Preserve Our Forests

President Biden can protect the Tongass National Forest today

Alaska's Tongass is America's largest national forest and home to the world's largest temperate rainforest. It deserves President Biden's protection from logging.

Forests

Forest Service Alaska Region, USDA via Flickr | Public Domain
Hikers on the Mt. McGinnis and West Glacier Trail in the Tongass National Forest.

There’s one thing President Biden can do today to help protect America’s largest national forest.

In October 2020, the Trump administration finalized a proposal exempting Alaska’s Tongass National Forest from protections under the “Roadless Rule,” allowing logging and road building in the world’s largest remaining intact coastal temperate rainforest. Since then, the U.S. Forest Service hosted a public comment period on this rule change, in which Environment America and coalition partners submitted more than 175,000 comments in favor of protecting this forest. Now, it’s time for President Biden to act.

The Tongass contains some of the largest tracts of old-growth forests left in the United States, providing unparalleled wild spaces and supporting a carbon sink that absorbs 44% of the total carbon stored by all the forests under the U.S. Forest Service.

All the president needs to do to protect this wild place is to finalize its own rule restoring the forest’s Roadless Rule protections.

For more steps that President Biden can take to fix our nation’s environmental protections, check out this report.

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