The Alaska Forest Association and two of its members have taken legal action against the US Forest Service.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska, seeks to compel the federal agency to comply with the Tongass Timber Reform Act’s mandate for timber sales, a move that could help revive the struggling timber industry in southeast Alaska.
“Federal law requires the Forest Service to sell enough timber every year to meet market demand,” said Frank Garrison, attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation, which represents the plaintiffs that include Viking Lumber and Alcan Timber. “By refusing to meet that requirement, failing to follow through on its own 2016 Management Plan, and issuing informal guidance rather than following formal federal rulemaking procedures, the agency has violated federal law three times over.”
The dispute stems from the US Forest Service’s 2016 Management Plan, which outlined a gradual transition from selling old-growth timber to younger trees over a ten-year period. The plan was designed to ensure a stable supply of timber during the transition, gradually reducing old-growth sales while increasing the harvest of younger trees. However, the plaintiffs argue that the agency abandoned the plan, ceasing old-growth timber sales immediately and failing to provide sufficient young-growth timber as promised.
In 2021, the Biden Administration’s Forest Service further tightened restrictions by issuing a guidance document that formally ended old-growth timber sales altogether—without a formal rulemaking process or adequate replacement sales of young-growth timber. The Alaska Forest Association argues that these actions have devastated the local timber industry, which once supported more than 4,000 jobs but has now dwindled to only 300 positions.
Timber harvested in Alaska has long been used for various products, from household fences to Steinway pianos. The industry was once a cornerstone of many southeast Alaska communities, providing stable employment and economic security for thousands of families. The abrupt policy shifts, however, have left sawmills struggling, businesses shuttered, and local economies reeling.
“Federal agencies cannot decide by fiat to ignore the law and make up their own rules that harm businesses and workers,” Garrison emphasized. “The U.S. Forest Service’s failure to uphold its obligations under federal law is not just a bureaucratic oversight—it has real-world consequences for communities that depend on this industry.”
The lawsuit, Alaska Forest Association v. Rollins, aims to force the U.S. Forest Service to honor its legal obligations and restore timber sales that sustain the region’s industry. If successful, the case could set a precedent for holding federal agencies accountable when they fail to follow statutory requirements. The case was assigned by the chief judge Sharon Gleason to her caseload. Gleason has a reputation for siding with the government against businesses.
As the legal battle unfolds, Alaska’s dying timber industry and its supporters hope for a resolution that will allow the sector to rebuild, protect existing jobs, and ensure that sustainable forestry remains a viable part of the state’s economy.
President Trump issued an executive order on March 1st regarding logging ‘https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/immediate-expansion-of-american-timber-production/’
I guess we will once again see if Judge Gleason believes in the rule of law, or if she believes she makes the law.
On the topic of trump’s EO, re: 280 million acres, “will be opened-up to logging”… this seems to me, like a coming scenario,of ‘be careful what you ask for’. If the stable-genius turns his focus towards Alaska, there could be a massive project that could-(potentially)- lead to an entire state being reduced to nothing but fields of stubble!
He issued that Executive Order, on the heels of the perceived loss of Canadian lumber, from his tariff. … (with such an un-stable & ignorant “King”- there’s nothing, that’s off the table)!
Hyperbolic nonsense. The EO directs BLM and USFS to “facilitate increased timber production and sound forest management” BLM manages roughly 58 million acres of forest and woodlands, USFS manages 193 million acres many that aren’t forested such as wetlands, lakes, and ski areas. The 280 million number is hogwash. Then there is the reality that logging all forest manged by BLM and USFS isn’t in any way a practical matter, of course reality doesn’t enter the equation for nonsensical emotional outbursts from those who do not live in reality.
You haven’t noticed the fires we have?
Couldn’t you agree that forest management is an ongoing responsibility to maintain a healthy forest? And also alleviate fire risks.
In addition to that, trees are crops.
Yep, to be planted and harvested.
There will be stumps for a while. But not long.
And the wildlife loves the browse.
You could start logging the Tongass at one end and non-stop to the other and start over again.
But, i believe in old growth forests, those do not need the “management ” like the new growth and immense scrub they contain.
A more lenient allowance to log and a strict blend of selective and ecological appropriate harvest is the best course.
A solid law, (president doesn’t make law) that ensures a reasonable and steady supply that requires all milling to be done in the US would make me happy.
Honestly, you couldn’t reduce Alaska to fields if you try! You are so filled full of hatred towards Trump, you fail to see the usefulness of logging. Don’t you think if we are importing trees from Canada that logging can be useful, productive and profitable? Instead we let our Federal Forests burn adding to air pollution and import from Canada! Make that make sense!
I’m a conservative, that means i’m fed up with all the nonsense from both the political right and the left.
Let’s have reasonable policies regarding the use of our forests.
This includes a robust rotation of planting and harvesting in balance over time.
