Thanks to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals 40 million acres of national forest get a reprieve from the ax. According to an Earthjustice e-mail, the court stated: “The watered-down roadless policy put forth by the Bush administration was illegal and reinstated the original 2001 Roadless Rule throughout the country except for Alaska’s Tongass National Forest and Idaho.” Why not the Tongass? Well that’s an interesting story.
In 2002 Alaska Growth Capital in partnership with Alaska’s Forestry Service set up a program to help rural communities in Alaska. Federal funding was leveraged to help produce a variety of forest–based goods and services to meet domestic and international needs. This program also granted loans for business start-ups. Steve Seley secured an $800,000 loan and put up $800,000 of his own money for his company’s (Pacific Log and Lumber) sawmill on Gravina Island in the Tongass. http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:8LQDo7Unq4MJ:www.fs.fed.us/r10/spf/publications/spf_2002AccompReport
_finalbyUntalaso_090503.pdf+who+is+Steve+Seley+related+to+in+government%3F&cd=6&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us.
An odd place to plan on making money since the Tongass was protected by the roadless rule in 2002.
In 2003, Bush decided to exempt the Tongass National Forest from the 2001 Roadless Rule in the late afternoon, the day before Christmas. http://www.nativeforest.org/action_alerts/archive/wildlands_1_13_04.htm .
That’s a little curious. He also announced that he planned to allow the governors of the lower 48 states to have the last say so as to what is protected by the Roadless Rule. In short, he effectively repealed the Roadless Rule by relinguishing Federal Power over NATIONAL parks. What does a state have any business deciding what happens in a NATIONAL PARK? National parks go over state lines, and are therefore shared by other states. That would be like Michigan deciding everything to do with the Great Lakes just because we have the most shoreline.
By 2006, Steve Seley’s business, all of 23 people, was in trouble. A timber sale that was supposed to happen did not happen yet. http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/373461/gravina_island_mill
_owner_hardened_by_hardship/index.html. But a little farther on in the year, the U.S. Forest Service signed an agreement with Alaska that assures Seley’s company will get the timber sales agreement in exchange for biological data of the Tongass area. Alaska and the USFS stated: “‘This is a cooperative agreement that accomplishes two things: to provide a timber supply, and to collectively share state data on all biological information gathered and collected with the Forest Service to help rewrite the Tongass Land Management Plan,’ said Michael Menge, commissioner of the state Department of Natural Resources. Oh I’m sure they would love to rewrite the plan and open up a heck of a lot more of Tongass National Park to useless logging. One of the Forest Service’s sticking points in offering sales, according to industry and state officials, is the rewrite of the plan.” http://www.alaskajournal.com/stories/020506/hom_20060205005.shtml.
In the same Alaska Journal article it was noted: “Gov. Frank Murkowski’s chief of staff, Jim Clark, who was the former chief lobbyist and attorney for the Alaska Logging Association, signed the memorandums for the state, and that Jack Phelps, special projects manager for the state, is the former executive director of the Alaska Forest Association.” We can see that the state of Alaska relative to this agreement was pretty much represented by the logging industry. So we can basically say that the logging industry cut a deal with the U.S. Forestry Service to give timber sales to the logging industry while they collect biological data of the habitat in and around the Tongass. Isn’t that a little backward?
Usually data like this is collected in order to understand what and how many species and/or ecosystems will be impacted by the logging business. To log first and study the impact during or afterward is ridiculous. And do you think it’s ethical to allow members of the logging business to be the ones to collect data in the first place that might possibly influence decisions made by the USFS in the future relative to the Tongass? The data might be a little skewed in the lumber industry’s favor.
Well, I guess we’ll see because our Secy. of Agriculture Tom Vilsack agreed to a new plan using taxpayer dollars to allow logging in the Tongass basically so that Steve Seley and others like him can stay afloat. So our taxpayer dollars are financing logging that is not really needed so that small businesses in rural areas of Alaska can stay working? http://www.examiner.com/x-13344-Wildlife-Conservation-Examiner~y2009m7d27-Obama-administration-clearcutting-Tongass-National-Forest-with-taxpayer-money. A sweet deal for Steve, but why was it we didn’t bail out the auto industry? Citizens of Alaska have the 5th highest median income of all the states.
Surely keeping the Tongass in an unprotected state for 6 years to ultimately allow unnecessary logging to take place in our largest U.S. temperate rainforest is not about Steve Seley. He’s the door that just opened. The data collected about environmental impacts will more than likely be watered down in the logging industry’s favor and slowly we will destroy a rainforest for no good reason than to give someone a job. For all that I read and there is much in the articles just cited here, the Tongass area lumber cannot compete with others between the quality of wood, and the shipping distance. As taxpayers we should not be happy about this.
As the Chicago Examiner asked: Why should we care about protecting Tongass National Forest from logging?
For one, this ancient, vital forest ecosystem belongs to all Americans. It’s our own 17 million acre lush, cool shaded rainforest. It is supposed to exist for all Americans for all time, not as a quick cash-cow for a few greedy businesses. There are endangered wildlife
like the Alexander Archipelago Islands Wolf, which exists nowhere else on earth, and black-tailed deer, grizzly bears, wolverines, black bears, timber wolves and bald eagles.
But oh, that’s right, Alaska aerial kills wolves and bears like they are rodents. We’re not going to get a lot of empathy for these critters out of the logging industry.
Finally this is a shady, cool, forest canopy. If it’s destroyed the area will dry out. There is a likelihood that the dried mosses, and needles could ignite no differently than down here.
Americans, the environment, the wildlife and their habitat are being swindled on this one. There is more natural resource wealth in the Tongass National Forest than will be made on lumber sales. Call your congress people before the door opens too wide on this one. It’s a real travesty.