The Tongass National Forest () in
Southeast Alaska
Southeast Alaska, colloquially referred to as the Alaska(n) Panhandle, is the southeastern portion of the U.S. state of Alaska, bordered to the east and north by the northern half of the Canadian province of British Columbia (and a small part ...
is the largest
U.S. National Forest
In the United States, national forest is a classification of protected and managed federal lands. National forests are largely forest and woodland areas owned collectively by the American people through the federal government, and managed by t ...
at . Most of its area is
temperate rain forest
Temperate rainforests are coniferous or broadleaf forests that occur in the temperate zone and receive heavy rain.
Temperate rain forests occur in oceanic moist regions around the world: the Pacific temperate rain forests of North American P ...
and is remote enough to be home to many species of endangered and rare flora and fauna. The Tongass, which is managed by the
United States Forest Service
The United States Forest Service (USFS) is an agency of the United States Department of Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture that administers the nation's 154 United States National Forest, national forests and 20 United States Nationa ...
, encompasses islands of the
Alexander Archipelago
The Alexander Archipelago (russian: Архипелаг Александра) is a long archipelago (group of islands) in North America lying off the southeastern coast of Alaska. It contains about 1,100 islands, the tops of submerged coastal m ...
,
fjord
In physical geography, a fjord or fiord () is a long, narrow inlet with steep sides or cliffs, created by a glacier. Fjords exist on the coasts of Alaska, Antarctica, British Columbia, Chile, Denmark, Germany, Greenland, the Faroe Islands, Icel ...
s and
glacier
A glacier (; ) is a persistent body of dense ice that is constantly moving under its own weight. A glacier forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation over many years, often centuries. It acquires distinguishing features, such a ...
s, and peaks of the
Coast Mountains
The Coast Mountains (french: La chaîne Côtière) are a major mountain range in the Pacific Coast Ranges of western North America, extending from southwestern Yukon through the Alaska Panhandle and virtually all of the Coast of British Columbi ...
. An
international border
Borders are usually defined as geographical boundaries, imposed either by features such as oceans and terrain, or by political entities such as governments, sovereign states, federated states, and other subnational entities. Political border ...
with
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by to ...
(
British Columbia
British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, for ...
) runs along the crest of the
Boundary Ranges of the Coast Mountains. The forest is administered from Forest Service offices in
Ketchikan. There are local
ranger district offices located in
Craig,
Hoonah
Hoonah ( tli, Xunaa or ''Gaaw Yat’aḵ Aan'') is a largely Tlingit community on Chichagof Island, located in Alaska's panhandle in the southeast region of the state. It is west of Juneau, across the Alaskan Inside Passage. Hoonah is the only ...
,
Juneau
The City and Borough of Juneau, more commonly known simply as Juneau ( ; tli, Dzánti K'ihéeni ), is the capital city of the state of Alaska. Located in the Gastineau Channel and the Alaskan panhandle, it is a unified municipality and the s ...
,
Ketchikan,
Petersburg,
Sitka
russian: Ситка
, native_name_lang = tli
, settlement_type = Consolidated city-borough
, image_skyline = File:Sitka 84 Elev 135.jpg
, image_caption = Downtown Sitka in 1984
, image_size ...
,
Thorne Bay,
Wrangell, and
Yakutat.
History
The Alexander Archipelago Forest Reserve was established by
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt Jr. ( ; October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919), often referred to as Teddy or by his initials, T. R., was an American politician, statesman, soldier, conservationist, naturalist, historian, and writer who served as the 26t ...
in a presidential proclamation of 20 August 1902. Another presidential proclamation made by Roosevelt, on 10 September 1907, created the Tongass National Forest. On 1 July 1908, the two forests were joined, and the combined forest area encompassed most of
Southeast Alaska
Southeast Alaska, colloquially referred to as the Alaska(n) Panhandle, is the southeastern portion of the U.S. state of Alaska, bordered to the east and north by the northern half of the Canadian province of British Columbia (and a small part ...
. Further presidential proclamations of 16 February 1909 (in the last months of the Roosevelt administration) and 10 June, and in 1925 (by
Calvin Coolidge
Calvin Coolidge (born John Calvin Coolidge Jr.; ; July 4, 1872January 5, 1933) was the 30th president of the United States from 1923 to 1929. Born in Vermont, Coolidge was a Republican lawyer from New England who climbed up the ladder of Ma ...
