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The U.S. Forest Service is rethinking how it defines areas of the Tongass National Forest. One of its ideas is to designate recreation areas according to commercial use, which could guide where the Forest Service concentrates permits for tour operators.
In a draft outline for the Tongass Forest Plan revision, the agency proposes two types of recreation areas: high commercial use and low commercial use.
Barb Miranda is the deputy forest supervisor for the Tongass. She explained it to about 40 Juneau residents at a public meeting the agency held April 15 at its Juneau district office.
“Think of it as sort of a zoning document from a city, but it’s sort of a zoning document and overall guidance for a forest,” Miranda said.
The forest plan sets the overarching vision and goals for how the Forest Service manages the Tongass including logging, subsistence, ecosystem health and recreation.
The current plan, made a decade ago, doesn’t map high and low commercial recreation use areas.
Right now, the Forest Service classifies recreation areas on a spectrum from urban to what the agency calls “primitive.” That spectrum guides where roads, motorized vehicles and amenities go. The current plan offers some direction on commercial recreation. For example, it says a tour group should generally be limited to 20 people in a “semi-remote” area.
But Miranda said the agency wants to simplify how the plan organizes different parts of the forest and transition from more than a dozen land-use designations in the current plan to just a handful of management areas with special guidelines in the new plan. She said the proposed recreation areas intend to address the growth of tourism in the Tongass.
“The biggest employer is tourism, and the biggest impact to communities, and how we develop communities, is tourism,” she said.
Alix Pierce is the visitor industry director for the City & Borough of Juneau, which is expecting 1.7 million cruise ship passengers this year. She said looking at recreation and tourism based on levels of intensity is an important exercise, and could offer more clarity than the current plan.
“I think there will probably be some evolution in the way that they look at the zones, but I do think that the zoning concept is a good idea,” Pierce said.
She said it could help protect areas that residents don’t want to see overrun by commercial tourism and could allow for development in areas where tourism is central. But Pierce said the plan should be adaptive, since some small Southeast communities want to expand tourism to boost local economies.
The village of Klawock on Prince of Wales Island is one. Don Nickerson is the mayor of Klawock and president of Klawock Heenya Corporation. He said the village of around 700 people welcomed six cruise ships in 2024 — the first year its cruise port opened. This summer, he said the village expects 58 cruise ships.
“Access to nature tourism and ecotourism is going to be huge,” Nickerson said. “From what I see with a lot of the guests that come into our port, you know, they’re very interested in wildlife and natural beauty.”
He said it’s important for Forest Service land accessible from Klawock to allow high recreation use in places where visitors can count on seeing bears, eagles and salmon.
Miranda said that while the Forest Service doesn’t control the number of cruises coming to Southeast, the agency does issue permits to commercial operators who guide in the Tongass.
High commercial recreation areas around towns with cruise ship ports — like the Mendenhall Glacier Recreation Area in Juneau — would probably continue to support many commercial tour permits.
“Low commercial recreation use areas are places where locals might say, ‘we wish you wouldn’t put as many special use permit holders into those areas,’” Miranda said.
The current comment period for the draft outline closes May 6. Miranda said the agency is also contracting with Spruce Root on a survey that people can use to submit feedback.
“What are the places you don’t want to see commercial tourism?” she said at the public meeting. “Let’s hear from you.”
In addition to commenting on recreation, Miranda said it’s a chance for locals to weigh in on the other proposed management areas, including old-growth forest, key fisheries watersheds and community use areas.
The forest plan revision process includes multiple public comment periods.
The Forest Service plans to release a full draft plan at the end of the year, which will kick off a 90-day comment period. Then the agency will prepare an environmental impact statement and draft record of decision next year that will allow for a 60-day objection period. Miranda said the final plan is anticipated in 2028.
