Udall Statement on Trump Stripping Protections from Tongass National Forest

Statement

U.S. Senator Tom Udall (D-N.M.), ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, Environment and Related Agencies, issued the following statement after the Trump administration moved to strip protections from the Tongass National Forest:

"The Trump administration is again showing us its true colors, adding to the worst environmental record of any presidential administration in American history with a truly reckless and destructive rollback of public lands protections. Yesterday, the Trump Interior Department put out a glossy campaign propaganda video implying that the president was single-handedly preserving the natural world. Today, as wildfires continue to burn the West, the Trump administration's Forest Service removed protections from one of the most important temperate rainforests in the world -- America's Amazon -- in a decision that will worsen climate change and destroy precious wildlife habitat. This is a stupendously bad decision that would deliver no meaningful economic benefit.

"No matter how much they try to greenwash their record ahead of an election, all Americans can now see that President Trump is putting the pedal to the metal to bulldoze an old growth forest, and tossing aside the views of Alaska Natives in the process. Scientists have raised the alarm that we need to conserve 30 percent of nature by 2030 to avoid a mass extinction of 1 million species, a catastrophe that threatens the planet's life support system that we all rely on for our health and prosperity. This decision must be reversed, or we will regret it for many generations to come."

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