) expanded the Tongass. An early supervisor of the forest was William Alexander Langille.
[Indian River protection]
(accessed 8 July 2010).
On 4 September 1971,
Alaska Airlines Flight 1866 crashed in the Tongass National Forest, killing all 111 people on board.
Aboriginal title
After the creation of the Tongass National Forest, the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska formed to challenge the federal government's rights to the land in 1935. In ''Tlingit and Haida Indians of Alaska v. United States'', the court found Alaskan natives held established aboriginal title by their "exclusive use and occupancy of that territory from time immemorial". The court found the
Alaska Treaty of Cessation between Russia and the United States did not extinguish aboriginal title to the land, and that the creation of the Tongass National Forest constituted a taking of land from the Tlingit and Haida. The case was finally settled in 1968 with a $7.5 million payment that valued the Tongass at about 43 cents an acre. The value was based on land value at the time of the taking in 1902, without the inflation or interest accrued in the past 66 years.
Logging
Timber harvest in Southeast Alaska consisted of individual handlogging operations up until the 1950s, focusing on lowlying areas and beach fringe areas. In the 1950s, in part to aid in Japanese recovery from
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
, the Forest Service set up long-term contracts with two pulp mills: the
Ketchikan Pulp Company (KPC) and the Alaska Pulp Company. These contracts were scheduled to last 50 years, and originally intended to complement independent sawlog operations in the region. However, the two companies conspired to drive log prices down, put smaller logging operations out of business, and were major and recalcitrant polluters in their local areas. Ultimately, virtually all timber sales in the Tongass were purchased by one of these two companies.
In 1974, the exclusive KPC contract for 800,000 acres of old growth forest on Prince of Wales Island was challenged by the
Point Baker Association led by Alan Stein, Chuck Zieske and Herb Zieske.
Federal District Court judge
James von der Heydt ruled in their favor in December 1975 and March 1976, enjoining clearcutting of over of the north end of Prince of Wales Island. The suit threatened to halt clearcutting in the United States. In 1976, Congress removed the Zieske injunction in passing the
National Forest Management Act
The National Forest Management Act (NFMA) of 1976 (P.L. 94-588) is a United States federal law that is the primary statute governing the administration of national forests and was an amendment to the Forest and Rangeland Renewable Resources Pla ...
. Over half the old growth timber was removed there by the mid 1990s.
The battle for buffer strips, to protect salmon streams from logging, which began in the ''Zieske v Butz'' lawsuit, continued through comments submitted to the major US Forest Service Environmental Impact Statements issued in subsequent five-year intervals starting in 1979, and continuing in the 1988 EIS.
Finally, in 1990, a Federal District Court in Alaska, in a case called ''Stein v Barton'', held the US Forest Service had to protect all salmon streams in the Tongass with buffer strips. One of the claims in ''Stein v Barton'' for protection of the Salmon Bay Watershed was partially enacted into law when Congress Passed the Tongass Timber Reform Act; however environmental lobbyists compromised with Senator Ted Stevens leaving the most valuable forest available to logging in the headwaters of the salmon streams therein.
Much of the power of these companies lay in the long-term contracts themselves. The contracts guaranteed low prices to the pulp companies—in some cases resulting in trees being given away for "less than the price of a hamburger."
The
Tongass Timber Reform Act
The Tongass Timber Reform Act (TTRA) is an act that was intended to amend the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA), with the primary intention to increase the protection of the Tongass National Forest from logging. The TTRA was ...
, enacted in 1990, significantly reshaped the logging industry's relationship with the Tongass National Forest. The law's provisions cancelled a $40 million annual subsidy for timber harvest; established several new wilderness areas and closed others to logging; and required that future cutting under the 50-year pulp contracts be subject to environmental review and limitations on old-growth harvest. Alaska Pulp Corporation and Ketchikan Pulp Corporation claimed that the new restrictions made them uncompetitive and closed down their mills in 1993 and 1997, respectively, and the Forest Service then cancelled the remainders of the two 50-year timber contracts.
In 2003, an appropriations bill rider required that all timber sales in the Tongass must be positive sales, meaning no sales could be sold that undervalued the "stumpage" rate, or the value of the trees as established by the marketplace (2008 Appropriations Bill P.L. 110–161, H. Rept. 110–497, Sec. 411). However, the Forest Service also conducts NEPA analyses, layout, and administrative operations to support these sales, and as such, the government does not make a profit overall.
