The Alaska Forest Association has now been involved in the Forest Service’s process for revising the 1979 Tongass Land Management Plan ( TLMP ) for more than ten years. The Forest Service has produced amendments in 1986 and 1991, draft revisions in 1990, 1991, a draft Final EIS in 1992, and a draft Record of Decision (ROD) in 1993 which was never signed. The process has cost the taxpayers more than $13 million. Unfortunately, the public has not been well served by the result.

            When the Revised Supplement to the Draft Environmental Impact Statement ( RSDEIS ) and the Draft Revised Forest Plan were released in 1996, AFA objected to many elements contained in them. We filed detailed comments which, with exhibits, totaled more than 200 pages. The changes from the RSDEIS sought by AFA were not made, particularly the matter of using Habitat Conservation Areas ( HCAs ) to reduce the Commercial Forest Land available under the plan. In the final version of the Plan, this problem has intensified, now reducing the land base from 2.2 million acres to 676,000 acres. Today we filed an administrative appeal setting forth in detail why the RSFEIS and ROD fail to meet the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the National Forest Management Act ( NFMA ).

The Forest Supervisors were illegally kept out of the decision making

            Under the law and the Forest Service planning regulations, the Forest Supervisors are supposed to direct the land management planning process. This is intended to ensure that a balance of resource uses is considered and recommended for incorporation into the final plan. During the TLMP revision process over the past 3 years, the Forest Service illegally kept the three Forest Supervisors out of the decision making, which the law requires them to direct. Instead, biologists from the Pacific Northwest Research Station headed up the planning effort. This led to a skewed process in which there was no balance of resource uses considered for the Tongass. Wildlife protection became the principal planning criterion.

New information was used in the ROD outside the legally required NEPA process

            Several issues, which did not come up at any time during the NEPA process, were inserted into the Forest Plan during the time the Record of Decision was being finalized in May of this year. The Forest Service learned significant new information and made substantive changes to the ROD that were never subjected to the NEPA process. This was illegal because the new material and changes were not analyzed in the same manner as other information and were not properly compared in the alternatives. Moreover, the public did not have any opportunity to review these items and comment upon them.

• Standards and Guidelines (S&Gs ) for goshawk, marten and endemic mammals which were never run through the NEPA process were added at the time of the ROD. These S&Gs dramatically reduced the available commercial forest land ( CFL ) and the Allowable Sale Quantity ( ASQ ) by approximately 37.5 mmbf . The public had no opportunity to review the new S&Gs as they should have been able to under NEPA.

• The so-called mitigation measure for wolves which requires 13 deer per square mile in vast areas of Southeast Alaska was added at the time of the ROD and was never subjected to the NEPA process. This change will effectively remove another 86,000 acres from the available CFL and will reduce the ASQ by approximately 26 million board feet ( mmbf ).

• Four Wild Rivers were added in the errata to the RSFEIS and ROD without review under the NEPA process. In three of the four, the action was taken without any consultation with private landowners who will be adversely affected by these designations. Thus, on the Wild and Scenic Rivers issue, the Forest Service violated both NEPA and the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. These rivers will remove quarter- to half-mile corridors on 30 miles of streams, with no analysis performed to determine the effect on the ASQ .

• In making his decision, the Regional Forester relied on a draft May 15, 1997, market demand analysis by Brooks and Haynes that inaccurately portrays the demand for Tongass timber, ignores emerging developments in the Alaska timber industry, and was never available for the public to review and comment upon. Thus, a demand analysis required under the Tongass Timber Reform Act was utilized without going through the NEPA process which requires that information used to form the decision be available to the public for comment.

The Forest Service violated FACA with its risk assessment panel approach to wildlife issues

            In evaluating wildlife effects of the new Plan, the Forest Service relied on a risk assessment panel process which was unscientific, violated principles of social science and group dynamics and was clearly illegal under the Federal Advisory Committee Act ( FACA ).

• The risk assessment panels were conducted in secret, with no opportunity for public observation and without keeping a transcript. Other than the "outcomes," the public has no way of knowing what actually went on during the panel discussions. However, Forest Service documents, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, indicate that the Forest Supervisors who should have been in charge of these panels, were uncomfortable with and objected to the process, but were overruled by higher authority.

