Trump administration advances plan to cut protections for largest national forest

Plan to open Alaska's Tongass national forest to logging faces backlash from environmental advocates, tribal nations and fishermen

The Trump administration has announced it will move forward with a plan to roll back regulations protecting millions of acres in America's largest national forest from logging, sparking an outcry from environmental advocacy organizations, Alaskan tribal nations, and fishermen.

More than half of the Tongass national forest - a 16.7m-acre old-growth temperate rainforest in south-east Alaska - has been protected for the last two decades by the so-called Roadless Area Conservation Rule", which prohibits development in designated wild areas. The US Forest Service is expected to release a final environmental impact statement on Friday which would allow for the Tongass to be exempt from the rule, moving one step closer to ending the protections entirely.