Judge Rules Against Trump’s Attempt to Log in America’s Largest National Forest

A bald eagle in the forest along the shoreline of Takatz Bay on Baranof Island, Tongass National Forest, Alaska on July 13, 2019. Wolfgang Kaehler / LightRocket via Getty Images A federal judge in Alaska ruled late Wednesday against a Trump administration plan to open 1.8 million acres of America’s largest national forest to logging. The Forest Service plan targeted part of the Tongass National Forest on Prince of Wales Island. It would have been the largest sale of national forest timber in 30 years, Earthjustice pointed out , permitting 164 miles of new roads and clearing an area of forest three times the size of Manhattan, more than half of it old growth. But U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason ruled that the plan violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) because the agency did not take all of its potential impacts into account, The Hill reported . “The magnificent, ancient forests of the Tongass just got a reprieve from the chain saws,” Randi Spivak, public lands director at the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), said in the Earthjustice press release. “We’re thrilled the court agreed that the Trump administration broke the law when it approved cutting thousands […]

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