• The risk assessment panels were illegal in that the participants were chosen and appointed in a manner that violates FACA.

• Members of the risk assessment panels provided their opinions on potentials and possibilities, and made "educated guesses," but were not in a position to provide a substantive effects analysis for wildlife population viability because the data do not exist.

The Forest Service failed to consider a reasonable range of alternatives in the new Plan

            The Forest Service failed to include a reasonable range of alternatives in developing the new Forest Plan, in violation of NEPA and the Forest Service planning regulations.

• No alternative was seriously considered that did not include major withdrawals of commercial forest lands through a system of Habitat Conservation Areas. HCAs were the main factor that reduced the timber land base from 2.2 million acres to 676,000, resulting in an ASQ so low as to threaten the existence of the timber industry in the region.

• The Forest Service failed to include an alternative based on an adaptive management approach that would have balanced the social needs of people with wildlife protection and provided flexibility to adjust the management regime based on information gathered over the next few years. Forest Service experts repeatedly stated during the planning process that they lacked sufficient information to determine future risks to wildlife. An adaptive management approach would have allowed the Forest Service to develop new information and incorporate it into the Plan as it was validated.

The Forest Service failed to consider important, available information in the new Plan

            The Forest Service ignored significant information that would have helped keep a balance in the new Forest Plan between environmental protection and the needs of people, particularly the needs of timber workers, their families and the timber dependent communities.

• The industry, the Alaska Legislature and the Governor’s Timber Task Force made it clear that to sustain an integrated, viable industry in Southeast Alaska, the Forest Service needs to make available a consistent supply of economic timber at the rate of 300 mmbf per year. The Forest Service was aware of this information, but refused to consider it in determining market demand because it was predisposed to favor wildlife through HCAs which drastically reduced the CFL and the ASQ .

• The new Brooks and Haynes analysis which the Forest Service relied on in part to determine the level of demand for Tongass timber did not take into consideration new information regarding the changing timber industry in Alaska, including the new veneer facility proposed by Louisiana Pacific Corporation for its Ward Cove facility.

The new Plan is illegally incomplete

            The new Forest Plan is missing some important elements required by law, and it should therefore be re-analyzed and amended.

• The Plan contains no growth and yield tables for silvicultural systems other than even age management. This violates the law, and renders the plan unusable because, in preparing sales, a forester cannot know how to apply the other silvicultural systems required by the plan for approximately 20% of the timber program. Sustained yield calculations cannot be made without the growth and yield tables, so yield calculations in the Plan are nothing more than guesses. Guessing at the ASQ does not fulfill the requirements of the law.

• The Plan does not include a scientifically supportable second growth rotation age for stands in which 10- 20 percent of the overstory is retained. In the place of Tongass based information which does not exist, the Forest Service relied upon model simulations from the Pacific Northwest. These models used species that do not grow in the Tongass and reflect forests with a longer growing season and higher average annual temperatures. Using these models in place of the appropriate data violated the law, standard silviculture principles, and good sense.

• The Plan does not contain a timber sales schedule as required in the National Forest Management Act. Instead, the Forest Service merely listed an ASQ breakdown by administrative area (Chatham, Stikine and Ketchikan). The lack of a sale schedule in the Plan prevents the accurate use of the Forest Service’s computer scheduling model. The most likely result of applying the schedule to the model would be a drop in timber availability, but in any case, it makes it impossible for anyone to reliably predict what timber outputs to expect during the first ten years of the plan.

The Alaska Forest Association’s appeal proposes a remedy

            The Alaska Forest Association has suggested in its appeal that the Forest Service remedy the problems in the new Tongass Land Management Plan by withdrawing the ROD and adopting and implementing the February 1993 ROD, which is based on science and is legally defensible. In the alternative, the Forest Service should withdraw the new TLMP , correct it to comply fully with the applicable laws and with sound science, and re-offer it to the public for review.

            The AFA has stated its willingness to work with the Forest Service to amend the Plan so that it achieves the ASQ needed by the industry and described by the Governor’s Southeast Regional Timber Task Force in its resolution of December 20, 1996. There is no reason that cooperatively we cannot solve this problem which will affect so many people in Southeast Alaska.

For further information contact AFA Executive Director, Jack Phelps at (907) 225-6114.

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