongass Timber Reform Act; environmental lobbyists had compromised with Senator Ted Stevens leaving the most valuable forest available to logging in the headwaters of the salmon streams therein.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8n01d2n/entire_text/|title=Stein (Alan) papers|website=oac.cdlib.org|access-date=2019-09-09}}</ref>

Much of the power of these companies lay in the long-term contracts. The contracts guaranteed low prices to the pulp companies—in some cases resulting in trees being given away for "less than the price of a hamburger".{{Citation needed|date=May 2023}}

The [[Tongass Timber Reform Act]], enacted in 1990, significantly reshaped the logging industry's relationship with the Tongass National Forest. The law's provisions cancelled a $40&nbsp;million annual subsidy for timber harvest; established several new wilderness areas and closed others to logging; and required that future cutting under the 50-year pulp contracts be subject to environmental review and limitations on old-growth harvest. Alaska Pulp Corporation and Ketchikan Pulp Corporation claimed that the new restrictions made them uncompetitive and closed down their mills in 1993 and 1997, respectively, and the Forest Service then cancelled the remainders of the two 50-year timber contracts.<ref>Steiner, R. 1998. Deforestation in Alaska's Coastal rainforest: causes and solutions. Univ. of Alaska. {{cite web |url=http://www.wrm.org.uy/deforestation/NAmerica/Alaska.html |title=Underlying Causes of Deforestation: Alaska |access-date=2012-01-03 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120602031325/http://www.wrm.org.uy/deforestation/NAmerica/Alaska.html |archive-date=2 June 2012}}</ref>

In 2003, an appropriations bill rider required that all timber sales in the Tongass must be positive sales, meaning no sales could be sold that undervalued the "stumpage" rate, or the value of the trees as established by the marketplace (2008 Appropriations Bill P.L. 110–161, H. Rept. 110–497, Sec. 411). However, the Forest Service also conducts NEPA analyses, layout, and administrative operations to support these sales, and as such, the government does not make a profit overall.<ref name=tnf/> Given the guaranteed low prices during contract days and the continued high cost of logging in Southeast Alaska today, one analysis concludes that, since 1980, the Forest Service has lost over one billion dollars in Tongass [[timber sales]].<ref name=groundtruthtrekking>[http://www.groundtruthtrekking.org/Forests.php#AKforests Temperate Rainforests of the North Pacific Coast] (accessed 16 May 2007).</ref> Logging operations are not the only deficit-run programs, however.  The Forest Service likens the overall deficit of the timber harvest program to the many other programs the agency operates at a deficit, including trail, cabin, and campground maintenance and subsistence programs.

High-grading (preferentially targeting for logging the most profitable forest types) has been prevalent in the Tongass throughout the era of industrial-scale logging there.<ref>[http://joomla.wildlife.org/alaska/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=157&Itemid=157 The Wildlife Society, Alaska Chapter, 2003. Comments to the Chief of the Forest Service on the exemption of the Tongass National Forest from the roadless rule. Aug. 8, 2003.] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110807085148/http://joomla.wildlife.org/alaska/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=157&Itemid=157 |date=7 August 2011 }}</ref> For example, the forest type with the largest concentration of big trees—volume class 7—originally comprised only 4% of the forested portion of the Tongass, and over two-thirds of it has been logged.<ref>Tongass Land Management Plan Supplemental EIS, 1991.</ref> Other high-grading has concentrated on stands of Alaska cedar and red cedar. The karst terrain often produces large trees and has fewer [[muskeg]] bogs, and has also been preferentially logged.<ref name=groundtruthtrekking/>

In a move that reverses a Trump administration decision to lift restrictions on logging and road-building, the Biden administration announced on 15 July 2021 that it would end large-scale, old-growth timber sales in the Tongass National Forest.<ref>{{Cite web|author=MATTHEW DALY|agency=Associated Press|title=Biden ends large-scale logging in Tongass National Forest|url=https://www.anchoragepress.com/news/biden-ends-large-scale-logging-in-tongass-national-forest/article_a40ba742-e59d-11eb-a003-376af3cc7225.html|access-date=2021-08-03|website=The Anchorage Press|language=en}}</ref> [[Forest restoration]], recreation and other non-commercial uses will instead be the focus. The new rules would still allow for smaller timber sales, including some old-growth trees, for cultural uses by local communities.

===Roadless controversy===
{{Further|Alaska Roadless Rule}}
[[File:Tongass National Forest 3.jpg|thumb|A stream in the forest]]
The most contested logging in the Tongass has involved the [[roadless area conservation|roadless areas]]. Southeast Alaska is an extensive landscape, with communities scattered across the archipelago on different islands, isolated from each other and the mainland road system.  The road system that exists in the region is in place because of the resource extraction history in the region, primarily established by the Forest Service to enable timber harvest.  Once in place, these roads serve to connect local communities and visitors to recreation, hunting, fishing, and subsistence opportunities long into the future. Installing roads in the vast wilderness areas of the Tongass has been opposed by the [[roadless area conservation]] movement, which claims that it would promote [[habitat fragmentation]], diminish wildlife populations and damage salmon spawning streams. They argue that existing roads are sufficient.<ref name="TongassEJ">{{cite web|url=http://earthjustice.org/our_work/cases/2009/tongass-roadless-exemption|title=Tongass Roadless Exemption|work=Earthjustice}}</ref>

The Tongass National Forest was included in the Roadless Initiative passed on 5 January 2001, during the last days of the [[Bill Clinton]] Administration, and the initiative prevented the construction of new roads in roadless areas of United States national forests.

