The Attack on Alaskan Wilderness Continues

As reported here on January 10th and January 14th, the US Fish & Wildlife Service has delayed listing the polar bear as threatened so that they can open 29 million acres of the Chukchi Sea, an important part of their habitat, to oil drilling. The New York Times reported on Friday that

A coalition of environmental organizations and Inupiaq native groups filed suit in federal court in Anchorage on Thursday to force the Interior Department to do a new analysis of the environmental consequences of oil and gas exploration in the Chukchi Sea, off northwestern Alaska.

The plaintiffs hope to stop plans to develop 29 million acres, which they argue could harm the endangered bowhead whale, a staple of subsistence hunting, and the polar bear, which is under consideration for protection under the Endangered Species Act.

The current environmental assessment, the suit says, fails to adequately analyze the impact of the lease sale in the context of a warming climate. The assessment also “understates the potential impacts of oil and gas development,” including the risks of an oil spill, the suit says...

The sale of leases in the Chukchi Sea is scheduled to take place next week. While the lawsuit does not seek to block the sale, should the judge agree with the environmental and native groups that the original environmental assessment was flawed, any leases might be voided...An earlier sale of oil and gas leases in the Beaufort Sea, to the east of the Chukchi lease area, ended with Royal Dutch Shell winning the right to exploit the vast reserves believed to lie in that area.

However, a different coalition of native and environmental groups sued to overturn the Interior Department’s decision to approve Shell’s three-year exploration and drilling program. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, has enjoined further activity by Shell pending the resolution of that lawsuit.

Additionally, representative Ed Markey (D) of Massachusetts and Jim Ramstad (R) of Minnesota introduced a January 17th bill (HR 39, or the Udall-Eisenhower Arctic Wilderness Act) to block the sale. Contact your congressional representative and ask them to support the bill.

Meanwhile, on January 25th, the US Forest Service opened 90,000 more acres of Alaska's Tongass National Forest to logging. This is in violation of the 'Roadless Rule,' a policy instated in January 2001 under the Clinton administration. According to the National Resources Defense Council: The plan was adopted after a two-year process that included more than 600 public meetings...Support for the forest-protection plan has poured in from scientists, religious leaders and newspapers across the country, and polling has shown strong support among outdoor-recreation enthusiasts -- according to one survey, 86 percent of anglers and 83 percent of hunters back the plan.

Since taking office in 2001, the Bush Administration has been using the courts to overturn or undermine the law. (see chronology) The National Resources Defense Council websitestates that many former industry lobbyists and executives now hold key positions in the Bush administration.

The World Wildlife Fund explains:By the time the roadless rule was adopted, the Forest Service was facing an $8.4 billion backlog for road maintenance. The rule, as originally written, allows for efficient reconstruction and maintenance of Forest Service roads; construction of new roads necessary for national forest system resource management; and future construction, restoration, and maintenance of roads with minimal long-term adverse environmental impacts...As the battle over the Roadless Rule is fought in the courts, the Bush administration continues efforts to undermine it. In mid-2001 the administration reopened the rule to public comment, a move which ironically brought the total number of comments in its favor to 2 million. Administration officials have even failed to defend the Roadless Rule against nine lawsuits filed by logging companies in an effort to undermine it.

On December 14, 2001 the chief of the Forest Service issued a series of directives that further undermined the rule by eliminating requirements that there must be a compelling need to build roads in roadless areas and the requirement that an environmental impact statement be prepared prior to building roads in roadless areas.

In September 2006, Judge Elizabeth LaPorte of the U.S. District Court of Northern California ruled that the Administration violated both the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act when it illegally repealed the Roadless Rule and ordered the Bush administration to reinstate it.

The Environment News Service reports that But the long term status of the roadless areas in the Tongass National Forest in Alaska was not settled by Judge Laporte. In 2003, the Bush administration exempted the Tongass from the roadless rule by creating a separate amendment that was based on the validity of the Tongass Land Management Plan...The land management plan released [on January 25th] was ordered more than two years ago by a federal court which concluded that the old plan justifying opening Tongass wildlands for development was invalid due to several factors, including a gross overestimation of demand for Tongass logs...

"The new plan suffers from the same central problem as the old plan. It leaves 2.4 million acres of wild, roadless backcountry areas open to clear cutting and new logging roads," said Earthjustice attorney Tom Waldo. "The Tongass is worth a whole lot more to the American people as a standing forest than it is as a sea of stumps and logs."

...According to Trish Rolfe of the Alaska Sierra Club; "The Tongass is the crown jewel of our nation's roadless wildlands. Wild salmon, bears, eagles, and wolves thrive there among moss-draped ancient trees, along crystalline fjords and untamed rivers. It has nine million acres of roadless areas that lack permanent protection. The Bush administration has just put some of the best of them on the chopping block."

The thing that I find the most bizarre is that American taxpayers will pay for the roads that will be built to get the equipment in and the timber out, many of which will be off-limits to the public. The Massachusetts Republican says Call it the Tongass Chainsaw Massacre, starring the American taxpayer as the sap...Aside from the environmental damage done to the national forest, the largest old-growth temperate rainforest in the world, the Forest Service estimates that each mile of new road will cost between $160,000 and $500,000. In a time of war and deficit, is this how we should be spending our money? To make immediate profit for a small group of people by destroying resources we won't have available to us in the future?

On June 27, 2007, the House of Representatives passed the Chabot-Andrews amendment, which would have been added to the appropriations bill for the Department of the Interior and related agencies for fiscal year 2008 (Section 503 of H.R. 2463). The amendment would have forbid the use of taxpayer funds to build logging roads in the Tongass. It was not included in the Senate’s companion legislation (S. 1696), however, as described here. FYI: Alaska Senator Ted Stevens (R) is on the Senate Appropriations Committee.