Republican House Attacks Tongass Forest & U.S Boundary Ecosystems

U.S. border ecosystems that currently have environmental protection would lose many of those defenses if the Senate passes a bill sent along today from the U.S. House. Included in the bill was a measure to let Alaskan Tlingit Indians in the SeaAlaska Corporation swap land selection areas given during the Nixon administration settlements with Alaska natives for prime old growth forest. SeaAlaska Corporation has a record of cutting old growth forest. There is only about 10% remaining of the old growth forests of S.E. Alaska and the nation's largest rain forest.

http://www.adn.com/2012/06/19/2511405/us-house-takes-up-waiver-of-border.html

American Indians are the essential beneficiary of legal racial apartheid in the United States. Probably U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) supports the bill because of its imperial characteristic and because Alaska natives provided political supported in her last election. Imperialism Alaska via foreign corporations is a venerable tradition. If the SeaAlaska land swap goes through it will probably also cast a shadow over Anglo-American mining efforts to develop copper mines in the headwaters of Bristol Bay-The notorious Pebble Mine Project.

The rationale for the Republican border environment road-building effort is to defend against drug traffickers and human and narcotics smugglers. Building roads is a bad way to accomplish worth-while objectives. The bill should be rejected in the Senate and new ways of capturing foreign invaders on the border developed in addition to not rewriting the original Alaska Native Land Claims Settlement Act provisions at all. One day such rewriting could turn the tide in another direction less desired by Tlingits, if not to end racially differentiated areas if nothing else.