Dances and songs ring out in support of the Roadless Rule
- Jasz Garrett
- Sep 14
- 9 min read
Updated: Sep 16
“This is about our rights, our rights as human beings, our land, where we live.”
By Jasz Garrett
Juneau Independent
Juneau’s Eagle Raven Dancers reached out to “pick berries” on Saturday with about 150 people uniting in support of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, just six days before the public comment period closes on the Notice of Intent to rescind the rule.
The Southeast Alaska Conservation Council hosted the protest, inviting tribal leaders and citizens, business owners, hunters, fishers, conservationists, and climate activists to speak at Bill Overstreet Park.
The Tongass National Forest spans nearly 17 million acres in Southeast Alaska. It is the largest national forest in the United States.
“It is worth more than timber,” said Maggie Rabb, executive director of SEACC. “It feeds us and it is our home. And so I thank you all for coming out here as they try to remove the Roadless Rule again, to say that we don’t want less protections. We don’t want to go backwards.”
Since its enactment in 2001, the Roadless Rule has limited development not only in the Tongass but in almost a third of America’s national forests. The Roadless Rule protects more than 58 million acres of America’s national forests from large-scale logging and roadbuilding, including 9.3 million acres of the Tongass. In 2020, President Donald Trump removed its protections at the recommendation of the U.S. Forest Service. In January 2023, the Biden administration reinstated them.
Now in Trump’s second term, the Forest Service is seeking to exempt the Tongass from the rule in alignment with the president’s Jan. 20 executive order “Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential.” The move also aims to fulfill Trump’s Jan. 31 executive order “to get rid of overcomplicated, burdensome barriers that hamper American business and innovation.”
The notice of the Roadless Rule rescission was published in the Federal Register on Aug. 29. The public was given less than a month to comment. The deadline is Friday, Sept. 19. The last time the Trump administration rescinded the Roadless Rule, approximately 90 days were given for public input.
“We’re talking about that almighty dollar — it’s not so mighty when you can’t eat it,” Lingít advocate Xaak’w Tláa Yolanda Fulmer told the Roadless Rule supporters.
She said the Lingít dance group chose to sing the “Berry Picking Song” to show appreciation for the plentiful land and for the berries “still coming forward for us.”
Fulmer taught the hand motions for the song along with the words.
“Gunalchéesh, áyá yáa at.wuxáa, which means thank you for all the food,” she said.
The children danced as the sun glinted off the Tahku the Whale sculpture, painting the spruce on the mountains a golden hue. The local dancers also performed the Aleut Seabird Song while seagulls flew over the Gastineau Channel.
Áak'w Kwáan spokesperson Seikoonie Fran Houston said she honored her mother and grandmother in her “battle” to protect the land and food security. She asked for a show of support and was answered with a crowd chant of “no road, no construction” followed by drumbeats.
“All of a sudden it’s like getting a slap in the face, because what’s happening is developing,” Houston said. “You’re talking about mining, you’re talking about logging, you’re talking about making a road. They want to develop Berners Bay. We have burials. But there are some people that want to make this — the money. That’s what it’s all about is to make the money. They don’t care if they’re going to invade the burial sites. That is sacred to us.”
UnCruise Adventures CEO Dan Blanchard sang part of the official state song, “Alaska’s Flag,” with the crowd. He is a captain who has been operating in Southeast Alaska for 40 years.
“What happens in the Tongass affects small business, and I’m here to talk about why a local small business is going to get hammered to death,” he said.
“The very same places that my guests go six days a week are scheduled to be clear-cut logged on Kuiu Island, in that whole area,” he said. “In The Last Frontier, the world comes for our wilderness and wildness. Over 3 million visitors came this year, are still coming, and 60% are going to come to the Tongass.”
The visitor industry is the largest private employer in Southeast Alaska, with 8,589 jobs representing 19% of the region’s total workforce in 2024, according to annual figures compiled for a “Southeast Alaska by the Numbers” report by Rain Coast Data. Mining accounted for 1,062 jobs and timber 274.
“These jobs rely on the Tongass National Forest being intact,” Blanchard said. “Rely on our fish, our bears, our whales.”
He said his business employs 300 people and brings 10,000 people to Southeast Alaska annually. “We have to embrace” visitors who vote, he said, because they take home a message about the value of wilderness.
Malachi Thorington, a certified assistant hunting guide and commercial fisherman, said animals do not thrive in clear-cuts. He said the hunting and fishing industries are sustainable when managed correctly.
“I hunted through the clear-cuts of varying ages, from northern Baranof to southern Prince of Wales, and they all appear ravaged and dramatically less productive to this day,” he said. “The sterile ground under close canopy of previously logged forests is depressing to walk through. Some places are so bad, the trees are so close together, I could barely fit between them. They’re more like prison bars than a forest.”
