Advocacy group’s first Roadless Rule public hearing defends the Tongass as a way of life, opposes repeal
- Jasz Garrett
- 2 hours ago
- 7 min read
Southeast Alaskans say they value protecting 'the northern lung of this planet' for cultural, economic and environmental reasons
By Jasz Garrett
Juneau Independent
The Southeast Alaska Conservation Council started a series of public hearings this month across the region titled “Stand Tall for the Tongass” on Wednesday at the Juneau Arts and Culture Center.
“The Tongass, I am surrounded by it and it is a part of my life daily,” said Jamalea Marelle, an ambassador of Artemis Sportswomen, a program of the National Wildlife Federation. She was one of four panelists at the event hosted by SEACC, an environmental preservation advocacy group.
As an ambassador, Marelle facilitates events that provide opportunities for women to build skills in hunting and fishing. Marelle said to empower women in the outdoors locally and help them become leaders, they need the opportunity to hunt, fish, recreate, and forage — which requires an intact forest.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced the intent to rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule last summer. In August 2025, a notice of intent was published to prepare an environmental impact statement. The agency’s comment period for this first step of repealing the Roadless Rule ended in September 2025, with the U.S. Forest Service planning to release a draft environmental impact statement and proposed rule in early 2026.
The rulemaking concerns the management of inventoried roadless areas on nearly 45 million acres of national forests and grasslands currently under the Roadless Rule. This includes approximately 9.2 million acres of the Tongass.
SEACC Executive Director Maggie Rabb said while the Forest Service may hold public hearings, her organization wants to be prepared in case the agency does not.
“While developing the Roadless Rule back in 2001, the Forest Service held over 600 public hearings on the rule over a two-year period,” she said. “This time, the Forest Service has told us that their job is to enact the intent of Trump's executive orders on Alaska, which includes removing the Roadless Rule. And when we’ve asked them when they’re going to have public hearings, they haven’t had an answer for us. That’s why we’re here today to have those public hearings anyway, and to make sure that our voices are heard.”
About 50 people gathered to listen to the panel before the hearing opened for public testimony. Residents attending from around Southeast Alaska built arguments for protecting opportunities they value for all Alaskans and echoed how the forest is a part of their daily life.
Nicole Weston, a panelist and local photographer, recounted the first sunny spring day in the forest with her four-year-old daughter last week, who was checking for spruce tips. She said every spring they make spruce-tip syrup together.
“We forage for mushrooms and berries,” Weston said. “Their dad hunts for meat and fishes to fill our freezer. And in that moment, I realized this isn’t just something that we do, it’s already a part of who she is.”
Weston added her photography business is reliant on wild landscapes attracting tourists. She is currently working on a film photography project to capture the timelessness of the Tongass and is accepting submissions of people hunting, fishing, foraging, and enjoying the forest at nwphotography.ak@gmail.com. The gallery will be displayed in 2027.
“The Tongass isn’t just land,” Weston said. “It’s how we all live, it’s what we teach our daughters, it’s what we pass on.”
Panelist Atagan Hood, co-president for Juneau’s Alaska Youth for Environmental Action, said his father passed on knowledge he learned from his career as a kayaker. Last summer they took a week-long camping trip in the Tongass, where Hood said he felt deep feelings of reverence and appreciation for old-growth trees.
The comments from Juneau’s hearing were recorded and will be transcribed. Once the Forest Service opens its public comment period with the release of a draft environmental impact statement, SEACC plans to submit them. Additional hearings are planned in Kake on Friday and Klawock next Wednesday, along with a virtual meeting for Alaska residents on May 6.
Rabb said SEACC expects the agency’s draft statement to be published by the end of April, which will start a 30-day comment period.
“Under the current administration, things don’t work like they used to, and predictability is not something that we can really count on anymore,” she said. “So of course, right now, as far as I’m aware there are no plans for the Forest Service to hold public hearings, but they like to throw curve balls that they get directed from D.C. on the regular.”
