Public Rebuts Alaska Rainforest Logging, Roadless Exemption Plan

The public is broadly opposed to the Trump administration’s plan to open most of the world’s largest remaining coastal temperate rainforest to logging and road-building, according to an internal U.S. Forest Service report.

Ninety-six percent of 15,909 public comment letters that the Forest Service received about the proposal supported maintaining protections for Southeast Alaska’s Tongass National Forest under the 2001 Roadless Rule, according to the report. The report was written in April and obtained in May by the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, a local environmental group.

About 1% of the public comments the Forest Service received supported dropping roadless ...