Trump’s action to open the Tongass for development received enthusiastic support from Alaska’s all-Republican congressional delegation, Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy and other officials who cite revenue possibilities from the state’s natural resources.
However, Dunleavy and others have previously cited the potential of conservation measures that can result in revenue such as carbon offsets. Sealaska Corp. claims to have earned $100 million in carbon credits from 165,000 acres of old growth, for instance. In 2023, the governor introduced legislation he said could lead to more than $1 billion in carbon credit income — although fiscal reports presented to state lawmakers when those bills were being considered found that possibility to be highly unlikely.
“If doing right by the numbers, right by our economy, was the real objective, we wouldn’t be having this debate,” said Kate Troll, a longtime Alaska conservationist.
She said because of the road exception provision in the rule, there are roads being built for hydroelectricity, roads connecting communities and a road to access mining claims.
“The Roadless Rule is not broken,” Troll said. “It works.”
“Let it be,” the crowd said in response. “Let it be.”
Fulmer traveled to Washington, D.C., in May to advocate for codifying the Roadless Rule into law through the Roadless Area Conservation Act, a bill that was reintroduced to the U.S. House of Representatives this summer. Most recently, it was referred to the Committee on Agriculture and the Committee on Natural Resources.
Fulmer is a representative for Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network. She said Rep. Nick Begich III, R-Alaska, is not listening. But she listens to the tree people — in Lingít, Aas Kwáani. On Saturday, she stood with her two granddaughters, Skaan da Aat Laiyah Maka and Kinaa Seedi Liana Fulmer, to give a closing speech in both English and Lingít.
“As long as we are listening to the tree people, they will share what they want to become,” Fulmer said. “They will give permission for what they are to be used for. And that is one thing I feel that these politicians forget is how to listen to the resources they’re demanding to give to them without giving back, and the Aas Kwáani is asking us to stand in the way of that extraction. They do not consent.”
Organized Village of Kake President Joel Jackson said his tribe was the first to fight for the protection of the Tongass decades ago. He traveled to Juneau to speak at the rally.
“Nobody stands up for us, so we stand by ourselves,” Jackson said. “Kake has always been known for that. We encourage people to stand with us, but at the same time, we stand by ourselves if we have to.”
But on Saturday, many people attending the protest waved signs of support and applauded Jackson.
“I don’t care who you are, where you come from; we need to stand together,” Jackson said.
Jackson and Troll called forward the fact that the Tongass holds approximately 44% of all carbon stored by U.S. national forests, according to research published in 2021 by the Woodwell Climate Research Center.
He said the old-growth trees are needed to provide cool, shady shelter for deer and salmon spawning streams. Jackson said he eats traditional foods and “everything costs more” in a village of less than 500 people.
“We choose to live there because that’s where our ancestors lived,” he said. “We walk in the same forest, we fish in the same streams, we go out on the same waters they had for thousands of years.”
His sister Kaatssaawaa Della Cheney is also from Kake. She recalled logging on the island of Haida Gwaii, where her mother is from. The song that came from protesting on Haida Gwaii is now the national anthem for the island.
“I’d like to sing it for you so that you know we are still standing against logging anywhere in our rainforests,” Cheney said.
Cheney said instead of allowing jobs to take over “reality of family,” it must be put aside to realize that “family is first, our ways of life is first.”
“I’m really pleased that we can be still at this moment protesting,” she said. “At some point, maybe in our lifetime, we will not be allowed to do this. So let’s appreciate this moment of freedom to be here. This Roadless Rule, this is about our rights, our rights as human beings, our land, where we live.”
After comments close, the next step in the process to rescind the Roadless Rule is the preparation of a draft environmental impact statement. It will be released in the spring of 2026. Nathan Newcomer, SEACC federal campaign manager, has his doubts about whether it will occur.
“The Trump administration is trying to change NEPA, and they’re telling the foresters, they’re giving them direction: ‘Try to not do EISs if you can avoid it, try not to do environmental assessments, and, if you can, try to use categorical exclusions wherever you can,” Newcomer said.
He said if people feel the Trump administration will not listen, the public support is worth having on record for a future administration to consider.
“Speak out,” Newcomer said. “We’re going to be collecting stories from Southeast Alaskans talking about roadless areas, specifically which areas that they hunt, subsist in, or recreate in, or maybe they’re an outfit or guide, and they take their clients out to these areas. And just build out a volume of stories from people that actually live here who are saying, ‘We don’t want to see this happen,’ and raise the public volume on it is really all we can do at this point.”
Public comments can be submitted to the Federal Registry and SEACC by Sept. 19.
• Contact Jasz Garrett at jasz@juneauindependent.com or (907) 723-9356.
