etchikan Indian Community asks judge to halt Shelter Cove timber sale before contract award

Editor's note: This story was updated to include the Forest Service's stated purpose for the project.

The Ketchikan Indian Community and two conservation groups asked a federal judge Wednesday to stop the Shelter Cove Timber Sale before the U.S. Forest Service awards a logging contract. They want a ruling by Oct. 21.

Sealed bids open Oct. 20. The plaintiffs wrote that a contract could be awarded as soon as the next day, with work starting soon after. The requested injunction would halt logging, road construction and any other ground-disturbing activity under the sale while the case proceeds.

The sale offers about 4 million board feet of old-growth timber near North Saddle Lakes and Shelter Cove on Revillagigedo Island, east of Ketchikan. It is the first sale under the South Revillagigedo Integrated Resource Project, which authorizes up to 83 million board feet over 15 years on 41,305 acres of the Tongass National Forest. The project includes building 40 miles of new roads and reopening 30 miles of closed roads. The motion says Ketchikan residents have historically harvested up to 70% of their deer from the project area, less than 20 miles from town.

The tribe, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council filed the motion for a preliminary injunction, a temporary order holding work in place, in U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska. They filed the underlying lawsuit Aug. 27, which challenges logging that would cut 44% of winter deer habitat on the island, as Alaska News reported. The Forest Service authorized the project July 29 and advertised the Shelter Cove sale Sept. 19.

The Forest Service has said the project, which also includes habitat improvements and recreation enhancements, "will help meet demand for wood products and support local operators in Southeast Alaska," according to its July announcement of the decision.

The plaintiffs argue that logging and roadbuilding would cause irreparable harm to their way of life, habitat, wildlife, subsistence resources and other Tongass values. They also make a financial argument: they say federal appropriations law bars the agency from advertising Alaska timber sales that appraise at a deficit, and that the agency's own analysis shows the full project operating at a negative rate of about $82 to $267 per thousand board feet. They allege violations of the National Forest Management Act, the Multiple Use and Sustained Yield Act and the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act.

"It cannot continue to be treated as an afterthought in decisions about our homelands, nor can our lands and resources simply be viewed as commodities to be exploited," said Ketchikan Indian Community President Gloria Ilsxilee Stáng Burns.

The motion says an injunction would likely delay at most two months of logging and road construction in 2026. Without one, the plaintiffs say, operations could begin right after award and run into December.