No one wants to see the clearcut practices of the 1950s through 1990s that left most of Oregon and Washington’s forests looking like a stumpscape.
Too bad they can’t “judge shop”.
From a dictator who doesn’t believe in the rule of law, I guess they will butt heads.
Gleason always has an environmental sympathy lean to her case rulings. Very bold, very expensive to bring this case before her, as the plaintiffs will be paying for an appeal, but I do wish them luck.
It would be great to have a vibrant, thriving timber industry again in this state & country.
The definition of old growth timber has become “any tree that makes you feel good”. If the USFS does not want to sell “old growth” on the Tongass, there are several areas within the forest that contain timber in the 60-to-75-year age class that are ready for harvest. The fact is, the Tongass, like its cousin the Chugach, is not being managed as a multiple use national forest. The national forests are supposed to be managed, whenever possible, to meet a multiple use mandate that recognizes six prongs: watershed, wildlife, timber supply, grazing, mining and outdoor recreation. Obviously, not every one of the 154 national forests can meet all of these prongs. However, where there is demand for timber and timber potentially available, converting a national forest into a recreation-only forest flies in the face of this mandate. Perhaps the answer for those national forests that are managed only for recreation like the Tongass and the Chugach, is to convert these forests into national recreation areas. The year-round staffs could be reduced to just recreation specialists and a few cops since the only function of the forest would be recreation. This small permanent staff and some seasonals could handle things.
I disagree with your assertion that the federal forests are to be managed for multiple uses as stated in the 1960 act.it has been held in the New Mexico case that your assertion is to BE SECONDARY TO THE FORESTS PRIMARY PURPOSE.TO SECURE A CONTINUOUS SUPPLY OF TIMBER AND THE UNINTERRUPTED FLOW OF WATER.1897 ORGANIC ACT.
The Tongass National Forest is home to an threatened species. The Alaska Logger!
Seems that their are more Environmental Lawyers working in Southeast Alaska these days then Timber Fallers.
One could argue that abuses in forestry practices beginnings in 1950’s to help rebuild Japan’s economy were to blame.
The geniuses in the State Department, not unlike Vickie Nuland, ( see Ukraine today) concocted a deal to help Japan. The result was a government sponsored logging program. L P jumped on board later and based their operations out of Ward Cove.
Later Native corporations scalped vast tracks and made out like Banksters, since they exported their logs to hungry mills in Japan.
What remains is vast tracks of high value old growth and a burgeoning forest of second growth, perfect for manufacture of engineered wood products.
I hope this law suit helps loggers. They deserve much better. And oh, the timber in S.E. is worth lots of CA$H
ALL Old Growth Foests should be Protected!!
By protecting them you have to harvest timber without harvesting the timber you open to forest up to disease and destruction from fire. Just like harvesting of game animals if you don’t manage them they will eventually be lost forever from disease and rot.
I lived on a floating camp in Southeastern Alaska in the mid-60’s, when my father was still logging. In 2001, my wife and I road the ferry from Ketchikan to Juneau, and as nearly as I could tell, they were logging the same area my father did, 35 years before. Trees grow. We can log responsibly, and have the wood we need for lumber, fuel, and other needs. Let the uneducated “environmentalists” go chew spruce gum.
Yep, trees are a true renewable resource. Most people don’t know that the Forest Service is a part of the USDA or the U.S. Department of Agriculture, trees are a crop. Cutting of old growth is also a better way to store carbon long term as the new trees store more of it while growing than the old growth does standing. Of course those who believe in anthropogenic global warming don’t believe in science so they deny obvious facts and demand that old growth trees remain standing.
I’ll take Things I Didn’t Expect Expect To See In My Lifetime for $1,000, Alex. Well done, AFA.
Gleason? We lost – even though she assigned the case to herself…
Impeach.
Executive orders are not law. They are what the title suggests.
Greed always wins. If the Tongass is opened up for logging, it will be a shit show in my opinion. Once the roads get cut, and the trees start falling, greed wins. Sustainable, well managed, wildlife conscious? Maybe. But most likely, in my opinion, greed will take hold, and our beloved Tongas will be up to the highest bidder, and destroyed, bit by bit.
In 2011, about six or seven Alaska foresters presented a paper at the annual meeting of the Society of American Foresters on the feasibility (or infeasibility) of the USFS efforts to create a forest products industry from what they called young growth timber on the Tongass NF. The paper is part of the published proceedings (possibly one could say peer reviewed) so anyone could find that paper, the names of the presenters, etc., without much trouble. I won’t list the foresters for fear I would miss one or more names. The group included a former USFS R 10 regional forester, a forester who had run the USFS AK forest inventory, a former regional corporation chief forester, a former AK state forester, etc. Three of the foresters have since passed.