[ Given the guaranteed low prices during contract days and the continued high cost of logging in Southeast Alaska today, one analysis concludes that, since 1980, the Forest Service has lost over one billion dollars in Tongass timber sales.][Temperate Rainforests of the North Pacific Coast]
(accessed 16 May 2007). Logging operations are not the only deficit-run programs, however. The Forest Service likens the overall deficit of the timber harvest program to the many other programs the agency operates at a deficit, including trail, cabin, and campground maintenance and subsistence programs.
High-grading (preferentially targeting for logging the most profitable forest types) has been prevalent in the Tongass throughout the era of industrial-scale logging there. For example, the forest type with the largest concentration of big trees—volume class 7—originally comprised only 4% of the forested portion of the Tongass, and over two-thirds of it has been logged. Other high-grading has concentrated on stands of Alaska cedar and red cedar. The karst terrain often produces large trees and has fewer muskeg bogs, and has also been preferentially logged.[
In a move that reverses a Trump administration decision to lift restrictions on logging and road-building, the Biden administration announced on 15 July 2021 that it would end large-scale, old-growth timber sales in the Tongass National Forest. ]Forest restoration
Forest restoration is defined as “actions to re-instate ecological processes, which accelerate recovery of forest structure, ecological functioning and biodiversity levels towards those typical of climax forest” i.e. the end-stage of natural ...
, recreation and other non-commercial uses will instead be the focus. The new rules would still allow for smaller timber sales, including some old-growth trees, for cultural uses by local communities.
Roadless controversy
The most controversial logging in the Tongass has involved the roadless areas. Southeast Alaska is an extensive landscape, with communities scattered across the archipelago on different islands, isolated from each other and the mainland road system. The road system that exists in the region is in place because of the resource extraction history in the region, primarily established by the Forest Service to enable timber harvest. Once in place, these roads serve to connect local communities and visitors to recreation, hunting, fishing, and subsistence opportunities long into the future. However, installing roads in the vast wilderness areas of the Tongass is also a point of controversy for many in the American public, as reflected in the roadless area conservation movement, which has opposed further road construction on the grounds that it would promote habitat fragmentation
Habitat fragmentation describes the emergence of discontinuities (fragmentation) in an organism's preferred environment (habitat), causing population fragmentation and ecosystem decay. Causes of habitat fragmentation include geological process ...
, diminish wildlife populations and damage salmon spawning streams. Further, they argue that existing roads are sufficient.
The Tongass National Forest was included in the Roadless Initiative passed on 5 January 2001, during the last days of the Bill Clinton
William Jefferson Clinton (né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and again ...
Administration, and the initiative prevented the construction of new roads in currently roadless areas of United States national forests.
In September 2006, a landmark court decision overturned Bush's repeal of the Roadless Rule, reverting to the 2001 roadless area protections established under president Clinton. However, the Tongass remained exempt from that ruling. In June 2007, U.S. House members added an amendment to the appropriations bill to block federally funded road building in Tongass National Forest. Proponents of the amendment said that the federal timber program in Tongass is a dead loss for taxpayers, costing some $30 million annually, and noted that the Forest Service faces an estimated $900 million road maintenance backlog in the forest. Supporters of the bipartisan amendment included the Republicans for Environmental Protection
ConservAmerica, formerly known as Republicans for Environmental Protection (REP), is a national nonprofit organization formed in 1995. REP's stated purpose is to strengthen the Republican Party's stance on environmental issues and support effor ...
. Representative Steve Chabot, an Ohio Republican who sponsored the amendment, said, "I am not opposed to logging when it's done on the timber company's dime… But in this case, they are using the American taxpayer to subsidize these 200 jobs at the tune of $200,000 per job. That just makes no sense."
In July 2009, the Obama Administration
Barack Obama's tenure as the 44th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 2009, and ended on January 20, 2017. A Democrat from Illinois, Obama took office following a decisive victory over Republican ...
approved clearcut logging on in the remaining old growth forests of a Tongass National Forest roadless area. The timber sale was permanently stopped by a lawsuit.
