In Alaska you’ll find some of the largest and most sensitive tracts of wild land left on Earth. Yet these lands may not stay that way if the oil and gas and timber industries have their way.
Factsheet on Sealaska Lands Bill. This legislation would make thousands of acres of the most important lands in the Tongass National Forest available for development by Sealaska Corp., a for-profit entity.
On Prince of Wales Island in Southeast Alaska, a coalition of conservation organizations, including The Wilderness Society, is working with partners to undo the damage caused by decades of clearcut logging in the Tongass National Forest—logging that had devastated t
The following statement from The Wilderness Society Alaska Regional Director Nicole Whittington-Evans is in response to the House Natural Resources Committee markup of the Southeast Alaska Native Land Entitlement Finalization and Jobs Protection Act , commonly called the Sealaska Lands Bill, (H.
A decade after it was first adopted by the U.S. Forest Service, the Roadless Area Conservation Rule has proven to be remarkably successful in protecting the 58.5 million acres of national forest roadless areas from road building and logging.
Southeast Alaska salmon contribute to a fishing industry worth $1 billion a year, are the most important subsistence species for Alaska Natives and other residents, and play a critical role in the ecosystem, providing a source of food for other animals, and fertilizing majestic spruce and hemlock forests.
Like a lot of people in Alaska, Don Hernandez has always fed his family with deer he shoots and fish he catches in the Tongass National Forest.
He says his way of life is threatened by a plan to give the American Indian-owned Sealaska title to 85,000 acres of National Forest land. Sealaska wants to log 75,000 acres, including areas of large-tree old-growth forest surrounding Hernandez's hometown of Point Baker.
A federal judge has thrown out an industry lawsuit that could have led to more logging and road building in Alaska's Tongass National Forest, the nation's largest federal forest.
U.S. District Judge John Bates Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit filed by a timber group and an organization of Southeast Alaska civic and business leaders. The Southeast Conference and Alaska Forest Association had challenged a 2008 management plan for the Tongass developed by the Bush administration.
The unlikely alliance (of contractors and environmental groups) is being played out in other parts of the country, including Montana where two projects are slated to begin next year in the Lolo National Forest. A project is also planned for the oft-contentious Bitterroot National Forest, said Marnie Criley, coordinator of the Montana Forest Restoration Committee.
The Wilderness Society strongly opposes legislation that was proposed by Senator Lisa Murkowski yesterday in the United State Senate and by Representative Don Young in the House. Commonly called the Sealaska Lands Bill, the proposed law would threaten the real economic engines of Southeast Alaska—fishing, recreation, and tourism—and would gut the U.S. Forest Service’s vision for the Tongass, America’s largest national forest.
