Now that the second attempt at a “solution” of the Tongass Futures Roundtable has been released, there’s little left to speculate upon. The “Tongass Solutions Concept” revealed The Nature Conservancy’s agenda subtitled, “Draft Management Prescriptions”, which would transfer ownership of vast swaths (over a million acres) of the Tongass National Forest into privatized/state-owned tree plantations.

It should come as no surprise, that the new owners of this rare gem in our national forest system would be unconstrained by bedrock environmental laws or the nuisance of citizens forcing their government in court, to maintain huntable populations of deer.

If that were the case, the new owners wouldn’t be able to profit from the short rotation-intensive timber harvest they claim to be “sustainable”.

Recognizing the difficulty of convincing the public such intensive harvest would be a good thing, “environmental” representatives have been co-opted as the principal greenwashing timber activists of this exercise in devolution.

It hasn’t gone so well for the greenwashing timber activists collaborating at the roundtable. As such, this would be an excellent time to abandon such deplorable exercises in “collaboration”. Roundtable members should hope no further light gets shed on their backroom negotiations. A timely, quiet exit would be in their best “stakeholding” interests.