Tongass

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Tongass Groundtruth Expedition: 2016

Photos by Jacob Ritley, Cascadia Wildlands’ Tongass Groundtruth Expedition, 2016. Thanks to LUSH Foundation for their generous support. Southeast Alaska’s Alexander Archipelago is made up of thousands of islands large and small. Small boats and floatplanes are the dominant modes of transportation. Old-growth clearcutting is ongoing this summer on the Big Thorne timber sale, Prince of … Read more

Cascadia Wildlands Leads Ground-truth Expedition into Fabled Tongass National Forest

by Alaska Legal Director Gabe Scott [updated 9/8/16]   TONGASS NATIONAL FOREST, ALASKA— Lots to report from our ground-truthing trek last week into Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. We spent a week on Wrangell, Revilla and Prince of Wales Islands with colleagues investigating proposed and active old-growth logging projects.   This was a trip to the edge of … Read more

Lawsuit Challenges Alaska Road Project from Ketchikan to Shelter Cove

April 14, 2016 — Five environmental groups sued the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers today in the federal district court at Anchorage to force supplemental analysis on the environmental consequences of the Ketchikan-to-Shelter-Cove road project on Revillagigedo Island in southeastern Alaska. The project is out for bids, which are due today.

U.S. Supreme Court Denies Effort to Overturn Tongass National Forest Protections

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 29, 2016

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Supreme Court today declined to hear a last‐ditch effort by the State of Alaska to exempt America’s largest national forest from a national rule protecting undeveloped, road‐free national forest areas from logging and road construction. The State sought to overturn a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that kept the Roadless Area Conservation Rule in effect in the vast Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska. The Ninth Circuit agreed with a federal District Court in Alaska that the Bush administration improperly exempted the Tongass from that landmark conservation measure.

Lawsuit Challenges Plan to Log Old-growth in Alaska

Cascadia Wildlands yesterday filed suit against the Forest Service challenging approval of the Mitkof Island timber sale, a 4,117-acre old-growth logging project on the Tongass National Forest, near Petersburg in Southeast Alaska. This lawsuit comes close on the heals of our challenge to the Big Thorne timber sale, another big old-growth sale that is currently on … Read more

WTF?!

By Gabe Scott Cascadia Wildlands filed a lawsuit today to stop the U.S. Forest Service’s Big Thorne timber project on Prince of Wales Island in southeast Alaska. Big Thorne is by far the largest logging project on the Tongass National Forest since the region’s two pulp mills closed about 20 years ago. The lawsuit argues … Read more

Delusions of grandeur on the Tongass

By Gabe Scott, Alaska Field Director CORDOVA, AK—Big plans are in the works on Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, the nation’s largest. It seems everyone has some grand scheme in mind for the largest remaining old-growth forest in the country. The Forest Service is planning huge new timber sales, which they say will bridge the gap … Read more

Crony Capitalism on the Tongass

by Gabe Scott Where is the Tea Party when we need them? I’ve been spending a lot of time lately with two thick Environmental Impact Statements — for the Tonka Timber Sale, and the Big Thorne Timber Sale — out of Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. These fellas are a blast from the past, a nostalgic … Read more