A legal challenge by the state to the Biden administration’s reinstatement of the so-called Roadless Rule, banning logging and road-building on more than nine million acres in the Tongass National Forest, was filed Friday in federal court.<\/p>\n
The complaint continues more than two decades of battles over the Roadless Rule protections initially enacted in 2001 under a policy initiated by former President Bill Clinton. In recent years former President Donald Trump nullified the policy and opened the forest area to development, with the Biden administration reimposing the policy in January of this year.<\/p>\n
[Biden administration reinstates Tongass Roadless Rule<\/a>]<\/p>\n “The State of Alaska will continue this long-running fight to unburden the Tongass National Forest from the constraints of the Roadless Rule and to protect the economic and socioeconomic development of Southeast Alaska,” said Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor, who filed the complaint in U.S. District Court, in a prepared statement Friday. “The Tongass National Forest has robust environmental protections in place, and the Roadless Rule is both unnecessary and continues to cripple the future of Alaskan communities.”<\/p>\n The press office for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the parent agency of the U.S. Forest Service, responded to an inquiry by the Empire about the state’s challenge with an email stating “as a matter of policy, USDA does not comment on pending litigation.”<\/p>\n