Roadless Rule Recision Buys Off Murkowski With Taxpayer-Funded Lumber Giveaway To China

But all it will achieve is to further break the forest service

On Monday, agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins announced plans to rescind the Roadless Rule, Clinton-era legislation that protects 58.5 million acres of public land managed by the forest service from development. Where did this come from and why is it happening now? Well, Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who’s making a lot of noise about potentially voting against the budget reconciliation package, has been trying to use federal funds to sell old-growth timber from her state’s rainforests to China for decades, and the Roadless Rule is in her way. But like most Trump administration efforts, incompetence may derail their attempt to enable her to do that.

In an effort to remain brief, I’m going to skip writing a giant history of the Roadless Rule, and instead refer you to the Montana Free Press’ excellent explainer about what that does. For the purposes of this article it’s enough to understand it as an effort to protect the forest service’s most pristine acres.

As the name suggests, one of the things the Roadless Rule achieves is preventing roads from being built into areas that haven’t had those before, which effectively prevents commercial logging and limits human presence. Areas protected by the rule are some of the last bastions of unspoiled habitat for wildlife like grizzly bears and wolverines, which are averse to living near people.

Protected forests also net ecosystem benefits that extend beyond their footprint, fostering abundant populations of salmon and trout that then support the commercial and recreational fishing industries, and tourism, while serving as carbon sinks.

I’d also like to point you towards a piece two of my readers who used to work for the forest service, Fred Clark and Paul Strong, wrote explaining how massive budget cuts at that agency will derail its ability to fulfill its mission of “Caring for the Land and Serving People.”

I’m also reminded of a piece published by Gawker (RIP) way back when John McCain was running for president that explained why, despite branding himself as a “maverick,” the former senator from Arizona still voted with the rest of his party most of the time, achieving much harm to normal Americans. Its headline was something along the lines of, “John McCain Is Still A Very Bad Person.”

All of that is relevant here because Murkowski is currently embarking on an effort to re-enforce her brand as a “moderate.” But rather than actually achieving anything positive for the American people, that entire boondoggle amounts to little more than an attempt to grow her own political power at a time when her vote may be crucial to advancing Trump’s cruel and unusual domestic policy agenda.

The purpose of the Republican Party is to steal from the poor and give to the rich. And Murkowski has spotted an opportunity here to do just that, by using taxpayer funds to destroy the Tongass National Forest, and sell its old growth timber to China. Rescinding the Roadless Rule will allow her to try and do just that.

Let’s Talk Tongass

Spread across 16.7 million acres of southeast Alaska, the Tongass is the largest national forest in America. It encompasses diverse ecosystems including spectacular fjords, massive glaciers, productive wetlands, and more. Less than 10 million acres of it is actually covered in trees, but there you’ll find the continent’s largest temperate rainforest. No other place on this continent is home to as much plant life per square mile as the Tongass. Its old growth timber contains trees that are 200 feet tall and 800 years old. 9.6 million acres of the Tongass are currently protected by the Roadless Rule.

The unique ecosystem the above creates also supports abundant animal life. Here live the densest populations of both brown bears and bald eagles on the planet, and other species like orcas, humpback whales, otters, and five different species of salmon are supported by the Tongass’ healthy forests. This is where the rare Alexander Archipelago Wolf—often called the sea wolf—lives.

The Tongass is referred to as “America’s Amazon,” but that label is misleading because temperate rainforests like this one are actually much rarer than tropical rainforests like the Amazon. Where Earth is home to about 2.4 million acres of tropical rainforest, there’s only 117,000 square miles of temperate rainforest. Destroying the 14,000 square mile Tongass would eliminate 12 percent of all remaining temperate rainforest.

It would also limit humanity’s ability to slow or prevent the worst impacts of the climate disaster. The Tongass absorbs fully eight percent of our country’s total annual carbon emissions.

The Tongass is also a massive economic driver in Alaska. 28 percent of that state’s $986 million (2020 dollars) annual commercial salmon harvest comes from fish originating in the Tongass’ 77 watersheds. The seafood industry in southeast Alaska, where the Tongass is located, employed 3,743 people and earned $238 million in 2020. Tourism to the Tongass employs 8,394 Alaskans and adds $271 million to the Alaskan economy. All those jobs are reliant on the Tongass’ intact ecosystem.

Existing logging operations in the Tongass, in areas not protected by the Roadless Rule, employed only 372 people that same year while earning only $22 million.

Murkowski vs Trees

“The Roadless Rule has never fit Alaska, so I welcome this effort to rescind it,” Murkowski said in a statement immediately following Rollins’ announcement. “Even without the rule in place, nearly 80 percent of the Tongass National Forest will still be explicitly restricted from development. Repeal will not lead to environmental harm, but it will help open needed opportunities for renewable energy, forestry, mining, tourism, and more in areas that are almost completely under federal control.”

After ConocoPhillips and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Murkowski’s largest campaign donor between 2019 and 2024 was KKR & Co, a global investment firm with significant holdings in the commercial logging industry. Murkowski has also accepted major donations from Viking Lumber, a privately-held Alaska company which would be one of the chief beneficiaries of expanded logging in the Tongass and which specializes in harvesting old growth timber.

Richard Goeken, a lawyer who has worked with Viking in its legal efforts to open the Tongass to logging also served at the Department of the Interior Deputy Solicitor for Parks and Wildlife during the first Trump administration.

