Special Areas; Roadless Area Conservation; Applicability to the Tongass National Forest, Alaska

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The Department of Agriculture, Forest Service is proposing to amend regulations concerning the Roadless Area Conservation Rule (hereinafter, referred to as the roadless rule) to exempt the Tongass National Forest (hereinafter, referred to as the Tongass) from prohibitions against timber harvest, road construction, and reconstruction in inventoried roadless areas until a final rule is promulgated as announced by the Forest Service on July 10, 2001, in an advance notice of proposed rulemaking. In seeking public comment on this proposal to amend the roadless rule, the agency is fulfilling part of the Department's obligations under the June 10, 2003 settlement agreement for State of Alaska v. USDA, while maintaining the ecological values of inventoried roadless areas in the Tongass National Forest. In State of Alaska v. USDA, the State of Alaska and other plaintiffs alleged that the roadless rule violated a number of federal statutes, including the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980 (ANILCA). Passed overwhelmingly by Congress in 1980, ANILCA sets aside millions of acres in Alaska for the National Park Service, Forest Service, National Monuments, National Wildlife R