In March 2011, Judge John Sedwick from the Anchorage federal district court, in his ruling,[A court order, ruling the Tongass exemption from the Roadless Rule invalid, Judge Sedwick (U.S. Dist. Court, Anchorage), 4 March 2011]
/ref> reinstated the Roadless Rule on roadless areas in the Tongass, but with three of the Forest Service's recent timber projects excluded from that ruling "without prejudice." Those projects were Iyouktug Timber Sales ROD (record of decision), Scratchings Timber Sale ROD II, and Kuiu Timber Sale Area ROD.[ The Order concluded in part:
In October 2019, the ]Trump administration
Donald Trump's tenure as the List of presidents of the United States, 45th president of the United States began with Inauguration of Donald Trump, his inauguration on January 20, 2017, and ended on January 20, 2021. Trump, a Republican Party ...
instructed federal officials to reverse the limits of tree cutting at the request of Alaska's top elected officials, including Senator Lisa Murkowski
Lisa Ann Murkowski ( ; born May 22, 1957) is an American attorney and politician serving as the senior United States senator for Alaska, having held that seat since 2002. Murkowski is the second-most senior Republican woman in the Senate, after S ...
and Governor Michael J. Dunleavy. In a statement, Forest Service officials said the new plan would be subject to public comment for 60 days.
The Forest Service removed most of the Tongass National Forest from roadless area designation in October 2020, allowing road construction and logging in more than 9.3 million acres of rainforest. Clear-cut lands lose the carbon sink of old-growth forest, habitat for wildlife, and soil stability, causing landslides.
In June 2021, the Joe Biden administration revealed its intent to "repeal or replace" Trump's removal of roadless designation. According to Matt Herrick, spokesman for the United States Department of Agriculture
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is the federal executive department responsible for developing and executing federal laws related to farming, forestry, rural economic development, and food. It aims to meet the needs of comme ...
(USDA) under Biden, "We he USDA
He or HE may refer to:
Language
* He (pronoun), an English pronoun
* He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ
* He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets
* He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' in ...
recognize the vital role the forest and its inventoried roadless areas play in communities, and in the economy and culture of southeast Alaska, as well as for climate resilience
Climate resilience is defined as the "capacity of social, economic and ecosystems to cope with a hazardous event or trend or disturbance".IPCC, 2022Summary for Policymakers .-O. Pörtner, D.C. Roberts, E.S. Poloczanska, K. Mintenbeck, M. Tignor, ...
." The Biden administration planned to formally publish its intent to revise the Trump-era rule by August 2021, with details of the plan being finalized in the following two years. In November 2021, the administration officially published a rule to restore roadless protections in the Tongass National Forest, followed by a 60-day period for public comment before the rule could be finalized.
Description
Known by the U.S. Forest Service as the "crown jewel", the Tongass stretches across 17 million acres of land and is Alaska's largest National Forest. Alaska Wilderness League describes the Tongass as "one of the last remaining intact temperate rainforests in the world". 70,000 people inhabit the region. While the timber industry dominated the economy for a long time, the region has transitioned into "non-timber... ources of revenuesuch as recreation, subsistence food, salmon, scientific use, and carbon sequestration
Carbon sequestration is the process of storing carbon in a carbon pool. Carbon dioxide () is naturally captured from the atmosphere through biological, chemical, and physical processes. These changes can be accelerated through changes in lan ...
hichcontributes more than $2 billion" annually. Tourism supports over 10,000 jobs in the Tongass National Forest, with about 10% being related to fishing activities.
Three Alaska Native
Alaska Natives (also known as Alaskan Natives, Native Alaskans, Indigenous Alaskans, Aboriginal Alaskans or First Alaskans) are the indigenous peoples of Alaska and include Iñupiat, Yupik, Aleut, Eyak, Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, and a num ...
nations live in Southeast Alaska: the Tlingit, Haida
Haida may refer to:
Places
* Haida, an old name for Nový Bor
* Haida Gwaii, meaning "Islands of the People", formerly called the Queen Charlotte Islands
* Haida Islands, a different archipelago near Bella Bella, British Columbia
Ships
* , a ...
, and Tsimshian
The Tsimshian (; tsi, Ts’msyan or Tsm'syen) are an Indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast. Their communities are mostly in coastal British Columbia in Terrace and Prince Rupert, and Metlakatla, Alaska on Annette Island, the only r ...
