President Donald Trump has asked his agriculture secretary to provide a regulations exemption in order to open millions of acres of protected land within Alaska's Tongass National Forest to "potential logging, energy and mining projects," The Washington Post reported Tuesday.
The Post, citing conversations with three people briefed on the issue, said Trump asked Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue earlier this month to exempt the 16.7-million acre forest from Clinton-era logging restrictions that prevented the area from being open to some commercial interests for nearly 20 years. According to the paper, the move would impact "more than half of the world's largest intact temperate rainforest," which is filled with "with old-growth spruce, hemlock and cedar, rivers running with salmon, and dramatic fjords."
The move is the latest in ongoing efforts by the Trump administration to lift restrictions on protected lands in order to provide industry access to the land. Among other places, the administration has rolled back restrictions on Utah's Grand-Staircase Escalante National Monument and the Bears Ears National Monument in what were two of the largest downsizes of protected lands in US history.
