Southeast Alaska Conservation Council

In 1975 the Forest Service released its 1975 Tongass plan, which proposed millions of acres to become wilderness areas. These areas were steep, rocky fjords or shifting glaciers that had not or never would be threatened by logging. Conservationists had been given 6 weeks to respond. SEACC came up with 45 areas that needed protection from logging. On March 7, 1975, conservationists from Southeast Alaska met in Sitka to discuss SEACC's Tongass Wilderness proposal.[7] SEACC received help from the Sierra Club Alaska representative for their campaigns on this issue. In 1976 Ted Whitesell and Kay Greenough took SEACC to Washington, DC, for the first time for the National Forest Management Act hearings.[8]

The March 1976 Congressional hearings in Washington were held because the Point Baker Association and plaintiffs Herb Zieske, Chuck Zieske, and Alan Stein had won a victory in the US District Court in Alaska on December 23, 1975, in which Judge Van der Heydt ordered 1) no trees could be cut unless they were dead or dying 2) and no trees could be cut at all north of a line between Calder Bay and Red Bay on Prince of Wales Island.[9]

In March 1976, Alan Stein testified before Congress, representing the United Fishermen of Alaska and the Point Baker Association.[10] The decision in Zieske threatened to shut down clearcut logging on the entire West Coast, so the timber industry pressed for immediate hearings to overturn the Zieske decision in Congress.[11]

Senator Gravel brought hearings to Alaska in 1976 on the pending National Forest Management Act (NFMA) legislation. Still, committees had already reconciled vital issues. Senator Huddleston stated on pages 26 and 60–61 in the Hearings Record of the US Senate Subcommittee of Environment, Soil, Conservation, and Forestry of the Committee of Agriculture and Forestry (in Juneau, Ketchikan, and Sitka August 18 and 21, 1976) that the bill was ready for floor action before committees considered the August testimony on such issues as whether mandatory 300-foot buffer strips should remove the discretion of the USFS when laying out clear-cut.[12] The President signed the National Forest Management Act of 1976 on October 22, 1976.[13]

The draft Tongass plan of the following years still included most of its proposed wilderness areas in rocky areas. Some alternatives even proposed extensive clear-cut logging on pristine regions such as Admiralty Island and West Chicago. In 1977 seven conservation groups, including SEACC, formed the Alaska Coalition. Despite efforts, President Carter signed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act that protected 5.4 million acres of the 17 million-acre Tongass National Forest. The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) triggered SEACC to take more action and protect the old-growth forests of the Tongass from logging.[14]

SEACC's proposal for protecting 45 areas was ignored in the Forest Service's 1979 Tongass Land Management Plan. Some important SEACC members resigned after this fallback. John Sisk described it as follows: The Tongass issue was over. The rest belonged to the timber companies." SEACC did not give up and took on smaller cases that included problems in the Tongass National Forest but also expanded to water pollution.

Bart Koehler took over SEACC in 1984 and published a document in 1986 that challenged the Forest Service. The report called: 'Last Stand' exposed the money-losing economic aspect of logging in the Tongass Forest. The report revealed how much money exactly was lost by the Forest Service every year. The report sparked a large debate, and SEACC took their concerns to Washington D.C.[15] A hearing on Tongass National Forest was held on May 8 and 9 in 1986 by the House Interior Subcommittee on Public Lands.[16] Koehler was leading a national Tongass reform campaign, in which he urged ending long-term contracts of the pulp mills, adding more wilderness areas, and cutting major subsidies for logging."[17] This went on for a couple of years, and many talks and meetings with government officials and environmentalists passed. SEACC did not give up its fight for the Tongass Timber Reform Act and received much support.[14]