. Thirty-one communities are located within the forest; the largest is Juneau
The City and Borough of Juneau, more commonly known simply as Juneau ( ; tli, Dzánti K'ihéeni ), is the capital city of the state of Alaska. Located in the Gastineau Channel and the Alaskan panhandle, it is a unified municipality and the s ...
, the state capital, with a population of 31,000. The forest is named for the Tongass group of the Tlingit people, who inhabited the southernmost areas of Southeast Alaska, near what is now the city of Ketchikan.
Ecology
The Tongass includes parts of the Northern Pacific coastal forests and Pacific Coastal Mountain icefields and tundra ecoregions. Along with the Central and North Coast regions of British Columbia designated as the Great Bear Rainforest
The Great Bear Rainforest is a temperate rain forest on the Pacific coast of British Columbia, Canada comprising 6.4 million hectares. It is part of the larger Pacific temperate rainforest ecoregion, which is the largest coastal temperate ra ...
, the Tongass is part of the "perhumid rainforest zone", and the forest is primarily made up of western red cedar, sitka spruce
''Picea sitchensis'', the Sitka spruce, is a large, coniferous, evergreen tree growing to almost tall, with a trunk diameter at breast height that can exceed 5 m (16 ft). It is by far the largest species of spruce and the fifth-lar ...
, and western hemlock. The Tongass is Earth's largest remaining temperate rainforest. The terrain underlying the forest is divided between karst
Karst is a topography formed from the dissolution of soluble rocks such as limestone, Dolomite (rock), dolomite, and gypsum. It is characterized by underground drainage systems with sinkholes and caves. It has also been documented for more weathe ...
(limestone
Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms w ...
rock, well-drained soil, and many caves) and granite
Granite () is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies un ...
(poorly drained soil).
Unique and protected creatures seldom found anywhere else in North America
North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and th ...
inhabit the thousands of islands along the Alaska coast. Five species of salmon
Salmon () is the common name for several commercially important species of euryhaline ray-finned fish from the family Salmonidae, which are native to tributaries of the North Atlantic (genus '' Salmo'') and North Pacific (genus '' Onco ...
, brown
Brown is a color. It can be considered a composite color, but it is mainly a darker shade of orange. In the CMYK color model used in printing or painting, brown is usually made by combining the colors orange and black. In the RGB color model ...
and black bears, and bald eagle
The bald eagle (''Haliaeetus leucocephalus'') is a bird of prey found in North America. A sea eagle, it has two known subspecies and forms a species pair with the white-tailed eagle (''Haliaeetus albicilla''), which occupies the same niche as ...
s abound throughout the forest. Other terrestrial animals include wolves
The wolf (''Canis lupus''; : wolves), also known as the gray wolf or grey wolf, is a large canine native to Eurasia and North America. More than thirty subspecies of ''Canis lupus'' have been recognized, and gray wolves, as popularly un ...
, mountain goats, ravens, and sitka black-tailed deer. Many migratory birds spend summer months nesting among the archipelago, notably the Arctic tern
The Arctic tern (''Sterna paradisaea'') is a tern in the family Laridae. This bird has a circumpolar breeding distribution covering the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions of Europe (as far south as Brittany), Asia, and North America (as far south ...
. Orca
The orca or killer whale (''Orcinus orca'') is a toothed whale belonging to the oceanic dolphin family, of which it is the largest member. It is the only extant species in the genus '' Orcinus'' and is recognizable by its black-and-white ...
and humpback whale
The humpback whale (''Megaptera novaeangliae'') is a species of baleen whale. It is a rorqual (a member of the family Balaenopteridae) and is the only species in the genus ''Megaptera''. Adults range in length from and weigh up to . The hu ...
s, sea lions, seals, sea otter
The sea otter (''Enhydra lutris'') is a marine mammal native to the coasts of the northern and eastern North Pacific Ocean. Adult sea otters typically weigh between , making them the heaviest members of the weasel family, but among the smal ...
s, river otters, and porpoise
Porpoises are a group of fully aquatic marine mammals, all of which are classified under the family Phocoenidae, parvorder Odontoceti (toothed whales). Although similar in appearance to dolphins, they are more closely related to narwhals a ...
s swim offshore. The Tongass is also home to steelhead and salmon. The Tongass is also the only place in the United States where the Haida ermine, a rare and endangered species of weasel
Weasels are mammals of the genus ''Mustela'' of the family Mustelidae. The genus ''Mustela'' includes the least weasels, polecats, stoats, ferrets and European mink. Members of this genus are small, active predators, with long and slend ...
