Alaska tribes want their own roadless rule

摘要

Alaska tribes opposed to the Trump administration's move to expand logging in the Tongass National Forest are making a new pitch to the Department of Agriculture: write a separate set of rules for areas used by Native populations. Nine tribes with ancestral ties to the Tongass, the country's biggest national forest, submitted a petition to USDA today, asking for a new rulemaking process to create a "Traditional Homelands Conservation Rule" that would govern forest management in areas used by tribes. "The course USDA is now on is incompatible with traditional and subsistence uses of the forest, undermines the role of the Tribes in forest planning processes, comes at great risk to future generations and the long-term productivity of the forest, and highlights the history of disenfranchising Alaska Native Tribes from the decisionmaking process where traditional lands are at stake," the tribes wrote in the petition, signed by leaders of several tribal organizations and villages. The petition doesn't identify specific territory but says tribes want closer collaboration on areas of the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian people. The Forest Service in the past hasn't heeded tribes' maps or descriptions of traditional use areas, according to the petition.