“Threads of the Tongass” is an ongoing series that explores how lives in Southeast Alaska are interwoven with the Tongass National Forest during a time of vast political, cultural and environmental changes. This is the first article of the series.
Environmentalists and tribal members who have defended the Tongass National Forest for decades are unsure how to proceed under the second Trump administration. Meanwhile, some people struggling in timber and mining feel renewed hope.
Both sides say only time will tell as they watch federal actions fall.
On his first day back in office, President Donald Trump signed “Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential.” The executive order received enthusiastic support from Alaska’s congressional delegation, Gov. Mike Dunleavy, and other officials who cite revenue possibilities from the state’s natural resources. Subsequent orders seek to expand logging in national forests, including the Tongass, which spans nearly 17 million acres in Southeast Alaska. It’s the largest national forest in the United States.
The Roadless Area Conservation Rule grants protections from development for more than 58 million acres of national forest lands, including 9.3 million acres of the Tongass. In 2020, Trump removed its protections at the recommendation of the U.S. Forest Service. In January 2023, the Biden administration reinstated them. Now, industrial-scale logging is up for debate again.
Conservationists say public opinion overwhelmingly supports protecting the Tongass, based on comments collected by the Forest Service. Some Alaska policymakers and industry representatives argue that national polls and public comments are detached from the economic and existential reality of people living in Southeast.
A 2020 Freedom of Information Act request by the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council (SEACC) showed 96% of more than 250,000 public comments submitted to the Forest Service favored maintaining Roadless Rule protections. A 2019 Pew Charitable Trusts survey showed that 75% favored the Roadless Rule. Both surveys included voices from Alaska and the Lower 48.
“The Roadless Rule is very popular,” said Patrick Lavin, the senior advisor of the Alaska program of the Defenders of Wildlife. “It protects thousands of acres of rare ancient forest from being cut down and almost certainly shipped overseas and around at a loss to the taxpayers.”
The Dunleavy administration challenged the revival of the Roadless Rule in 2023. The lawsuit stated the public review process “made little to no mention of the significant opposing comments received from the State and other Alaskan stakeholders and community members.” Furthermore, it failed to “consider impacts to the Southeast Alaskan economy, which were not adequately examined.”
With Trump now moving to reform the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), advocates are waiting to see what will happen next.
Defenders of Wildlife has advocated for the national Roadless Rule since the 1990s. Lavin said he does not think a different approach should be taken to defend it this time.
“In terms of the public process, the only thing that might be different this time is there may not be one or not much of one,” he said.
Trees in the Tongass National Forest are dusted by snow on Thursday, March 13, 2025. (Jasz Garrett / Juneau Empire)
Nathan Newcomer, SEACC federal campaign manager, said the Roadless Rule could be revoked more quickly if a public process does not occur. For example, he said the Fix Our Forests Act, which passed the House in January and is under consideration by the Senate, significantly shrinks the judicial review process, impacting communities and organizations’ ability to provide input.
Newcomer is tracking other federal actions, including Trump’s additional executive orders on timber production. He said SEACC’s response depends on how they unfold.
During the waiting period, others question the actual impacts of lifting the rule. They doubt mass logging would occur. Still, some say Trump’s policies could help recover jobs.
A lawsuit filed in federal court on March 6 urges U.S. agencies to make old-growth timber available for sale at the volumes required by the 1990 Tongass Timber Reform Act and the 2016 Tongass Land and Resource Management Plan.
Filed on behalf of the Alaska Forest Association, Viking Lumber Co., and Alcan Timber Inc., the complaint claims the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Forest Service did not follow the old-growth sale requirements required by Congress and stopped old-growth timber sales when the Southeast Alaska Sustainability Strategy was established in 2021, according to the Ketchikan Daily News.
Tessa Axelson, executive director of the Alaska Forest Association, told business leaders at the Southeast Conference in February that she is hopeful the Trump administration can revive an industry that once employed more than 4,000 people but now only has a few hundred.
“In the last two years, the U.S. Forest Service has sold less than 8% of the total volume that our industry needs,” she said.
In the past, the federal government subsidized the Southeast Alaska timber industry. Joel Jackson, president of the Organized Village of Kake, said that would have to happen again for timber to become profitable. He said the tribal government in Kake has always supported Southeast logging on a smaller scale.
“The timber industry will never be like it was way back in the day when they had three pulp mills — one in Sitka, Wrangell, and Ketchikan,” he said. “It won’t be like that anymore. As far as I can see, those days are gone.”
Jackson said timber sales were once offered in Southeast Alaska, including Kupreanof Island.
“Nobody touched it,” he said. “The reason why they didn’t touch it was because it costs so much to get the timber to the water in and out. Truck it to the water, put it in rafts, and tow it away. And same with Kuiu Island, which is just next to us out here, there were numerous timber sales out there. Same situation there, nobody bid on it because they took all the easy timber.”
Jackson has been working to defend the Roadless Rule since it was first introduced in 2001. The Organized Village of Kake was the only tribe that signed onto a lawsuit against the Forest Service that year. Several tribes and other organizations signed onto a subsequent 2020 lawsuit.
“We weren’t even through that one, and now they’re opening it up again,” Jackson said. “It’s a never-ending fight.”
The Tongass is the homeland of the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian people. Jackson said his ancestors lived in the Tongass for thousands of years, and the next Tlingit stewards are responsible for protecting the land.