I think I recall that we represented an accumulated 200 years of professional forestry experience in Alaska. Two or more of us knew the logging whistles, a benchmark and credential I strongly feel is important in Tongass NF forest management work. At that time I knew how much money the USFS had spent on consultants tasked with originating this “young growth” industry, but now I only recall it was millions of dollars.
Government officials hire consultants for a variety of reasons; show progress to stave off elected officials demanding a show of progress, meet governmental requirements for paperwork in a public process, support findings of the agency paying the consultant, etc. For me the dollar amounts, the amount of time used, and even the amount of paper is always shocking. We all know of projects and ideas studied over and over, at great expense and anyone who says that train can be stopped is inexperienced. The Tongass young growth effort appeared to have been derived from a need to answer officials elected in Alaska, and someone might say that very often elected officials are happy to be fooled: Everybody wins I suppose.
My part of the presentation was the impossibility of the economics given structural constraints including the USFS track record on making and meeting timber supply commitments, and the products to be manufactured and sold from Tongass NF second growth (also known as young growth by government foresters, sometimes) spruce, hemlock, and cedars. I would be very happy if during the years since then the USFS had made even a little progress with the millions of dollars and airline miles spent and proven us wrong, but very likely no one, even the agency and its consultants is surprised that absolutely nothing has happened.
I won’t attempt to resurrect or even summarize our paper but I will add some anecdotes. A small sawmill only a few miles from the northern NH town where I grew up, and to which I sold logs as a young fellow produced 80 million board feet of dimension lumber and boards, kiln-dried SPF for the most part, last year from logs similar to but materially inferior to Tongass NF second growth logs (for lumber manufacture), requiring roughly 40 million board feet of logs for that quantity of lumber. That’s not all that much production but it’s a small multiple of dimension lumber volume produced by any Alaska mill. The Tongass NF is 3 times the size of the entire state of NH.
Environmentalists like to say that the Tongass NF timber sale program, back when it produced as much as 450 million board feet of logs, lost money for taxpayers. I did the arithmetic a few times over the years and every time found that to be untrue. Taxpayers made money on Tongass NF timber sales, including the 50-year contracts. At one time the PNW lumber industry appointed me as chair of their (USFS R 6) timber audit committee, pushing back against the USFS & BLM cost collection and stumpage appraisal process, and they loaned me to R 10 (the Tongass and Chugach NFs), so I am very confident in my methods and conclusions.
I’ve been back to some of the places where as a logging engineer I designed and marked the timber lay-out, found the rock to be shot for the roads I marked, etc, and in my view as a long-time forester and as a Certified Forester we left the timber stands better than we found them. That timber is there today for the world to see. On some of those settings I set chokers and pulled rigging, an irreplaceable education if you did the lay-out! The forest owners and the taxpayers both won in the forest industry that existed on the Tongass NF.
I’ll leave my comments at that. I hope that someone keeps Suzanne Downing informed as this litigation proceeds so she can keep us up to date.
Thank you for sharing.
Local rule, viz. assertion of Alaskan State Constitutional rights is a form of holding resource stake-holders to agreed policies and statues. Alaskans, like all Americans, need to resolve the pragmatic reality that natural resource depletion, when re-deemable, must be included as a stipulation of use. Fanatics today controlling the USA EPA, Dept of Interior, etc. all federal agencies attempting to over-rule states’s resource management… today these fanatics work with & are funded by America’s adversaries. Why else would the American people so stupidly have allowed China and Russia to land-grab?
When I was surveying in the Togass for CU/MO in 1972, all the huge trees being ckear cut went to Japan, not to American mills. Stupid then, mo stupid now. When you cut the mature trees you gotta wait 70 years or so for reprog. Plus mechination has cut 75% of logging jobs in the woods n mills. So timber beasties, go back to school and learn a new trade for the next 70 years. Ill keep exploring for metal.
It’s possible I do not understand your statement. Tongass NF timber had to be milled before export from Alaska (not just the US) in 1972, and that meant lumber or market pulp. The lumber had to be no larger than a specific dimension so it tended to be cants shipped rough-green for reman in Asia. Over time Alaska yellow cedar logs, a minor part of the stands, were sometimes exported in the round, and upon the demise of the Alaska pulping and sawing industry more and more Tongass NF logs were shipped in the round – with the pulp logs, the utility grades, felled and left at the stump. The high-grading was most wasteful when yarding was by helicopter.
By 1980 the Native corporations were both selling stumpage, which tended to be shipped as round logs, and harvesting their own logs for shipment to Asia. Most of the utility grade logs were left at the stump. As with USFS logs the high-grading was most wasteful when yarding was by helicopter.
If you don’t like loggers cutting these trees than just stop buying it more old growth is on the outside of houses in Nantucket MA. than Any another town in America. JUST SAYING
Hi,
Would like to be added to your email posts. And make a contribution.
Greg Harris
Forester – Logging Engineer
Petersburg, Homer, Mat-Su and Afognak
Yes
There’s less and less damage for paper…less timber needed, right?