, can be found; aside from here, the only other place on Earth where it is found is the Haida Gwaii archipelago in Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by to ...
. Of the three subspecies of the Haida ermine, one is found on Prince of Wales Island and the other is found on Suemez Island Suemez Island is located in the Alexander Archipelago of southeastern Alaska, United States. It resides in the west-central coast of Prince of Wales Island (Alaska), Prince of Wales Island. The northern tip of Dall Island lies to its southeast, whil ...
(both located within the Tongass), with the third being found on Haida Gwaii.
Though its land area is huge, about 40% of the Tongass is composed of wetlands, snow, ice, rock, and non-forest vegetation, while the remaining are forested. About are considered "productive old-growth", and of those are preserved as wilderness areas.[Tongass Forest Management FAQs]
(accessed 18 September 2008).
Historically, logging operations tended to concentrate on lower-elevation, bigger-tree ecosystems for harvesting; at present, approximately 78% of the land remains intact, i.e. out of original big-tree, low-elevation forest area. Given the high value of these areas for wildlife species, close to 70% of this old growth forest is protected in reserves and will never be eligible for harvest.[Tongass National Forest Land Management Plan Final EIS]
(PDF). (See tables 3.7-9 and 3.9-12. Accessed 18 September 2008).
Major disturbances in the Tongass National Forest include windfall and landslides. Local winter windstorms referred to as the "Takus" can affect the structure of some stands and often cause single-tree blow-downs.
Of all the old growth in the forest, no more than 11% of the remaining area will ever be harvested. Of the of "productive old-growth" in the forest, , or 12% of the total old-growth, are slated for harvest over the next 10 years.[ Current harvesting plans call for a phase-out of old-growth harvesting, to be replaced by rotation harvesting of managed second-growth forests.][Transition for Tongass]
The World Wildlife Fund
The World Wide Fund for Nature Inc. (WWF) is an international non-governmental organization founded in 1961 that works in the field of wilderness preservation and the reduction of human impact on the environment. It was formerly named the W ...
locates it in their Pacific temperate rain forest
The Pacific temperate rainforests of western North America is the largest temperate rain forest region on the planet as defined by the World Wildlife Fund (other definitions exist). The Pacific temperate rainforests lie along the western side of ...
'WWF ecoregion', a geographical area.
Wilderness areas
There are 19 designated wilderness areas within the Tongass National Forest, more than in any other national forest. They contain over of territory, also more than any other. From largest to smallest, they are:
* Misty Fjords National Monument Wilderness
Misty Fjords National Monument (or Misty Fiords National Monument) is a national monument and wilderness area administered by the U.S. Forest Service as part of the Tongass National Forest. Misty Fiords is about east of Ketchikan, Alaska, along ...
* Kootznoowoo Wilderness
* Tracy Arm-Fords Terror Wilderness
* Stikine-LeConte Wilderness
* Russell Fjord Wilderness
* South Baranof Wilderness
* West Chichagof-Yakobi Wilderness
The West Chichagof-Yakobi Wilderness is a federally designated wilderness. It encompasses in Southeastern Alaska, in the United States. It includes Yakobi Island and the entire western side of Chichagof Island, as well as the many small island ...
* Endicott River Wilderness
Endicott River Wilderness is a wilderness area in the U.S. state of Alaska. Designated by the United States Congress in 1980 in a provision of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, it is located within the Tongass National Forest ...
* South Prince of Wales Wilderness
* South Etolin Wilderness The South Etolin Wilderness is a wilderness area within the Tongass National Forest of Alaska. The designated wilderness encompasses 82,676 acres, including much of Etolin Island along with several smaller islands, all of which are part of the Alexa ...
* Chuck River Wilderness
* Tebenkof Bay Wilderness
__NOTOC__
The Kuiu Wilderness and Tebenkof Bay Wilderness are federally designated wilderness areas within the Tongass National Forest, located on Kuiu Island, Petersburg Census Area, Alaska. The Kuiu and Tebenkof Bay wildernesses are managed ...