A decade after the ANILCA Law passed, SEACC ushered through the first locally crafted federal lands protection bill they had been fighting for, for many years. President George Bush signed the Tongass Timber Reform Act on November 28, 1990.[18] It is described as: "An Act to amend the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, to protect certain lands in the Tongass National Forest in perpetuity, to modify certain long-term timber contracts, to provide for protection of riparian habitat, and for other purposes."[19] The law protected an additional 1.2 million acres of forestlands and canceled the pulp mill's contracts. The Tongass Timber Reform Act was the first major victory for SEACC.[[20] After his victory, Koehler moved to Montana to work for the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. In 1995 he moved back to Alaska after discovering that state senators Frank Murkowski, Ted Stevens, and Don Young had gained power and tried to change the Tongass Timber Reform Act.[21] A year later, Koehler returned to Washington, D.C., to discuss this problem. Six years after the Tongass Timber Reform Act had passed, the Tongass National Forest was yet again a national issue.[22] In the end, the Tongass Timber Reform Act led to two major mills in Sitka and Ketchikan having to shut their doors in 1997, and it protected an additional half a million hectares of forest lands.[23] In 1997 the largest pulp mill, the Ketchikan Pulp Corporation, had to shut down (Durbin, 2005).[24]

The Coeur Alaska, Inc. v. Southeast Alaska Conservation Council was a Supreme court case that ruled in favor of Coeur Alaska, Inc. SEACC, the Sierra Club, and Lynn Canal Conservation Inc. filed a lawsuit against Coeur Alaska, Inc: a mine developer. They had received a permit issued by the United States Army Corps of Engineers, allowing them to dump the toxic waste in the environment. The three environmental non-profit organizations argued that the permit for dumping toxic mine tailings into Lower Slate Lake violated sections 301(a), 301(e), and 306(e) of the Clean Water Act. The court ruled in favor of Coeur Alaska Inc.[25][26][27]

SEACC's non-management employees unionized as SEACC United on December 9, 2022, with a public super-majority of all eligible (permanent, non-management) employees, in accordance with the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).[28] SEACC management refused to voluntarily recognize the union, forcing the union to petition the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) for an election on December 19, 2022.[29] SEACC leadership hired the global law firm, Littler Mendelson, known for specializing in "union avoidance",[30] to challenge the NLRB's jurisdiction over the organization, claiming that it does not participate in interstate commerce and is therefor not subject to the federal labor act.[31] On February 13, 2023, the NLRB rejected SEACC's "numerous novel arguments" and cited 80 years of precedent to affirm that "the board has broad jurisdiction over nearly all types of private employers, large and small, for-profit and non-profit," and directed an election to take place by mail-in ballot. SEACC appealed that decision, continuing to challenge its workers' federal right to union representation.[32] On March 30, 2023, SEACC United won formal recognition in the NLRB election, despite SEACC leadership contesting one of the ballots.[33] On March 31, 2023, after being contacted by SEACC leadership, local news outlet, KINY News of the North bizarrely retracted a story covering the union's victory, removing it from publication rather than updating it with a correction.[34]

SEACC continues to challenge its workers' union and released a statement immediately after the vote count indicating that leadership will not enter into bargaining until the NLRB is "ultimately and appropriately determined to have jurisdiction in this case.[35]" However, the February 13 decision did affirm its jurisdiction, and SEACC Board Chair Natalie Watson claimed in a December 30, 2022 Juneau Empire op-ed that organizational leadership "will stand by the results" of the election[36] –– a claim not supported by SEACC's actions to contest the election. SEACC leadership filed objections to the election with the NLRB on April 6, 2023 that were ultimately overruled by the board on April 21, 2023 at the same time that it certified the election, affirming the union. On August 22, 2023, Alaska AFL-CIO President Joelle Hall published a commentary in The Alaska Current defending SEACC United, the Communications Workers of America, and the AFL-CIO from SEACC Board Chair Natalie Watson's bizarre, unprovoked attacks in a misleading email alert sent out to SEACC's email lists and posted to SEACC's blog.

SEACC United is affiliated with the Communications Workers of America Local 37074, an AFL-CIO affiliate. SEACC United is believed to be the first labor union of nonprofit advocacy workers in Alaska.