Late last year, the U.S. Forest Service finalized the latest amendment to the Tongass Land and Resource Management Plan (TLMP.) One of the focuses of that amendment is to conserve critical salmon spawning and rearing habitat in the Tongass National Forest by eliminating the extraction of old growth forest in select watersheds. To accommodate the logging industry, the USFS is surveying second growth forest that are now coming of harvestable age. …I’m not against having a viable logging industry in Southeast. In fact, I think there is ample room for one. But it is time to get the focus off old growth and transition harvest efforts to second growth. The infrastructure/roads are already in place for that. Bringing some existing logging roads back to usable condition is doable under the Tongass Roadless Rule and would cost far less than building new roads.