* Kuiu Wilderness
__NOTOC__
The Kuiu Wilderness and Tebenkof Bay Wilderness are federally designated wilderness areas within the Tongass National Forest, located on Kuiu Island, Petersburg Census Area, Alaska. The Kuiu and Tebenkof Bay wildernesses are managed ...
* Petersburg Creek-Duncan Salt Chuck Wilderness
* Karta River Wilderness
* Pleasant/Lemesurier/Inian Islands Wilderness
* Coronation Island Wilderness
* Warren Island Wilderness
* Maurille Islands Wilderness
There are three other wilderness areas within the Alaska Panhandle region that are not part of the Tongass National Forest, but are administered by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service
The United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS or FWS) is an agency within the United States Department of the Interior dedicated to the management of fish, wildlife, and natural habitats. The mission of the agency is "working with othe ...
as part of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge. From largest to smallest they are the Forrester Island Wilderness
Forrester Island Wilderness is a wilderness area in the U.S. state of Alaska at Forrester Island (). It was designated by the United States Congress in 1970. It is part of the Gulf of Alaska unit of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge. ...
, the Saint Lazaria Wilderness
The Saint Lazaria Wilderness (formerly the Saint Lazaria National Wildlife Refuge) or St. Lazaria Island is a nesting bird colony located west of Sitka, Alaska and is a part of the Gulf of Alaska unit of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refu ...
, and the Hazy Islands Wilderness. Also in Southeast Alaska, but not in the Tongass National Forest, are the Glacier Bay Wilderness
A glacier (; ) is a persistent body of dense ice that is constantly moving under its own weight. A glacier forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation over many years, often centuries. It acquires distinguishing features, such as ...
and a small part of the Wrangell-Saint Elias Wilderness, which are both administered by the National Park Service
The National Park Service (NPS) is an agency of the United States federal government within the U.S. Department of the Interior that manages all national parks, most national monuments, and other natural, historical, and recreational properti ...
.
Recreation
The Tongass National Forest offers recreation opportunities, some of which are found only in Alaska. The forest has close to one million visitors each year. Most come by cruise ships arriving through the Inside Passage of Southeast Alaska. The Forest Service provides visitor programs at the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center in Juneau and the Southeast Alaska Discovery Center in Ketchikan. The Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center, built in 1962, was the first Forest Service visitor center in the nation. The forest interpretive program on the state ferries began in the summer of 1968, and was the longest-running naturalist program in the agency until ending in 2013.
Native inholdings
Native corporation lands are those designated by the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act
The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) was signed into law by President Richard Nixon on December 18, 1971, constituting at the time the largest land claims settlement in United States history. ANCSA was intended to resolve long-standing ...
of 1971 (ANCSA). This Act conveyed approximately of federal land in Alaska to private native corporations which were created under the ANCSA. of those lands were hand-picked old growth areas of the Tongass National Forest and are still surrounded by public National Forest land. These lands are now privately held and under the management of Sealaska Corporation
Sealaska Corporation is one of thirteen Alaska Native Regional Corporations created under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 (ANCSA) in settlement of aboriginal land claims. Sealaska was incorporated in Alaska on June 16, 1972.Corpor ...
, one of the native regional corporations created under the ANCSA.Transference of public National Forest land to a privately owned corporation removes it from protection by Federal law and allows the owners to use the land in whatever way they see fit without regard to the effects of the use on surrounding lands and ecosystems. This fact has caused much controversy involving the business interests of Native Regional Corporations and the personal interests of local Native and non-Native residents of Southeastern Alaska.
Currently Sealaska, a native regional corporation created under the ANCSA is asking for an amendment to the Act that would distribute additional land to Alaskan Natives. When Sealaska was created, it was promised additional land that was unavailable at the time due to contracts with pulp mills; much of this original land is now under water or in a watershed, and consequently Sealaska has requested different land. On 23 April 2009, Senator Murkowski and U.S. Rep. Don Young introduced a revised Sealaska bill (S. 881 and H.R 2099) that requests public lands that are both economically valuable and environmentally delicate. Starting with the next session of Congress in 2011, Senator Murkowski reintroduced a slightly modified version of the Sealaska Bill and Representative Don Young introduced a companion bill (S 730 and HR 1408). While HR 1408 was passed out of the Natural Resources Committee, S 730 remains in the Natural Resources Committee of the Senate.
