Forest Service Exempts Tongass National Forest From Roadless Rule - 1/12/2004 - Home Exterior Environment Landscaping

Forest Service Exempts Tongass National Forest From Roadless Rule

The U.S. Forest Service on Dec. 23 announced its decision to exempt the Tongass National Forest from the embattled Roadless Area Conservation Rule. The regulation is also known as the “Roadless Rule.”

NAHB had strongly advocated the exemption because further restrictions on timber harvesting in the forest would have taken a tremendous economic toll on local communities in that area.

Despite its exemption from the Roadless Rule, some 95% of the Tongass will remain off-limits to logging under existing forest management plans, preserving tremendous stretches of one of the world’s last temperate rain forests.

The exemption will, however, allow local communities such as Ketchikan, AK, to continue to survive and grow. Timber from the Tongass accounts for a significant percentage of the volume processed by local mills in Southeast Alaska. Curtailing that supply would precipitate unacceptable job losses and economic disruption in local communities and businesses.

NAHB has long held that the questionable environmental benefits provided by the Roadless Rule do not justify such costs, and the Administration has at long last agreed with that position.

Buffeted by litigation, the future status of the Roadless Rule remains in question. In addition to citing the rule’s deleterious impact on local economies, NAHB contends that application of the rule violates a number of federal laws and undermines state and local planning authorities. At the same time, the rule provides little, if any, benefit to the forests above and beyond protections already afforded under forest management plans.