A Journey to Alaska’s Tongass, Where Our Last Old-Growth Temperate Forest Meets the Sea
The 17-million-acre Tongass National Forest sustains both the wildlife within it and the rich ecosystem along its shores. So why would anyone want to clear-cut this place?
BY JEFF FAIR
Published: March-April 2014
Rain. Not heavy, but constant. Thick, low overcast glued to the ground. Flight-canceling weather for bush pilots. Alaska, they say, is the land that changes your plans. But photographer Eirik Johnson and I finally lifted off a day late and under marginal clearing on the 25-minute flight west from Juneau to the village of Gustavus, population 437, near the mouth of Glacier Bay. There are no roads to Gustavus.
From our Piper Cherokee we gazed 2,000 feet down on tall woodland, mist, sea, and mountain--the coastal temperate rainforest. Thick, luxurious coniferous trees like a deeply piled carpet, lofted here and there into steep ridges and separated by tidewater rippled like hammered pewter. Occasionally we saw a fishing boat arrowed by its wake or a camp near a break in the rocky shoreline. Now and then there was a clearcut, lighter green in second growth. But mostly just the wild, dark-emerald, pointy-timbered wilderness, a huge expanse of ruggedness and productivity. And everywhere, down through the deep coniferous mat, little streams twinkled like veins of tinsel.
This was just a small portion of the Tongass National Forest. At 16.8 million acres, it's America's largest woodland, containing 30 percent of the remaining temperate rainforest on earth. The Tongass covers most of southeast Alaska, and its major inholding is 3.3-million-acre Glacier Bay National Park.
We came here in July to witness an ecological spectacle . . . .
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