Rabb said there is also no guarantee of the 30-day comment period and she feels the Forest Service is making it difficult for the public to engage in the process. She said this leaves more up to organizations. Rabb said it’s difficult to know if this is purposeful or the natural result of the chaos she observes throughout the federal government.
“As a person who lives here and cares about this place, whose livelihood depends on it — my husband's a commercial fisherman — my family are commercial fishermen — this isn’t the only threat to our livelihood and the Tongass,” Rabb said, pointing towards shifts in the Tongass National Forest management plan and good neighbor authority agreements that have garnered momentum within the state.
A Juneau workshop to discuss the revision to the forest management plan is scheduled from 5-7 p.m. on April 15 at the Juneau Ranger District office.
Rabb said it’s difficult to see from Juneau, but prioritizing logging throughout Southeast Alaska would have huge impacts, particularly on Prince of Wales Island.
Panelist Mike Jones, the president of the Organized Village of Kasaan, recalled when clear-cut logging was unregulated in 1985. He said he remembers barge after barge full of logs going up and down the Inside Passage. He compared the cut trees to dead bodies stacked up.
Haida Gwaii is about 80 miles south of Kíis Gwaii, the Haida name for Prince of Wales Island, which means “Old Island.” In 1985, a group of Haida, including elders, created a blockade on a logging road on Lyell Island, just off British Columbia’s North Coast.
The result was 72 arrests by the Canadian police and the shaping of sovereignty and environmental justice, Jones said. He said the nonviolent protest prompted environmental groups to start working with tribal groups. Last year, Canada and the Haida Nation signed a historic agreement recognizing Aboriginal title over the archipelago of Haida Gwaii.
“This shows what can be done when we are all working together,” Jones said in an interview. “Just like the people who came here today to testify and speak from the heart about the things that they love and care about in the place we live.”
Jones said the Organized Village of Kasaan is currently working with the Forest Service to protect long-term cultural use trees for canoes and totem poles. He said he feels he has a good relationship with the agency in Kasaan, even under the Trump administration.
He added the fight is global since the Tongass is “the northern lung of this planet.”
Sophia Lovato, a citizen of the Osage Nation who traveled to the hearing from Colorado, said the Roadless Rule repeal also affects the world. She was representing Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network International, a solutions-based climate justice organization established to engage women worldwide in policy advocacy, according to the website.
“It affects people worldwide, because the Tongass is America’s lungs,” Lovato said in an interview. “It affects the climate. It affects people globally, and a lot of people don’t recognize that. And so we’re here to try and help people understand the effects that the government is going to be having on us and our globe and the climate, and especially since they’re trying to rescind it nationwide. It affects forests all over.”
In her testimony, Lovato recognized the Tongass as significant for its vast amounts of carbon to “mitigate the climate crisis” with old-growth stands. She said during a time of escalating climate disasters, such as floods, heatwaves, and extreme coastal storms, the Tongass acts as a shield.
“This land cannot be used as a bargaining chip between corporations and governments to fill their pockets and leave the people with the wreckage,” Lovato said.
A trio of women from Hoonah, who are a part of WECAN’s Women For Forests program, also testified. It is the second time they have defended the Roadless Rule — the first was in 2020 during President Donald Trump’s last move to revoke it. All three said the impacts from logging will be felt hard in Hoonah and already have been from past logging camps in the 1980s and 1990s.
“During that time, we had high statistics of suicide and self-destructive behavior. So this kind of massive clear-cut affects us personally, very deeply, and the community as a whole,” Wanda Culp said.
Rebekah Sawers and Adrien Lee also testified and, in an interview, explained how Hoonah and other villages in Southeast Alaska rely heavily on subsistence living due to frequently cancelled planes, ferries, and Alaska Marine Line barges. They said the Roadless Rule is crucial for protecting salmon and deer habitat and essential for fishing and tourism.
“We are demanding protection for wild foods,” Lee said. “We need to focus on community resilience across Southeast Alaska.”
• Contact Jasz Garrett at jasz@juneauindependent.com or (907) 723-9356.
