Special Areas; Roadless Area Conservation; Applicability to the Tongass National Forest, Alaska

The Department of Agriculture, Forest Service is proposing to amend regulations concerning the Roadless Area Conservation Rule (hereinafter, referred to as the roadless rule) to exempt the Tongass National Forest (hereinafter, referred to as the Tongass) from prohibitions against timber harvest, road construction, and reconstruction in inventoried roadless areas until a final rule is promulgated as announced by the Forest Service on July 10, 2001, in an advance notice of proposed rulemaking. In seeking public comment on this proposal to amend the roadless rule, the agency is fulfilling part of the Department’s obligations under the June 10, 2003 settlement agreement for State of Alaska v. USDA, while maintaining the ecological values of inventoried roadless areas in the Tongass National Forest. In State of Alaska v. USDA, the State of Alaska and other plaintiffs alleged that the roadless rule violated a number of federal statutes, including the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980 (ANILCA). Passed overwhelmingly by Congress in 1980, ANILCA sets aside millions of acres in Alaska for the National Park Service, Forest Service, National Monuments, National Wildlife Refuges, and Wilderness Areas with the understanding that sufficient protection and balance would be ensured between protected areas and multiple-use managed areas, and that there would be no more administrative land withdrawals. The Alaska lawsuit alleged that USDA violated ANILCA by applying the requirements of the roadless rule to Alaska’s national forests. USDA settled the lawsuit by agreeing to publish this proposed rule to temporarily exempt the Tongass from the application of the roadless rule, and to publish the separate advance notice of proposed rulemaking (located elsewhere in the same part of today’s Federal Register) requesting comment on whether to exempt permanently the Tongass and the Chugach National Forests in Alaska from the application of the roadless rule. Under the settlement, the vast majority of Alaska National Forests will remain off limits to development. Timber harvest will be prohibited on more than 95 percent of Alaska National Forests as required under existing forest plans. Exempting the Tongass National Forest from the application of the roadless rule would make approximately 300,000 roadless acres available for forest management— slightly more than 3 percent of the 9.3 million roadless acres in the Tongass, or 0.5 percent of the total roadless acres nationwide. Exempting the Chugach National Forest from the application of the roadless rule would permit roaded access on approximately 150,000 acres—less than 3 percent of the forest’s 5.4 million roadless acres, or 0.3 percent of the total roadless acres nationwide. The proposals under the settlement would preserve all old-growth reserves, riparian buffers, beach fringe buffers, roadless areas, and other protections contained in the forest plans. The roadless rule would also continue to apply to the 43.7 million roadless acres in national forests outside of Alaska. Public comment is invited and will be considered in the development of the final rule.