Forest Service Moving Quickly to Open "America’s Amazon" to Loggers

Trump is trying to slash protections for more than 9 million acres of national parks. Trees that are more than 1,000 years old will be razed.

Trump’s National Forest Service is using a refuted scientific theory to justify building roads in our country’s largest national forest, what some call “America’s Amazon.”

Trump’s plan, pushed by Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, would slash protections for more than 9 million acres of the Tongass National Forest, an area larger than Yellowstone, Glacier and Grand Canyon national parks combined. Building roads in the Tongass is prohibited under a rule published in the last days of President Bill Clinton’s administration.

These are the kinds of actions that can never be undone -- and it will barely make the news.

The Tongass stores more carbon removed from the atmosphere than any other national forest in the country in its old-growth Sitka spruce, hemlock and cedar trees. It  helps protect Alaska, which is warming more than twice as fast from climate change as our planet overall. The forest holds about 650 million tons of carbon or about half of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions in 2017.

Historically, large-scale industrial logging has damaged salmon streams. The Tongass is spawning ground for 40 percent of wild salmon along the West Coast.

“It’s sad that we have to continue to fight our own government to protect our forests and streams,” says Joel Jackson, the president of the Organized Village of Kake which depends on food such as berries and salmon from the Tongass.

It's no coincidence that Trump and Bolsonaro have no problem destroying natural resources - an accelerated climate crisis is an inevitable result of authoritarian nationalist politics.

Source: https://www.salon.com/2019/12/15/forest-service-moves-to-open-americas-amazon-to-loggers_partner/