Murkowski has been working to rescind Roadless Rule protections for the Tongass since at least 2003, when she supported an effort to open 300,000 acres of old growth timber there for logging.

In 2011, Murkowski stated, “The roadless rule was never intended to apply to the Tongass…I intend to do every thing I can to limit this damage.”

In 2017, Murkowski attempted to repeal the Roadless Rule’s application to acreage in Alaska as part of the Senate’s budget negotiations. At the same time, she sought to limit the state’s transition away from logging old growth timber.

“[I] will pursue every possible legislative and administrative option to exempt us from [the Roadless Rule],” Murkowski wrote in a Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources release at the time.

This was “really the first concerted attack,” on the Roadless Rule in Congress, The Wilderness Society stated in 2017.

The Senator eventually go her in way in 2020 when, just days before the election, Trump issued an order revoking Roadless protections from the Tongass. Murkowski praised the decision, and was vocal in her criticism when Biden restored Roadless protections to the area the following July.

“I will be using every tool at my disposal to fight back on the administration’s latest action,” the Senator stated following Biden’s decision.

Murkowski vs “One Big Beautiful Bill”

“I don't refer to it as the big beautiful bill,” Murkowski told NPR yesterday. “It is big and I'm not quite sure it's beautiful yet.”

Over the last week or so, Murkowski, who is usually reluctant to speak to the media, has been on something of a press tour. She’s used the opportunity to express reluctance to support the budget reconciliation package, and has even threatened to quit the GOP in favor of becoming an independent who caucuses with Democrats.

Histrionics like this are common from Republican legislators who want to advance their own profile within the party, or who feel they’re not getting the attention they’re due. Remember when McCain, the “maverick,” threatened to quit the GOP in 2001, after he felt he’d been mistreated in the presidential primary against Dubya the previous year? The attention that threat got him helped propel the senator to the top of the GOP ticked in 2008.

Could Murkowski, the “moderate,” be trying something similar? The answer might lie in her “yet,” in the above quote. She’s not totally against the President’s budget, she just needs more convincing.

Repealing the Roadless Rule would give Murkowski a victory she’s been working on for over two decades, and allow her to go back to Alaska voters frustrated with the Trump administration’s chaos holding something she could bill as a tangible concession.

Where Does China Come Into All This?

“If the Roadless Rule is lifted, the expanded logging in the Tongass will generate millions for China’s economy—but little for America’s economy,” states Citizens for the Republic. Citizens for the Republic is a lobbying organization established by none other than Ronald Reagan himself back in 1977, for the purpose of, “protecting the American taxpayer by undertaking grassroots initiatives to stop the advance of liberal government.”

Over 90 percent of lumber harvested in the Tongass goes to China, according to assessments conducted by the USDA (which manages USFS).

And it’s not just limited areas in the Tongass currently open to logging that send lumber to China. The vast majority of timber harvested across Alaska ends up there.

“Nearly all 2015 Alaskan log exports were sent to Pacific Rim countries in Northeast Asia, with China receiving approximately 76 percent of the volume leaving the Anchorage Customs District,” concluded a study conducted by the University of Montana.

And They Expect Taxpayers To Fund That?

USFS policy dictates that logging operations on public lands must be profitable. In order to give private companies that profit, USFS taps into the federal budget to fund the construction of logging roads.

Since 1980, taxpayers have on average spent $44 million a year (2020 dollars) building roads into areas of the Tongass where logging is permitted to support that industry. When Trump struck Roadless protections from the forest, it was estimated that new road construction would cost taxpayers $500,000-a-mile.

Put all that together and what Murkowski has spent two decades attempting is to spend tens of millions of dollars of the taxes you and I pay the federal government to subsidize the destruction of a unique ecosystem, and with it tens of thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions in economic activity reliant on the Tongass in order to give China 800 year old trees from her state’s largest intact old growth forest.

Murkowski may brand herself a “moderate,” but there’s very little that’s moderate about her attempts to destroy the state she represents.

Save Us, Incompetency!

As of 2012, the last time this data was collected, there were 972 billion cubic feet of lumber available nationwide, in already permitted areas. The Tongass only holds 18 billion cubic feet, total. We’re currently under three billion board feet in total annual production. Rollins’ April emergency order aims to increase that total by 25 percent within the next five years, taking us to a total of around 3.75 billion board feet produced on USFS land annually.

But go back to that article on the USFS budget written by Clark and Strong, and you’ll see that the Trump administration is engaged in an attempt to break the forest service by dramatically slashing its budget from $6.178 billion to $2.136 billion. Even while Rollins is trying to increase production, she’s unable to give USFS the money it needs to support an increased harvest.

Rollins’ five-year budget for road construction across the entire forest service? It’s $50 million. Even if all of that was spent in the Tongass, she’d only be buying a hundred miles of road construction—one mile of road for ever 150 square miles of formerly Roadless forest. Not enough to get Murkowski much closer to destroying the Tongass than she was before the rule was rescinded.

What about the rest of us? There’s 6.4 million acres of Roadless Rule-protected lands in Montana and 9.3 million in Idaho, along with parcels across most other western states. There’s even 25,000 acres of roadless in Vermont. Like in Alaska, USFS doesn’t appear to have the budget necessary to open those up. So while some harms will be visited by the loss of protection regardless, it’s easy to feel like Roadless areas away from the Tongass are just collateral damage from Murkowski’s political ambition.

Top photo: USFS

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