When it comes to the battle over resource extraction on public lands, Alaska is on the front lines. For years, federal land there has been the source of legal disputes over expanding mining, development, oil and gas drilling, and logging.
A recent legal case pitted the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) against logging companies over the Tongass National Forest in Alaska. On March 11, the court ruled in the federal government’s favor, putting a stop to efforts to expand logging in a major win for environmentalists.
What Is the Tongass National Forest?
Located in the Alaska Panhandle, the 17-million–acre Tongass National Forest is the nation’s largest. It’s also the world’s largest remaining temperate rain forest. With rainfall totaling over 200 inches a year, it’s one of the wettest places in the U.S. outside of Hawaii.
It also has the highest concentration of bald eagles in the world, and is home to many other rare and endangered species, including the humpback whale, sperm whale, Chinook salmon, stellar sea lion, and short-tailed albatross.
The Lawsuit
On March 6, the Alaska Forest Association, Viking Lumber Company, Inc., and Alcan Timber Incorporated sued the USDA, U.S. Forest Service, Secretary of Agriculture, and Forest Service Chief. Two local villages, Kasaan and Kake, and several environmental nonprofits joined the case as intervenor-defendants. These third parties believe they have a direct interest in the case.
The plaintiffs, all involved in the timber industry, sought access to log the forest’s old-growth sections. Old-growth timber, by definition, has been growing for a long time, so it’s larger and more profitable for timber companies.
Hanging over the entirety of this case is a 1990 law called the Tongass Timber Reform Act (TTRA). This law required the USDA to “seek to provide a supply of timber from the Tongass National Forest which (1) meets the annual market demand for timber from such forest and (2) meets the market demand from such forest for each planning cycle.”
The lawsuit hinged on two government management plans. The 2016 Forest Plan said that companies could buy 46 mmbf (million board feet) of timber from Tongass per year. Of that, 12 mmbf would come from young growth and 34 from old growth sections of forest. Then, in 2021, the USDA announced the “Southeast Alaska Sustainability Strategy.” That plan aimed to end old-growth logging except for tribal uses.
The plaintiffs were suing on three counts: claims that the 2021 strategy was a rule, and thus should have undergone public comment; that the USDA didn’t follow its own 2016 plan, with the amount of timber sold falling far below the 46 mmbf threshold; and that those plans didn’t conform to the TTRA because they didn’t meet market demand.
The defendants argued that the TTRA never mandated that the USDA sell a specific amount or type of timber. They also maintained that the numbers for harvested timber in the 2016 plan were broad objectives, not binding requirements.
The Ruling
District Court Judge Sharon L. Gleason granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss all three counts. The judge sided with the defendants’ reasoning, finding that the 2021 strategy was a continuation of the 2016 plan. Thus, it didn’t require a new formal rulemaking procedure. Gleason also agreed that the 2016 plan did not require the USDA to hit that goal number of 46 mmbf of lumber.
Importantly, the judge dismissed the case with prejudice, meaning the plaintiffs cannot bring it again. The Center for Biological Diversity, one of the nonprofit intervenor-defendants, celebrated the result.
“This ruling is a big victory for the Tongass’ old-growth forests. I’m relieved the court squarely rejected the logging industry’s rash attempt to force large-scale logging,” Marlee Goska, the center’s Alaska attorney, said in an email to GearJunkie. “This lawsuit had no legal basis, and the court was right to dismiss the case outright. We need to leave the Tongass standing for the sake of wildlife, climate, and local communities.”
GJ reached out to the Alaska Forest Association, a trade industry group and one of the plaintiffs, for comment, but did not hear back by the time of publication.
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