Donald Trump told Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to release Alaska’s Tongass National Forest from logging restrictions that are almost 20 years old, The Washington Post reported Tuesday. At 16.7 million acres, Tongass is America’s largest national forest, covering most of Southeast Alaska. Conservatives have been trying to open up the forest to logging for years—thwarted only by the fact that it has been illegal to do since President Clinton made logging in more than half of the forest off-limits by banning the construction of roads in those areas.
The Post explains that their sources believe the logging and national forest issues are something of an “obsession” with Trump. The orange imbecile seems hell-bent on turning into the Seussian villain from The Lorax. You might recall his attempts at blaming the California’s park services for climate change-driven forest fires because they hadn’t raked enough.
But let’s be clear, having Alaska exempted from the commercial logging restrictions of the last two decades is not a unique Trump idea. It’s a fossil fuel- and anti-environmental industry-funded passion of Republicans in the state. Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy and Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski have lobbied for these waivers. The conservative argument is that it will create more jobs and industry for Alaska, where the timber industry accounts for less than 1% of the state’s jobs. Other, more forward-thinking folks point out that, for those genuinely interested in jobs, money, and the state’s ability to help generate money, the salmon industry generates almost a billion dollars each year. And 40% of the industry’s salmon depend on standing trees to create the environs they live in.
Alaska’s forests are a tourist destination, for both sightseeing and sport hunting, which generate considerably more money than logging does, all while leaving the forest intact for the next visitor. There are many who hope the Trump administration, if unwavering on this dumb old idea to open up commercial logging in Alaska, will at least apply their greedy hands in a limited fashion. The fundamental problem is that greed doesn’t work that way: Instead, big industry extracts all of the resources it can, and spends money on lawyers to keep expenses down while the environmental costs soar.