Controversy, Taxpayer Loss and an Illegal Logging Plan Aren’t Enough to Deter Forest Service from Clearcutting in Alaska Rainforest

Forest Service Denies Local Residents and Conservation Groups’ Appeal of Emerald Bay Timber Sale in the Tongass National Forest

Contacts:     Laurie Cooper, Manager, Alaska Rainforest Campaign,  (202) 549-0475

Controversy, Taxpayer Loss and an Illegal Logging Plan Aren’t Enough to Deter Forest Service from Clearcutting in Alaska Rainforest
Forest Service Denies Local Residents and Conservation Groups’ Appeal of Emerald Bay Timber Sale in the Tongass National Forest

The Bush administration turned a deaf ear to concerns about logging in Emerald Bay Alaska raised by residents in the nearby, small community of Meyers Chuck. The local opposition to the sale was echoed by Alaska-based and national conservation groups which appealed the Forest Service’s Emerald Bay Timber Sale decision.

“The Bush administration seems to have an enormous blind spot when it comes to operating with common sense,” said Cooper. “Their first order of business should be to fix the Forest Plan. The ‘timber-first, business-as-usual mentality doesn’t even come close to offering a solution.”

The Emerald Bay Timber Sale appeal, in part, sought to stop the harmful clearcutting because the Forest Service is currently operating under an illegal Forest Plan. Last year a federal court ordered the Forest Service to fix its Forest Plan after it found the agency had misrepresented economic data and unnecessarily doubled logging levels in the Tongass National Forest. At the heart of the court’s ruling was the Forest Service’s failure to consider logging less of the remaining roadless areas in the rainforest, including Emerald Bay.

 “The public’s been told almost nothing about how the agency is going to put in place a legal plan for the Tongass, but the agency has no problem barreling ahead in bureaucratic overdrive with taxpayer-subsidized logging projects” said Cooper.

The logging project, which will cost America’s taxpayers at least $1.5 million according to Forest Service estimates, will irrevocably damage the dazzling Emerald Bay in the Tongass National Forest. Emerald Bay is one of the last, large unroaded regions of the mainland coast of southeast Alaska’s Inside Passage.

 “Taxpayers are tired of paying to pave and log America’s greatest forest. It’s like Alaska’s ‘Bridges to Nowhere’: unwanted, ill-advised projects paid for by every one of us,” said Cooper.

The Tongass National Forest in Alaska is America’s Rainforest. It was established by Teddy Roosevelt in 1907 and is the largest intact temperate rainforest in the world. Its giant Sitka Spruce and other old growth are home to healthy populations of wolves, bears, salmon and Bald Eagles that have disappeared from many other parts of the country.