Alaska Roadless Rule Explained

Keeping track of efforts to save the “Roadless Rule” in Alaska has been complicated.  

But if you value public lands and wild salmon - and the jobs, cultures and recreation they sustain - you’ll want to tune in. The Roadless Rule in Alaska’s National Forests could be overturned in 2020, putting places we as Alaskans hold most dear at risk. 

Watch our new video to see what’s at stake this year for the Tongass National Forest.  

The gist of it? 90% of communities within Southeast Alaska spoke up in favor of the Roadless Rule. They said they want safeguards for their backyard forest, the Tongass. 

Despite this, Alaska’s Governor Dunleavy and President Trump made deals behind closed doors that jeopardize those safeguards for Tongass fish, wildlife and recreation opportunities, and the communities that depend on them. 

The decision makers we elected in Alaska are working to increase industrial clear-cut logging of old growth trees in undeveloped, wild areas of the Tongass called ‘Roadless’ areas. These logging activities are harmful to fish and wildlife, come at great taxpayer expense, and threaten the economy and way of life in Southeast Alaska—not to mention some of the best fishing on the planet. 

Despite that the Roadless Rule is flexible - allowing communities within the forest to obtain exemptions for every single infrastructure, transportation, mining, and energy project that’s been proposed in roadless areas – the State of Alaska has bent over backwards to serve the old-growth logging industry in its quest to overturn the popular conservation measures. 

Check out the new video below and share it with your friends and neighbors and then add your name to the letter on this page. 

Roadless areas in the Tongass are what make the Alaskan “backyard” a unique treasure that is worth protecting.