“For time immemorial, we relied on these old-growth trees, and they’re very important to us,” he said. “Walking into one of these magnificent old-growth forests, I’ve always said it’s just like walking into one of the most beautiful cathedrals you can ever go into. It took thousands of years to get to that point where the tree spacing and the canopy of the trees allowed enough sunlight to reach the forest floor.”
A Sitka black-tailed deer peers through the undergrowth of the Tongass National Forest in an undated photo. (Jasz Garrett / Juneau Empire)
When sunlight reaches the forest floor, medicinal plants and berries flourish. The trees shade and cool the streams, allowing the yearly return of salmon. Jackson said the Tlingit are “salmon people.” The forest canopy shelters deer, moose, and other animals. After years of no logging, Jackson said Kake’s deer population returned.
“Now we can hunt deer on our island,” he said. “We used to have to go to Admiralty Island and hunt our deer over there. And unfortunately, we had an incident where we lost three young men who made a trip over there, and they didn’t make it back. They got lost on the water. So it’s really important, especially going forward now. Food security — we don’t want to lose that again.”
During the late 1960s and 1970s, annual timber harvests from the Tongass included tree species such as Western hemlock, Sitka spruce, Western red cedar, and Alaska yellow cedar.
Jackson said red cedar is one of the main woods used for carving. He said his father and brother found a stand of red cedar in the 1970s and requested the Forest Service post a “only for cultural use” sign there. The stand of trees remains and is precious to Kake.
“There’s not many big ones left,” he said. “There’s smaller ones that would be good for smaller totems and cutting up for other artwork. What we understand is that the red cedar is very scarce beyond what we have here in Kake. That’s why we hold it pretty close to us.”
Haida master carver Eric Hamar said the trees used by carvers in Kasaan to create canoes and totem poles are 500-600 years old.
“It takes that long to grow them,” Hamar said. “But it takes only a fifth of that time to level off thousands of them. The reality is we won’t be able to replace those within our lifetime. Our totem poles are getting smaller. Canoes aren’t being carved hardly at all. We’re right on the cusp of losing all that kind of stuff anyway. If we allow a culture of extraction to replace entirely our Indigenous cultures and the way that we steward and respect our surroundings, then we’re really allowing totem poles culture and canoe culture and all these sorts of things, we’re allowing that to disappear.”
Hamar said rescinding the Roadless Rule would go against everything he works toward.
In March, he organized Kasaan’s second five-day culture camp. About 350 people attended it at the cultural campus, which includes a tribal hall and carving shed. The culture camps focus on passing down traditional foods and arts. Hamar said he plans to host more in the future, and the goal is to inspire youth to perpetuate their culture on their own, so that culture camps are no longer needed.
Kasaan’s second culture camp took place in March 2025 at the cultural campus and included a totem pole raising. (Photo by Ivalu-Erin Gingrich)
Hamar is working on an 18-foot dugout canoe to join other dugouts for a journey to Wrangell in July for a totem-pole raising. He is primarily a figure carver, making regalia, rattles, totems, and masks. Hamar said increasing extraction will decrease Indigenous peoples’ ability to use resources in the future.
Implementing the Roadless Rule has allowed Indigenous people to begin reclaiming their culture not only physically but philosophically, Hamar said.
“It’s created a good opportunity for us to look at Southeast or the state as not just a place that we extract resources and ship south or overseas, but as a place that has its own individual culture that’s been here for a very long time and has sprouted out of this place and its unique needs,” he said. “Repealing the Roadless Rule is really working in a direction of changing the culture back into this resource extraction that’s destructive to our individualistic culture that we had here.”
Due to federal uncertainty, other steps in managing the Tongass are being put on hold. The Tongass National Forest Plan Revision will be paused indefinitely after an assessment is submitted this summer, according to Barbara Miranda, acting forest supervisor for the Tongass National Forest.
“After that, we’re in a little bit of an unknown stage, because we don’t know yet if we’re going to be moving forward with the rest of the planning,” she told the Greater Juneau Chamber of Commerce on April 10.
The last comprehensive forest plan revision was completed in 1997. The most recent update was in 2016. Miranda declined to comment on the future of the Roadless Rule.
Gordon Chew, owner of Tenakee Logging Co., said logging did not change the last time the Roadless Rule was rescinded. He finds it unlikely to be different now because he said no industry exists. The Forest Service no longer builds roads for timber operators.
He said his fear with the Roadless Rule being revoked lies in another goal outlined in Trump’s executive order: mining.
“The big threat is going to be mining, because these folks are international corporations with big money and big finance behind them,” he said. “That is my fear with the Roadless Rule being rescinded, just because that’s where the money is. It’s not in timber. We’re 900 miles from a real market for timber, so just shipping lumber to Seattle is a total loser right now with fuel costs and barging costs.”
He has been in timber production since 2008 and is rebuilding Tenakee one building at a time with his son.
“We’re working together to saw lumber and get timber sales of young growth so we can thin those overgrown stands and create a building product with it,” he said. “We get to make every board, so we know what we’re working with, where it came from, and that it was done in a sustainable fashion.”
Chew’s business began with the selective harvesting of old-growth trees. After purchasing individually marked trees selected for harvest by the Forest Service in a NEPA-cleared area, Chew and his son truck and unload the logs at their sorting yard. Tenakee Logging harvests 100 to 300 trees annually.
“We’ve never clear-cut and don’t believe in that practice, it’s deforestation in our opinion,” he said.
• Contact Jasz Garrett at jasz.garrett@juneauempire.com or (907) 723-9356.
Kasaan’s second culture camp took place in March 2025 at the cultural campus and included a totem pole raising. (Photo by Ivalu-Erin Gingrich)
