The Trump Administration seeks to cut, drill and gouge wild Alaska

The Tongass National Forest, embracing 80% of Southeast Alaska, is North America's largest rain forest and habitat to 40% of West Coast salmon. The Trump Administration set wheels motioning last week to open up 9 million acres of it to logging and development.

The aim is to unravel 40 years of preservation, and roll back the 2001 "Roadless Rule" in which President Bill Clinton sought to protect remaining roadless lands in America's national forests. Our lands!

Portions of the Tongass were once brutally clear cut, to feed two (now shut) pulp mills in Sitka and Ketchikan. Uncle Sam received, for each big tree cut on public land, "the price of a Big Mac," Timothy Egan wrote in the New York Times.

The Trump Administration is mounting a multi-pronged assault on wild Alaska, directed at such places as ancient forests of Chicagof and Baranof islands, and the 40,000 square mile watershed of Bristol Bay that sees 40 to 60 million salmon return each year.

https://www.seattlepi.com/local/politics/article/Connelly-The-Trump-Administration-seeks-to-cut-14548962.php