The largest remaining temperate rainforest in the world is in Alaska, stretching over 1000 miles of coastline. Most of it lies within the 22 million acres of the Tongass and Chugach National Forests.
The Tongass
The Tongass has suffered mightily from destructive logging. Most of the Tongass's biggest and best trees have already fallen to clearcutting. Over the last 50 years, logging has destroyed the wilderness values on approximately a million acres of this forest. Nearly half of the total area affected was federal public land, while the other half consisted of state and native corporation land.
The Tongass supports healthy populations of brown bears, wolves, bald eagles, wolverine, and northern goshawks and offers vital habitat for many others species of wildlife and fish.
The Chugach
The Chugach National Forest, at 5.5 million acres is the nation's second largest and may very well be its wildest. All but about two percent of the Chugach is roadless, but there is not a single acre of designated wilderness on the forest.
Home to wolves, grizzly bears, sea otters, orcas and other sensitive wildlife species, the Chugach includes tidewater glaciers, towering mountain peaks and some of the richest salmon spawning streams in America. This forest includes the Kenai Peninsula, Prince William Sound, and the Copper River Delta. Its priceless ecological and recreational resources deserve permanent protection.
Threats and the Answer: Wilderness
Continued logging and road building, growing off-road vehicle use and other development jeopardize the rich and rare diversity of these two forests. The Forest Service is busy planning upwards of 50 separate timber sales on the Tongass.
These wild forests are of special importance to wildlife, fish and local communities. The Wilderness Society strongly supports their permanent protection and is working in the 109th Congress to that end.
Protecting our rainforests in Alaska also protects the unique Alaskan way of life. Thousands of Alaskans depend upon the bounty of the rainforest to put food on their tables through subsistence hunting and fishing. The rainforest region is also the home of a number of Alaskan Native communities whose history and culture are intricately interwoven with the land.
America's wild places are disappearing. But we have a unique opportunity to protect the magnificent coastal rainforest of Alaska while it remains largely intact and wild.
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