Southeast Alaska Conservation Council


The Southeast Alaska Conservation Council is a non-profit organization that focusses on protecting the lands and waters of Southeast Alaska. They promote conservation and advocate for sustainable natural resource management. SEACC is located in Alaska's capital: Juneau. The environmental organization focuses specifically on concerns in the Southeast region of Alaska: including the Panhandle, the Tongass National Forest and the Inside Passage.

Mission

SEACC's core purpose is “to protect Southeast Alaska’s wild lands and clean water in order to sustain an intact ecosystem, abundant fish and wildlife populations, and a unique Southeast Alaskan way of life.” Striving for interconnecting the values of land, wildlife, cultures, and communities so all of this can exist together for future generations. SEACC brings local voices together and gives community members a platform to express their concerns and advocate for a change.

History

Large-scale clearcutting projects by the United States Forest Service were of great concern to environmental activists in the 1960s and 1970s. Specifically, the long-term permits the Forest Service had given to two pulp mills that allowed them to clear-cut ancient old-growth trees and turn them into pulp. In 1970, a group of Southeast Alaskans from communities across the entire region formed a group to oppose the unsustainable logging in the Tongass National Forest. They started as the Tongass National Forest preservation group and were mostly fighting the large-scale old-growth logging, but later they changed their name to the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council. In 1977 SEACC became a federally recognized 501 organization.

[Tongass Timber Reform Act]

In 1975 the Forest Service had released their 1975 Tongass plan, that proposed millions of acres to become wilderness areas. These areas were steep, rocky fjords or shifting glaciers that had not or never would be threatened by logging. Conservationists had been given 6 weeks to respond. SEACC came up with 45 areas that needed protection from logging. On March 7, 1975, conservationists from all over Southeast Alaska met in Sitka to discuss SEACC's Tongass Wilderness proposal. SEACC received help from the Sierra Club Alaska representative for their campaigns on this issue. In 1976 Ted Whitesell and Kay Greenough took SEACC to Washington, D.C. for the first time for the hearings on the National Forest Management Act. The draft Tongass plan of the following years still included most of its proposed wilderness areas in rocky areas. Some alternatives even proposed large clear-cut logging on pristine areas such as Admiralty Island and West Chicagof. In 1977 seven conservation groups, including SEACC, formed the Alaska Coalition. Despite efforts, President Carter signed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act that protected 5.4 million acres of the 17 million acre Tongass National Forest. The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act triggered SEACC to take more action and protect the old-growth forests of the Tongass from logging.
SEACC's proposal for protecting 45 areas was ignored in the Forest Service's 1979 Tongass Land Management Plan. Some important SEACC members resigned after this fallback. John Sisk described it as: The Tongass issue was over. The rest belonged to the timber companies.” SEACC did not give up and took on smaller cases, that included problems in the Tongass National Forest still but also expanded to water pollution.
Bart Koehler took over SEACC in 1984 and published an important document in 1986 that challenged the Forest Service. The report called: ‘Last Stand’ exposed the money-losing economic aspect of logging in the Tongass Forest. The report revealed how much money exactly was lost by the Forest Service every year. This sparked a large debate and SEACC took their concerns to Washington D.C. A hearing on Tongass National Forest was held on May 8 and 9 in 1986 by the House Interior Subcommittee on Public Lands. Koehler was leading a national Tongass reform campaign, in which he urged for ending long-term contracts of the pulp mills, adding more wilderness areas and cutting major subsidies for logging.” This went on for a couple of years and many talks and meetings with government officials and environmentalists passed. SEACC did not give up its fight for the Tongass Timber Reform Act, and received a lot of support.
A decade after the ANILCA Law passed, SEACC ushered through the first locally crafted federal lands protection bill they had been fighting for, for many years. The Tongass Timber Reform Act was signed on November 28, 1990 by president George Bush. It is described as: “An Act to amend the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, to protect certain lands in the Tongass National Forest in perpetuity, to modify certain long-term timber contracts, to provide for protection of riparian habitat, and for other purposes.” The law protects an additional 1.2 million acres of forestlands and cancelled the pulp mill's contracts. The Tongass Timber Reform Act was the first major victory for SEACC.
After his victory, Koehler moved to Montana to work for the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. In 1995 he moved back to Alaska after he found out state senators Frank Murkowski, Ted Stevens and Don Young gained power and tried to change the Tongass Timber Reform Act. A year later Koehler went back to Washington, D.C., to talk about this problem. 6 years after the Tongass Timber Reform Act had passed, the Tongass National Forest was yet again a national issue. In the end, the Tongass Timber Reform Act led to two major mills in Sitka and Ketchikan having to shut their doors in 1997 and it protects an additional half a million hectares of forest lands. In 1997 the largest pulp mill, the Ketchikan Pulp Corporation had to shut down.

''Coeur Alaska, Inc. v. Southeast Alaska Conservation Council''

The Coeur Alaska, Inc. v. Southeast Alaska Conservation Council was a Supreme court case that ruled in favor of Coeur Alaska, Inc. SEACC, the Sierra Club and Lynn Canal Conservation Inc. filed a lawsuit against Coeur Alaska, Inc: a mine developer. They had received a permit that was issued by the United States Army Corps of Engineers, allowing them to dump the toxic waste in the environment. The three environmental non-profit organizations argued that the permit for dumping toxic mine tailings into Lower Slate Lake violated sections 301, 301 and 306 of the Clean Water Act. The court ruled in favor of Coeur Alaska Inc.

Current work

SEACC continues to publish reports on the uneconomical practices of logging in the Tongass National Forest. The North Kuiu Island timber sale, the Big Thorne timber sale are two major sales offered by the Forest Service that SEACC is currently opposing.
On February 28, 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to allow Alaska an exemption for the Tongass National Forest from the Roadless Rule, a Forest Service rule which limits road construction on designated national forest lands: "The 2001 Roadless Rule establishes prohibitions on road construction, road reconstruction, and timber harvesting on 58.5 million acres of inventoried roadless areas on National Forest System lands. The intent of the 2001 Roadless Rule is to provide lasting protection for inventoried roadless areas within the National Forest System in the context of multiple-use management." SEACC, together with Earthjustice and the Natural Resources Defense Council advocated on behalf of the Tongass National Forest and challenged the State of Alaska.

Awards and achievements

SEACC received the National Conservation Achievement Award in 1990 for “Outstanding Contributions to the Wise Use & Management of the Nation’s National Resources.” It was given by the National Wildlife Federation after successfully leading the Tongass Timber Reform Act campaign.
In 2012, former Executive Director of SEACC Lindsey Ketchel and Project Leader Dan Lesh received the Wilderness Partner of the Year award from the Forest Service for their wilderness steward trips with youth, native Alaskans, volunteers and agency staff to Stikine Admiralty, and Chichagof Island Wilderness areas. They also cleaned up trash and waste, as well as conducted invasive plant control on Admiralty Island.