The Alaska Rainforest Defenders have submitted comments on the Central Tongass Project Draft Environmental Impact Statement to request that the USFS cease planning on this destructive project.
Judge Issues Preliminary Injunction Halting Old-Growth Timber Sale
ACTION ALERT: Comment Period for the Central Tongass "Project"
The heart of the Tongass is threatened by the Central Tongass Project. Please take a stand before the September 16th deadline.
We urge you to submit written comments or testify on the CTP Draft EIS during the 45-day comment period, ending at midnight on September 16, 2019. Download the Defender’s action alert for more information and talking points.
Northern Kupreanof Island. Photo: Colin Arisman.
The comment period is now open on the Forest Service’s proposed Central Tongass Project (CTP) Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS). In truth, the project is a huge timber sale and road construction boondoggle. We ask you to submit comments requesting selection of the no-action alternative and cessation of any further planning for this destructive project.
If approved, the Forest Service would provide the timber industry with nearly a quarter billion board feet of primarily old-growth and some second-growth timber, on up to 13,500 acres of logging units, to be cut over the next 15 years. This devastation would occur on Mitkof, Kupreanof, Kuiu, Wrangell, Zarembo and Etolin Islands and the adjacent mainland.
The forest landscape in this part of the Tongass is already heavily fragmented, both naturally and from decades of industrial scale logging. The logging activity would include construction of about 118 miles of new logging roads, despite the project area already having almost 1,200 miles1 of poorly maintained national forest roads. In an attempt to sell this travesty to the public, the Forest Service has packaged this destructive activity with a minor amount of largely unfunded recreation improvements and watershed restoration—and have innocuously labeled it a "project" instead of a "timber sale project."
WAYS TO SUBMIT COMMENTS OR TESTIFY
Comments can be submitted by these means:
Online at: https://cara.ecosystem-management.org/Public/CommentInput?project=53098
By FAX to: (907) 772-5995
By email to: commentsalaska-tongass-petersburg@fs.fed.us
Defenders File Objection to the Prince of Wales Landscape Level Analysis Project
Ancient cedar stump on Prince of Wales. Photo: Elsa Sebastian.
Alaska Rainforest Defenders filed an objection to the POWLLA project in December 2018. You can download the Alaska Rainforest Defenders objection here, and you can also download an objection filed jointly with Earthjustice and other conservation groups.
The Defender’s are deeply concerned with the USFS’s proposed actions presented in POWLLA, which would:
Log 235 million board feet (MMBF) of old growth timber over the next decade: 25 MMBF annually during the first five years of implementation and 15 MMBF annually during the second five years of implementation.
After logging 235 MMBF Forest Service would then evaluate whether to cut the remaining old growth on the island.
Alternative 2 would also remove 3 MMBF of recovering, second-growth forest annually for the first seven years of the project and then escalate to 50 MMBF per year for the final eight years, for a staggering total of 421 MMBF.6
The agency would construct 129 miles of temporary road and 35 miles of permanent system road, adding to the economic and ecological cost of the project.
These levels of timber extraction are unreasonable, particularly in light of the damaged ecological condition of Prince of Wales. In ARD’s objection we provide more details on impacts on salmon habitat, address the impacts of clearcutting recovering second growth forests, introduced some new science on Prince of Wales wolves, and challenge the idea of the need for timber harvest on Prince of Wales.
To read more, download Alaska Rainforest Defender’s objection.