VVPR info: Larry Edwards, Greenpeace (Sitka). (907) 747-7557 (O) Gabe Scott, Cascadia Wildlands Project (Cordova), (907) 424-3835 Chris Winter. Crag Law Center (Portland), 503-525-2725
Notes: The four timber projects are: Scott Peak (Kupreanof Island, Petersburg Ranger District (RD)); Overlook (Mitkof Island, Petersburg RD); Traitors Cove (Revillagigedo (Revilla) Island, Ketchikan-Misty Fiords RD); and Soda Nick (Prince of Wales Island, Craig RD). The Islands Wolf (aka: Canis lupus ligoni, the Alexander Archipelago wolf) is a grey wolf subspecies endemic to the region, inhabiting all of it except three large islands. Nearly all of the 17 million-acre region is in the Forest Service-administered Tongass National Forest, by far the largest national forest in the U.S. The Alexander Archipelago is Southeast Alaska, the Alaska panhandle – a region 500 miles long and 125 miles wide, comprising a narrow mainland strip (rising to 8,000 – 10,000 ft. peaks forming the border with interior British Columbia) and several thousand islands (the “Inside Passage”). Globally it is the largest remaining block of mostly-intact coastal temperate rainforest. In 1980, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act established the first Wilderness areas in the Tongass. The Tongass Timber Reform Act of 1990 protected more forest and restrained rampant clearcutting to a degree. Many tens of thousands of public comments supported strong protections for the Tongass concerning adoption and revisions of the Tongass Land Management Plan in 1979, 1982, 2003, and January 2008. The 2008 plan was ordered by a court in NRDC v. USFS (2005) to correct a fundamental error in the plan that the agency denied until in court but then refused to fix until ordered to do so. To provide for wolves and hunters, a 1997 Tongass Forest Plan standard and guideline requires retaining a habitat-carrying capacity of 18 deer per square mile. There are two long-standing errors in how the Forest Service calculates deer carrying capacity. The Vol-Strata forest-characteristics data set that the agency uses is known to be uncorrelated to habitat quality, causing overestimation of carrying capacity. Second, a conversion factor (the “deer multiplier”) has been misused for the estimates, alone causing a 30 percent overestimation. The combined error can be as much as an 120 percent overestimation of carrying capacity, and a consequent underestimation of the logging impacts to deer, wolves and hunters. Both the plaintiffs and the Alaska Dept. of Fish & Game have repeatedly asked the Forest Service to correct these errors