Known as the Sealaska Lands Bill, the removal of 91,000 acres from the regulatory protections of the USFS and transfer of the land to Sealaska, a for profit corporation, created a huge controversy in South East Alaska.
A study released by Audubon Alaska on 22 February 2012 showed that the Sealaska selection of the largest trees in areas designated in S 730 and HR 1408 is 1200 percent greater than the occurrence of these trees in the Tongass as a whole.
There is strong opposition to passage of S 881 coming from seven communities in the Tongass, most on Prince of Wales Island. In addition, there are fears expressed by the Territorial Sportsmen that the northern goshawk
The northern goshawk (; ''Accipiter gentilis'') is a species of medium-large raptor in the family Accipitridae, a family which also includes other extant diurnal raptors, such as eagles, buzzards and harriers. As a species in the genus '' Acci ...
will be listed as endangered if the bill is passed. Similar concerns were expressed by the Alaska Outdoor Council in letters to Senators Murkowski and Begich and Governor Parnell.
See also
* Chugach National Forest
The Chugach National Forest is a United States National Forest in south central Alaska. Covering portions of Prince William Sound, the Kenai Peninsula and the Copper River Delta, it was formed in 1907 from part of a larger forest reserve. The C ...
* Climate change in Alaska and climate change in the Arctic
Major environmental issues caused by contemporary climate change in the Arctic region range from the well-known, such as the loss of sea ice or melting of the Greenland ice sheet, to more obscure, but deeply significant issues, such as perma ...
* '' Coeur Alaska, Inc. v. Southeast Alaska Conservation Council''
* Fort Tongass
Fort Tongass was a United States Army base on Tongass Island, in the southernmost Alaska Panhandle, located adjacent to the village of the group of Tlingit people on the east side of the island.
* Juneau Raptor Center
* Southeast Alaska Conservation Council
* Tongass Island
Tongass Island, historically also spelled Tongas Island, is an island in the southern Alaska Panhandle, near the marine boundary with Canada at 54–40 N. It was the site of Fort Tongass, which was established shortly after the Alaska Purchase as ...
* Tongass Passage
Citations
General references
* Rakestraw, Lawrence (1981). ''A History of the United States Forest Service in Alaska''. Copyright Lawrence Rakestraw. Printed by the USDA Forest Service in 1982, 1994, 2002. SD565R24, .
* Durbin, Kathie (1999). ''Tongass: Pulp Politics and the Fight for the Alaska Rain Forest''. Corvallis, Oregon: Oregon State University Press. .
* Ketchum, Robert Glenn (1987). ''The Tongass: Alaska's Vanishing Rain Forest: The Photographs of Robert Glenn Ketchum''. Text by Robert Glenn Ketchum and Carey D. Ketchum; introduction by Roderick Nash. New York, New York: Aperture Foundation. Distributed in the U.S. by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
* List, Peter C., ed. (2000). ''Environmental Ethics and Forestry: A Reader''. Environmental Ethics, Values, and Policy series. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Temple University Press. . .
* Gulick, Amy (2009). ''Salmon in the Trees: Life in Alaska's Tongass Rain Forest''. Written by Amy Gulick, Illustrated by Ray Troll. Published by Mountaineers Books.
External links
*
''A History of the U.S. Forest Service in Alaska''
Southeast Alaska Conservation Council
��coalition of local groups working to preserve the Tongass
��chronicler of the struggle to preserve the Tongass (book referenced above)
Temperate Rainforests of the North Pacific Coast
Audubon Alaska: Tongass National Forest
The National Forest Foundation's Conservation Plan for Tongass National Forest
Collection of photographs spanning the Tongass National Forest
{{Authority control
1907 establishments in Alaska
Civilian Conservation Corps in Alaska
Ketchikan, Alaska
National Forests of Alaska
Pacific temperate rainforests
Protected areas established in 1907
Protected areas of Haines Borough, Alaska
Protected areas of Hoonah–Angoon Census Area, Alaska
Protected areas of Juneau, Alaska
Protected areas of Ketchikan Gateway Borough, Alaska
Protected areas of Prince of Wales–Hyder Census Area, Alaska
Protected areas of Sitka, Alaska
Protected areas of Wrangell, Alaska
Protected areas of Yakutat City and Borough, Alaska
Tlingit