Brief History of the Tongass Timber Program

Tongass National Forest Land Types

Tongass Legislation and Management

Brief History of the Tongass Timber Program

Industrial-scale logging began in the 1950’s when the Forest Service signed 50-year contracts with Ketchikan Pulp Company (KPC) and foreign-owned Alaska Pulp Corporation (APC). The contract gave the corporations public timber in exchange for building and operating pulp mills in Ketchikan and Sitka. These 50-year contracts—the only ones of their kind in the National Forest System—meant that clear-cut logging and road building took priority over all other uses and resources of the forest. Although only a small fraction of the region’s forested lands have been cut, intensive logging has targeted roughly 70% of the biggest and best trees, the biological heart of this temperate value rainforest.

Tongass National Forest Land Types

Two-thirds of the Tongass land base is either non-forest or scrub (non-commercial) forest. About half of the commercial forest land is made up of low-volume stands. Only 4% of the entire Tongass land base is composed of high-volume old growth (stands greater than 30,000 board feet per acre). Though the relatively rare high-volume old growth represents some of the most valuable wildlife and fish habitat, it is also most highly sought after by the timber industry.

Clearcutting these key forest lands severely impacts fish and wildlife resources, which in turn damages traditional hunting and gathering, recreation, tourism, and fishing. Tongass clearcutting also has proved costly to the American taxpayer. The two long-term contracts guaranteed the sale of vast quantities of public timber at virtual giveaway prices. As a result, the Tongass has been a chronic money-loser. Since 1980, Tongass timber management has cost U.S. taxpayers roughly one billion dollars, making it the biggest money loser in the entire national forest system.

Tongass Legislation and Management

1906 Antiquities Act: Allowed President Teddy Roosevelt to create the Tongass National Forest by Executive Order in 1907.

1947 Tongass Timber Act: Created a timber-first management regime by disregarding all other forest users.

1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANSCA): Created 1 regional, 2 urban, and 10 village Native corporations and allowed them to select more than one-half million acres of the Tongass National Forest. The 12 village and urban corporations clear-cut nearly all their productive forest land within 20 years, with virtually no protection for salmon streams and wildlife habitat.

1972 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA): Mandates that every government funded activity with significant environmental impacts must undergo a study (Environmental Impact Statement) to examine the effects of the proposed action on the human environment, as well as look at the effects of alternatives to the action.

1976 National Forest Management Act (NFMA): Requires each National Forest to create and maintain an updated forest plan, and to manage the forest in accordance with the plan.

1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA): Protected 5.4 million acres in Southeast Alaska from harmful development (3.6 million acres consist of rock, ice, muskeg, and non-commercial forest), including the Admiralty Island and Misty Fjords National Monuments. Set a legislative timber target of 4.5 billion board feet per decade and a permanent timber appropriation of at least $40 million per year to support the timber industry.

1990 Tongass Timber Reform Act (TTRA): Signed into law by President George H. Bush, this landmark conservation law revoked the artificially high timber target, repealed the automatic $40 million annual appropriation, protected over one million acres of wild Tongass watersheds with vital community-use values, and mandated minimum 100-foot buffer strips on all salmon and resident fish streams. This bill did not terminate the two long-term pulp contracts but modified them in order to better protect the national interest.

1994 Termination of Alaska Pulp Contract:  In October 1993, the Alaska Pulp Corporation unilaterally decided to shut down its pulp mill and terminate about 400 employees.  The Forest Service responded by terminating Alaska Pulp Corporation’s exclusive long-term contract for Tongass timber in April 1994.

1996 End to 104th Congress:  The once-rowdy “Republican Revolution of ‘94” whimpered to a quiet close and Alaska’s powerful Congressional Delegation left Washington without succeeding with a single piece of the 17 initiatives proposed to rollback Tongass reform and once again give timber a priority over all other forest uses.

1997 Sawmill Agreement Closes Out Ketchikan Pulp’s Long-term Contract:  Five months after Louisiana-Pacific Corporation announced its intent to shut down its Ketchikan pulp mill, the federal government at LP completed negotiations to terminate the long-term contract, settle all claims, and provide wood for 3 years to the Ketchikan and Metlakatla sawmills.