In September 2006, a landmark court decision overturned Bush's repeal of the Roadless Rule, reverting to the 2001 roadless area protections established under president Clinton. The Tongass remained exempt from that ruling. In June 2007, [[United States House of Representatives|U.S. House]] members added an amendment to the appropriations bill to block federally funded road building in Tongass National Forest. Proponents of the amendment said that the federal timber program in Tongass is a dead loss for taxpayers, costing some $30&nbsp;million annually, and noted that the Forest Service faces an estimated $900&nbsp;million road maintenance backlog in the forest. Supporters of the bipartisan amendment included the [[Republicans for Environmental Protection]]. Representative [[Steve Chabot]], an Ohio Republican who sponsored the amendment, said, "I am not opposed to logging when it's done on the timber company's dime… But in this case, they are using the American taxpayer to subsidize these 200 jobs at the tune of $200,000 per job. That just makes no sense."<ref name=ens />

In July 2009, the [[Obama Administration]] approved clearcut logging on {{convert|381|acre|km2}} in the remaining old growth forests of a Tongass National Forest roadless area.<ref>{{cite news| url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/16/obama-administration-appr_n_235311.html | work=Huffington Post | first=Katherine | last=Goldstein | title=Obama Administration Approves First Logging Contract in Alaska's Tongass National Forest | date=16 July 2009}}</ref> The timber sale was permanently stopped by a lawsuit.<ref>Los Angeles Times editorial, 21 December 2009. [https://archive.today/20130616042148/http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-tongass12-2009dec12,0,1738682,print.story Logging illogic].</ref><ref>US District Court, Alaska. 7 December 2009. ''Order and Opinion'' in case 1:09-cv-00003-JWS.</ref>

In March 2011, Judge [[John W. Sedwick|John Sedwick]] from the Anchorage federal district court, in his ruling,<ref name=sedwick>[http://earthjustice.org/sites/default/files/Tongassdecision3-4-11.pdf A court order, ruling the Tongass exemption from the Roadless Rule invalid, Judge Sedwick (U.S. Dist. Court, Anchorage), 4 March 2011]</ref> reinstated the Roadless Rule on roadless areas in the Tongass, but with three of the Forest Service's recent timber projects excluded from that ruling "without prejudice." Those projects were Iyouktug Timber Sales ROD (record of decision), Scratchings Timber Sale ROD II, and Kuiu Timber Sale Area ROD.<ref name=sedwick/> The Order concluded in part:

{{blockquote|Because the reasons proffered by the Forest Service in support of the Tongass Exemption were implausible, contrary to the evidence in the record, and contrary to Ninth Circuit precedent, the court concludes that promulgation of the Tongass Exemption was arbitrary and capricious.

<blockquote>With the passage of the Roadless Rule, inventoried roadless areas, 'for better or worse, [were] more committed to pristine wilderness, and less amendable to road development for purposes permitted by the Forest Service.'"<ref>Lockyer, 575 F.3d at 1010 (quoting Kootenai Tribe, 313 F.3d at 1106).</ref></blockquote>

While the Forest Service may reevaluate its approach to roadless area management in the Tongass, it must comply with the requirements of the APA [the federal Administrative Procedures Act] in doing so.<ref name=sedwick/>}}

In October 2019, the [[Environmental policy of the Donald Trump administration|Trump administration]] instructed federal officials to reverse the limits of tree cutting at the request of Alaska's top elected officials, including Senator [[Lisa Murkowski]] and Governor Michael J. Dunleavy. In a statement, Forest Service officials said the new plan would be subject to public comment for 60 days.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/trump-administration-proposes-expanding-logging-in-alaskas-tongass-national-forest/2019/10/15/92e47db8-ef77-11e9-8693-f487e46784aa_story.html|title=Trump administration proposes expanding logging in Alaska's Tongass National Forest |first=Juliet |last=Eilperin|newspaper=The Washington Post|language=en|access-date=2019-10-23}}</ref>

The Forest Service removed most of the Tongass National Forest from roadless area designation in October 2020, allowing road construction and logging in more than 9.3&nbsp;million acres of rainforest.<ref name=":02">{{Cite news|last=Eilperin|first=Juliet|title=Trump to strip protections from Tongass National Forest, one of the biggest intact temperate rainforests|language=en-US|newspaper=Washington Post|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2020/10/28/trump-tongass-national-forest-alaska/|access-date=2020-10-28|issn=0190-8286}}</ref> Clear-cut lands lose the [[carbon sink]] of [[old-growth forest]], habitat for wildlife, and soil stability, causing landslides.<ref name=":02" />

In June 2021, the [[Joe Biden]] administration revealed its intent to "repeal or replace" Trump's removal of roadless designation. According to Matt Herrick, spokesman for the [[United States Department of Agriculture]] (USDA) under Biden, "We [the USDA] recognize the vital role the forest and its inventoried roadless areas play in communities, and in the economy and culture of southeast Alaska, as well as for [[climate resilience]]." The Biden administration planned to formally publish its intent to revise the Trump-era rule by August 2021, with details of the plan being finalized in the following two years. In November 2021, the administration officially published a rule to restore roadless protections in the Tongass National Forest;<ref>{{cite web |last1=Davenport |title=Biden Plans to Restore Alaskan Forest Protections Stripped Under Trump |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/11/climate/tongass-biden-climate.html |website=The New York Times |access-date=12 June 2021}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last1=Eilperin |first1=Juliet |title=Biden officials to propose road ban on much of Alaska's Tongass National Forest |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/11/18/tongass-national-forest-roadless-rule/ |newspaper=The Washington Post |access-date=30 December 2021}}</ref> The rule took effect in January 2023, restoring the 2001 roadless rule.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Friedman |first=Lisa |date=2023-01-25 |title=Biden Bans Roads and Logging in Alaska's Tongass National Forest |language=en-US |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/25/climate/alaska-tongass-national-forest.html |access-date=2023-01-26 |issn=0362-4331}}</ref>