The U.S. Forest Service announced in the Federal Register Wednesday that it is preparing to update the Tongass National Forest Land and Resource Management Plan to align with executive orders that President Trump issued when he took office last year.
Also on Wednesday, the Forest Service opened a 30-day public comment period on the planned update.
The current Tongass plan has been in place since 1979, and the last major revision of the management plan for the 16.7-million acre national forest was in 1997.
Amendments to the plan in 2016 emphasized a transition to young-growth logging.
The Forest Service initiated its current revision of the Tongass plan in 2023, when Joe Biden was president. In 2024, the Forest Service laid the groundwork for the plan revision by assessing ecological, social and economic data from across Southeast Alaska.
That 2024 assessment focused on the cultural significance of the Tongass for Alaska Native peoples, and the role of the Tongass in economic opportunity and social well-being, ecosystem functions, and carbon sequestration and carbon storage. The Forest Service engaged federally recognized tribes and community groups in its assessment.
In a press release Tuesday, the Forest Service said it is now preparing to implement changes to the plan to “align with best available science, as well as laws and regulations,” including President Trump’s Executive Order 14225 “Immediate Expansion of American Timber Production,” and his Executive Order 14153 “Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential.” The Alaska-specific executive order directs federal agencies to maximize timber harvest and mineral extraction.
In Wednesday’s notice in the Federal Register, the Forest Service addressed the Trump administration’s ongoing effort to rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule. If it’s rescinded, it would remove prohibitions on road construction and timber harvesting on 9.3 million acres of land currently inventoried as roadless areas in the Tongass.
The current revision of the Tongass land management plan will consider a future in which the Roadless Rule is rescinded, so “the revised plan can align with the outcome of the (Roadless) rulemaking process,” the Forest Service stated in the notice.
Wednesday’s notice also outlined six “interrelated goals” for the updated plan. The six goals address land use designations; the Tongass as an economic driver; increased cruise ship visitation; collaboration between different groups; subsistence hunting, fishing and gathering needs; and Indigenous knowledge.
Speaking with the Sentinel today, House District 2 Rep. Rebecca Himschoot of Sitka said that she’s excited about the six points that the Forest Service listed as goals in updating the Tongass plan.
“The sixth point had to do with Tribal engagement, and I think we have a lot of room in our decision-making spaces for more Tribal voice,” Himschoot said.
Himschoot said she’ll be taking a closer look at Wednesday’s notice. She encouraged Southeast Alaskans to engage with the Tongass plan revision process.
“My entire district is in the Tongass,” Himschoot said. “This plan revision is very important to us.”
Sitka Conservation Society executive director Andrew Thoms said during a phone interview Wednesday that Sitka has a high stake in the outcome of revisions to the management plan for the Tongass.
“The land management plan is basically a zoning plan for the Tongass,” Thoms said. “The revision will affect everything from where we recreate, where we hunt, where timber harvest happens, permitted uses that happen, to how resources are protected or managed.”
When the Forest Service conducted its 2024 assessment, “Southeast Alaskans talked about wanting to see their forest managed for restoration and old growth habitat conservation for winter deer habitat and salmon habitat,” Thoms said.
The language in the Forest Service’s announcement Wednesday “indicates that the focus of the plan revision is on timber harvest operations and mining, rather than a lot of the priorities that Southeast Alaska, communities like Sitka, told the Forest Service that they wanted to see be the focus of this land management plan,” Thoms said.
The proposed changes are “extremely important to our lifestyles and livelihoods and our home economics in Southeast Alaska,” Thoms said.
“The comment period around that is a chance for Southeast Alaskans to give the input and get it on the record,” Thoms said.
The Forest Service is accepting comments through the Federal Register website (docket number 2026-03197) or by mail to: Tongass National Forest, USDA Forest Service, 648 Mission Street, Suite 110, Federal Building, Ketchikan, AK 99901.
The Forest Service intends to prepare a preliminary plan and environmental impact statement by the fall of 2026, and finalize the plan update in 2027.
Forest Service officials told Southeast Alaska’s federal subsistence Regional Advisory Council last year that the Forest Service will hold community workshops in April to reveal the agency’s vision for the forest plan update.
This story was originally published by the Daily Sitka Sentinel