1997 Tongass Land Management Plan (TLMP): Released in May of 1997, the revised Tongass Plan set the Allowable Sale Quantity or maximum logging level at 267 million board feet per year. This was more than double the amount cut the previous year and disregarded the historic changes taking place on the Tongass with closure of the last pulp mill. The result of a decade of research, planning, and political haggling, the 1997 TLMP improved salmon and wildlife habitat protections on the Tongass and safeguarded some special places. Yet, by endorsing such a high cut level, the Forest Service continued to demand that hunting, sport and commercial fishing, subsistence, tourism and recreation take a back seat to timber interests. In response, SEACC and several of our member groups filed administrative appeals challenging the 1997 TLMP decision. In all, the groups filed 33 appeals in opposition to the 1997 TLMP.

1999 Tongass Land Management Plan (TLMP): In deciding 33 administrative appeals challenging the 1997 TLMP, the Undersecretary for the Department of Agriculture issued a modified Record of Decision in April of 1999. The final TLMP decision removed over 40 wild watersheds in 18 high-value community use areas from the timber base, including the Cleveland Peninsula near Ketchikan; East Kuiu, Castle River and Port Houghton near Petersburg; Upper Tenakee Inlet; Honker Divide and Poison Cove/Ushk Bay near Sitka. 

2001 Federal court decision in lawsuit brought by Alaska Forest Association overturns 1999 TLMP Decision.  The same court ruling also found the 1997 TLMP unlawful because the Forest Service had failed to consider recommendations for new wilderness areas during the forest planning process.

2001 National Roadless Rule: On January 12th, President Clinton approved a forest management tool that directs National Forests to keep roads and logging out of undeveloped areas of 5,000 acres or greater (known as roadless areas). The Tongass has 109 roadless areas, most of which were covered by the Roadless Rule. The Forest Service received more than 2.5 million comments supporting this rule.  Immediately after entering office, however, President George W. Bush delayed implementation of the rule and then re-opened the rule-making process.

2001 Introduction of Alaska Rainforest Conservation Act by Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, with 100 co-sponsors the proposed legislation would create permanent protection for key Tongass and Chugach wildlands, Wild and Scenic Rivers, restoration areas, and lands for small-scale value-added timber industry.  The Act has been reintroduced in every congress since 2001.

2002 Roadless Rule upheld by Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and qualifying Tongass roadless areas receive protection.

2003 Wilderness Decision, February: The court-ordered supplement to the 1997 TLMP considered alternative recommendations for new wilderness or Land Use Designation II status for Tongass roadless areas (LUD II prohibits commercial logging and most roads). Before the decision was made, Senator Stevens shielded the decision from public accountability with a legislative rider that prohibited any administrative or court challenge of the decision. The Forest Service determined that none of the spectacular wild lands on the Tongass deserve new long-term protections from roads and clearcuts.

2003 Settlement between Forest Service and State of Alaska over Roadless Rule:  Secret negotiations between Undersecretary of Agriculture Mark Rey, former timber lobbyist and Jim Clark, former attorney for Alaska Forest Association and then chief-of-staff for Governor Frank Murkowski, result in settlement where Forest Service agrees to propose rule that exempts Tongass from the Roadless Rule.

2003 Roadless Rule Exemption:  The Bush administration exempts the Tongass from Roadless Rule protections on December 23, 2003.   

2005 Roadless Rule:  The final rule requires governors to request roadless area protections.  The Forest Service has scheduled more than 50 logging sales in Tongass roadless areas over the next decade.

2005 Forest Plan ruled illegal:  The 9th Circuit Court ordered the Forest Service to do the 1997 land management plan over after SEACC and others challenged it.  The court ruled that the agency erroneously doubled its experts’ projections of market demand for Tongass timber.  This error exaggerated projected logging levels and resulted in much more land being designated for logging than the agency’s own economists found was necessary to supply local mills

2008 Tongass Land Management Plan (TLMP): The Forest Service introduces a new forest plan to respond to the 2005 9th Circuit Court ruling.  The plan still allows logging in key areas, but much of it is put off into the future through an unconventional phased approach.