Meetings this week between U.S. Forest Service leadership and Southeast Alaska timber industry representatives are raising concerns among tribal and other officials about the possibility that a years-long revision of the management plan for the Tongass National Forest will be halted by the Trump administration.

At least one additional meeting is now planned this week because of those concerns, scheduled for Friday, Dec. 19, in Juneau between Forest Service leaders and the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska.

The Alaska Forest Association has requested a halt to work on the revised timber management plan. The industry association says that less than 10% of old-growth trees allotted to the industry in a 2016 revision of the plan have actually been authorized for harvest. The allocation was intended to support a 15-year industry transition to harvesting new-growth trees, according to the association.

Sarah Dahlstrom, AFA’s board president, said Dec. 10 that industry officials also want to discuss President Donald Trump’s executive order eliminating regulations that prohibit maximum utilization of Alaska’s natural resources and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins’ directive to repeal the Roadless Rule, which has banned new logging roads in the Tongass.

“We’re going to discuss how the Forest Service has been implementing their executive orders and secretary memos from the president and from Secretary Rollins — that’s the first thing we’re going to discuss — and see some of the forest health concerns that our industry has seen out in the woods,” she said. “Then they’re actually going to come and tour the small businesses, the operations that are unique to the Tongass, and then check out supply and market needs in Southeast Alaska.”

The latest revision to the Tongass Land Management Plan began in 2023, with the Forest Service issuing a draft “biography” in February 2025 profiling the forest’s health and uses from a wide range of perspectives including industrial, environmental and tribal. An official timeline calls for further review of a proposed draft revision before it is implemented in 2027.

However, the Trump administration has drastically altered environmental policies and directives since the beginning of his second term, including removing references to and policies involving climate change from federal government agencies. The Tongass draft assessment report released in February, totaling more than 800 pages, references climate change extensively.

AFA, in a Nov. 4 letter to Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz, states the industry organization “believes it is imperative that the USFS immediately halt the plan revision process.”

“AFA is gravely concerned that there is a fundamental bias in the development of the plan revision that is opposed to the harvest of old-growth (OG) timber by any operators larger than small … and ‘micro’ components of the industry,” the letter signed by Dahlstrom states. “These small mill operators have also indicated they rely on OG and do not currently have the supply they require.”

Dahlstrom said regional Forest Service officials have stalled old-growth timber sales specified in the 2016 update. For that reason, she stated AFA is seeking to ensure “planning activities for the Tongass are overseen and directed by leadership outside the region.”

AFA filed a lawsuit in March against the U.S. Department of Agriculture in an effort to cut more old-growth timber.

A response to AFA’s request to halt the revision to the Tongass management plan is detailed in a Nov 26 letter to Schultz by Tlingit and Haida President Chalyee Éesh Richard Peterson. It states AFA is seeking “to preserve a status quo built on an outdated forest plan — one developed under ecological, political and management assumptions that no longer reflect the realities of the Tongass (or) the needs of its people.”

The letter continues: “The current plan continues to favor industrial timber interests even though timber now represents less than 1% of regional jobs and earnings, while sectors dependent on healthy forests, salmon and intact ecosystems, such as tourism, subsistence and commercial fishing, drive the regional economy.”

Forest Service leaders are scheduled to meet with AFA representatives in Ketchikan on Monday, Dec. 15, and with timber company workers on Prince of Wales Island afterward, Dahlstrom said.

A Forest Service meeting in Juneau with Tlingit and Haida officials to discuss the issues raised in Peterson’s letter is scheduled for Friday, Dec. 19, Jacqueline Pata, the tribal council’s first vice president, said during a Dec. 4 executive council meeting.