Here’s a link to a story on the Juneau roundtable.
Community leaders given a chance to comment on forest planning Tuesday during a regional roundtable in Juneau said they want more control over decisions made on public lands surrounding their towns.
The inability of the U.S. Forest Service to get projects through its system, or even make a plan to change the system, is hurting Alaska’s rural communities that depend on the forest for livelihoods and sustenance, roundtable attendees said.
“The Forest Service has an obligation to see that it helps keep local communities alive,” Petersburg Community Development Director Leo Luczak said, adding that timber revenues have fallen to such lows that “communities are dying.”