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The Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska is our nation’s largest national forest. Nearly 17 million acres in size, it encompasses the largest intact temperate rainforest on earth. Stretching 500 miles north-to-south, the Tongass includes a thousand islands, countless streams, glacial fjords and lush valleys backing into spectacularly rugged mountains, and sprawling forests of majestic, old-growth cedar, spruce, and hemlock trees. The Tongass also has abundant fish and wildlife, including all five species of Pacific salmon, brown (grizzly) bears, wolves, Sitka black-tailed deer, Bald Eagles, Northern Goshawks, and Marbled Murrelets.

Photo Gallery of the Tongass
Audubon at Work in the Tongass
Map of Conservation Design
What’s Next
What You Can Do
Read More

© John Schoen

Logging over the last century, however, is changing the Tongass, targeting especially the rare, big-tree, old-growth forest stands. While only about 11 percent of Alaska's rainforest has been clearcut to date, more than half of the highest value, old-growth stands have already been cut. Yet these same, productive stands are also the most important for fish, wildlife, and ecosystem integrity.

While the Tongass still boasts healthy populations of fish and wildlife, its most important places are now at risk.

Today, conservation of the Tongass is at a critical juncture as the U.S. Forest Service revises its current Tongass Land Management Plan as ordered by federal court. Millions of acres of temperate rainforest are on the line. This is the greatest opportunity in the nation, if not the world, for protecting temperate rainforest at the ecosystem scale.

Audubon at Work in the Tongass

In partnership with The Nature Conservancy, and with the input from dozens of scientists, local residents, and resource managers, we have studied, analyzed, mapped, and described the coastal forests and mountains of Southeast Alaska to identify the most significant areas of highest ecological value in the region.

Read our conservation assessment, available online here, or download the executive summary here (2MB, PDF format, 6 pages).

Using the best science available, Audubon Alaska and The Nature Conservancy have devised a place-based approach to protect and/or restore the most significant places within the Tongass. If we are to ensure the integrity of the Tongass ecosystem—and the fish, wildlife, and people that depend on it—we must protect places like the Cleveland Peninsula, Honker Divide, Port Houghton, and the west side of Tenakee Inlet on Chichagof Island, to name a few.

The assessment also identifies some places where both careful timber management and conservation could occur—indeed, some places where selective cutting would increase wildlife values by creating gaps and age variances in the forest canopy of second-growth stands.

Map of Conservation Design

Click here for larger view of map.
Click here for more maps of the Tongass.

What’s Next

© John Schoen

Tongass Land Management Plan: More than one year ago, a federal court ordered the U.S. Forest Service to revise its 1997 Tongass Land Management Plan because the Service had over-estimated market demand—an error that would have opened up many of the Tongass’ roadless watersheds for logging. Audubon Alaska submitted 55 pages of comments to the U.S. Forest Service on their draft revision. The U.S. Forest Service is expected to release its Second Environmental Impact Statement and Record of Decision in the coming months. Audubon Alaska will work closely with its conservation partners to promote the protection of the most significant places within the forest.

Tongass Futures Roundtable: Audubon Alaska serves as a conservation representative on the Tongass Futures Roundtable, a diverse group of stakeholders working together to achieve a long-term balance of healthy and diverse communities, vibrant economies, and responsible use of resources—including timber—while maintaining the natural values and ecological integrity of the forest. The Roundtable includes representatives from conservation, the timber industry, commercial fishing, tourism, tribes, southeastern Alaska communities, U.S. Forest Service, Alaska Fish and Game, and others. At the April 2007 meeting, conservation organizations, the timber industry, and the U.S. Forest Service agreed to work collaboratively on timber sales in previously roaded areas. The idea is to offer suggestions to improve timber sale economics while protecting fish and wildlife habitats and resources. In the interim, a subgroup is working to evaluate the possibility of a one-year time-out for new timber sales in undeveloped roadless areas on the Tongass on a trial basis.

What You Can Do

Join the Audubon Action Alert Network to receive periodic email alerts on urgent Tongass, Alaska, and national conservation issues as they arise. Click here to sign up or click here for more information.

Donate Online now to Audubon Alaska to support our science-based conservation work in the Tongass.

Write to your Congressman/woman to urge him/her to protect the Tongass National Forest.

Suggested text: “I am writing to voice my support for the protection of the old-growth forests of the Tongass National Forest. The Tongass is our nation’s largest national forest and one of the most significant old-growth temperate rainforests on earth. It is an important haven for productive populations of fish and wildlife that are rare or threatened elsewhere, and it is our last chance to protect the temperate rainforest at the ecosystem scale. Subsidized logging in the Tongass has cost American taxpayers nearly $1 billion dollars since 1982. I urge you to eliminate taxpayer subsidies on new roads in the Tongass, support a transition from old-growth timber harvest to second-growth harvest, and protect the spectacular American treasure that is the Tongass National Forest.”

Find the contact information for your Congressman/woman here by typing in your zip code.

Read More

The Tongass National Forest and Audubon Alaska are featured in the July 2007 issue of National Geographic magazine. Click here to read the article online.

Click here to read a conservation assessment and resource synthesis for the Tongass National Forest, which was created by Audubon Alaska in partnership with The Nature Conservancy.

Download the executive summary of the conservation assessment by clicking here (2MB, PDF format, 6 pages).