Tell Your Representative to Protect Tongass, Support the Roadless Area Conservation Act

From PennEnvironment (http://www.pennenvironment.org):

The administration is poised to strip protections from the Tongass National Forest — our largest intact temperate rainforest.¹

This forest is too special to lose. That’s why we’re calling on the U.S. House of Representatives to support the Roadless Area Conservation Act today.

Go to https://pennenvironment.webaction.org/p/dia/action4/common/public/?action_KEY=38695 to tell the House: Support the Roadless Area Conservation Act.

In southeast Alaska, a dense network of islands is covered in the deep greens of moss and old-growth trees that have been standing for a thousand years. Fog cloaks the web of forest, ice and rock that is home to some of America’s most iconic species — brown bears, moose, and the largest concentration of nesting bald eagles in the world.²

Nearly 9.5 million acres of the 16.7 million acres of forest are now once again at risk of logging, an industry that has long lobbied to enter the areas protected by the Roadless Rule. The 2001 Roadless Rule protects undeveloped lands of our national forests from timber harvesting and road construction — keeping wild places wild. But the administration has been working to exempt the Tongass from the protection of the Roadless Rule — and now they’re on the brink of succeeding.³

But there’s still a way for us to save the Tongass. The Roadless Area Conservation Act would codify the 2001 Roadless Rule into law, solidifying the protections for the Tongass and all of the other wildlands across the country that the Roadless Rule currently protects.

Call on your U.S. House representative to save the Tongass before it’s too late.

The ancient cedars, Sitka spruce and hemlocks provide vital habitat to the diverse species that call the forest home. We can’t let our largest remaining intact national rainforest be cut down to make doorjambs, crown molding or piano sounding boards.

Take action today.

1. Juliet Eilperin, “Trump administration proposes expanding logging in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest,” The Washington Post, October 2019.
2. Brendan Jones, “Trees older than America: a primeval Alaskan forest is at risk in the Trump era,” The Guardian, March 22, 2018.
3. “2001 Roadless Rule,” Forest Service, last accessed June 10, 2020.