Alaska Sues US Government to Contest Tongass Forest Protections
The state of Alaska sued President Joe Biden's administration on Friday seeking to block its decision to reverse a policy begun under his predecessor Donald Trump that had opened vast swaths of the Tongass National Forest, the largest such wilderness in the United States, to logging and mining.
The state's lawsuit, filed in federal court in Anchorage, said the January decision by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to restore protections for 9.37 million acres (3.76 million hectares) of the southeastern Alaska forest undermines the state's economy by prohibiting timber harvests and mining for essential minerals.
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