Road Hogs

It was the night before Christmas … and Bush opened the Tongass to logging.

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


“If a tree gets cut in a protected forest the day before Christmas and no one’s there to report it, does that mean they get away with it?”

Thus a spokeswoman for the National Environmental Trust, after the U.S. Forest Service announced on December 23 that 300,000 acres in the Tongass National Forest in southeastern Alaska — the largest intact temperate rain forest on earth — would be exempted from a Clinton-era rule banning the building of new roads in roadless areas of national forests. The rule change opens the acreage, which (surprise) is rich in old-growth trees, to logging.

Announcing controversial rule changes just before a weekend or holiday, when the press and public are otherwise preoccupied, is of course, a well-known trick — but no less effective for that. So the answer is, yes, they do get away with it.

State and local politicians opposed the roadless rule on the grounds that it hurt the area’s anemic timber industry, and the state brought suit to have the law overturned. Says an editorial in the Seattle Times, “The prospect of jobs for Alaska’s slumping forest-products industry helped sell this rollback of roadless protections.” There are only about 650 remaining timber-related jobs in Southeast Alaska, down from a decade ago when the logging industry employed about 5,000 people.

The rule change, the forest service said, “concludes a process begun on July 15, with the release of the proposed exemption for public comment, following settlement of the state of Alaska’s lawsuit challenging the application of the roadless rule in Alaska.”

“Two points are worthy of more examination in that statement,” says an editorial in Florida’s Ledger titled, “Flying Under Santa’s Sleigh.”

First, public comment: There were nearly a quarter-million comments received on the plan. An analysis of them by the Heritage Forest Campaign found fewer than 2,000 of them were in favor of exempting the Tongass from the rules that prohibited logging. Comments in support of continued protection outnumbered those favoring the forest service’s plan by 100-to-1. So much for the weight of public comment.

Second, the Alaska lawsuit: While it might seem that this is one of those court-ordered rule changes, there’s more to it than that. The roadless rule, implemented by the Clinton administration in early 2001, prohibited road building in nearly 60 million acres of undeveloped national forests nationwide. The rule was implemented after one of the most-extensive-involvement public-comment periods in history. …

Clearly, the Bush administration hasn’t given the rule any support in the courts and has been correctly labeled as not defending it.”

The land in question, by the way, as well as being rich in old-growth trees, is a valuable wildlife habitat. No matter — the administration’s environmental priorities are well established. “The Bush administration is just catering to its friends in the timber industry by adopting this rule today,” Tom Waldo, an attorney with Earthjustice, told AP.

That the decision is driven by something other than good economic sense is underscored by the well-attested reality that the timber industry is in terminal decline for reasons far larger than the inability of loggers to get at trees in the Tongass. Again, the Seattle Times:

“A sobering economic analysis by the state’s Department of Labor paints a glum picture for Alaska’s timber industry in a global market. …

If U.S. taxpayers are going to send money to Alaska, more people might be put to work for a greater return if the investment is made in tourism, recreation and commercial fishing. …

Paying to build and maintain more roads to cut more trees no one wants is suspect public policy.”

But what is public policy next to political expediency? In Mother Jones September/October issue, Ted Williams wrote that “[i]f the Bush administration gets its way, the woods around Port Houghton [in the Tongass] and similar woods all across America will have roads hacked through them, much of their fish and wildlife sacrificed, and their trees cut and auctioned off to private corporations at a net loss to the federal government.”

Well, the Bush administration is getting its way.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate