Tongass National Forest Plan Maintenance Program

Forest Plan Implementation

Procedures and Tools

Roadless Areas

The majority of the lands on the Tongass National Forest are roadless and the vast majority of these lands are classified as inventoried roadless areas. Inventoried roadless areas are lands that are identified and inventoried based on procedures defined in the Forest Service Handbook (FSH 1909.12). In general, inventoried roadless areas contain at least 5,000 acres of undeveloped land that does not contain improved roads maintained for travel by passenger-type vehicles.

The inventory of roadless areas on the Tongass was updated in the 2003 Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the Tongass Forest Plan Revision. This inventory was further updated in the 2008 EIS for the Forest Plan Amendment. The 2008 inventoried roadless area map can be observed by clicking on the 2008 Roadless Area Map. The coverage used to create this map is named "inv_rdls2007".

Counting existing wilderness, over 90 percent of the Tongass is currently roadless. A total of 109 inventoried roadless areas are identified and they comprise just over 9.5 million acres or 57 percent of the Tongass.

Future projects may affect the boundaries and size of inventoried roadless areas. Therefore, the effect of future projects on inventoried roadless areas must be evaluated. The procedure to be used for revising the boundaries of inventoried roadless areas is as follows:

Projected roads and harvest units, and all areas within 1,200 feet of an existing road and 600 feet of an existing harvest unit, should be considered developed for the purposes of assessing effects on inventoried roadless areas. These 1,200- and 600-foot buffers are necessary because areas near roads, harvest units, and other developments would be influenced by that development. The buffering process allows for more consistent mapping for analysis purposes, without restricting where the actual boundary could be designated by Congress. Narrow strips of land between developed areas should be included as part of the adjacent developed areas. Isolated helicopter-logged units and helicopter units that are only partially harvested and are mostly natural appearing after harvest, do not need to be considered as developed. However, even-aged helicopter units that are adjacent to a road system should be considered as developed and buffered as harvest units. All National Forest System lands within existing inventoried roadless areas, but outside of the areas defined as developed, are identified as roadless.