The Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska is the largest U.S. National Forest, covering 16.7 million acres (26,100 sq mi; 6,800,000 ha; 68,000 km). This area is larger than the combined size of 10 U.S. states and 75 U.N. member nations. Most of the forest is temperate rainforest, and its remote location supports many endangered and rare plant and animal species. The Tongass is managed by the United States Forest Service and includes islands in the Alexander Archipelago, fjords, glaciers, and mountain peaks in the Coast Mountains. The border between the United States and Canada (British Columbia) follows the top of the Boundary Ranges in the Coast Mountains. The forest is managed from Forest Service headquarters in Ketchikan. Local ranger offices are located in Craig, Hoonah, Juneau, Ketchikan, Petersburg, Sitka, Thorne Bay, Wrangell, and Yakutat.

History

The Alexander Archipelago Forest Reserve was created by President Theodore Roosevelt through a presidential proclamation on August 20, 1902. This reserve included Chichagof Island, Kupreanof Island, Kuiu Island, Zarembo Island, Prince of Wales Island, and nearby small islands. Another proclamation by Roosevelt on September 10, 1907, established the Tongass National Forest. On July 1, 1908, the two forests were combined, covering most of Southeast Alaska. Additional proclamations by Roosevelt on February 16, 1909, and June 10, 1925, by President Calvin Coolidge, expanded the Tongass. William Alexander Langille was an early supervisor of the forest.

On September 4, 1971, Alaska Airlines Flight 1866 crashed in the Tongass National Forest, killing all 111 people on board.

After the Tongass National Forest was created, the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska formed in 1935 to challenge the federal government’s claim to the land. In a court case called Tlingit and Haida Indians of Alaska v. United States, the court ruled that Alaska Natives had original rights to the land based on their long-term use and occupancy. The court also stated that the Alaska Treaty of Cessation between Russia and the United States did not end these rights, and that the creation of the Tongass was a taking of land from the Tlingit and Haida. The case was settled in 1968 with a $7.5 million payment, which valued the Tongass at about 43 cents per acre based on land prices in 1902.

Timber harvesting in Southeast Alaska began with small, individual operations in low-lying and beach areas until the 1950s. In the 1950s, the Forest Service signed long-term contracts with two pulp mills—Ketchikan Pulp Company and Alaska Pulp Company—to aid Japan’s recovery after World War II. These contracts were meant to last 50 years and support independent logging operations. However, the companies lowered log prices, drove out smaller businesses, and caused pollution. By the 1970s, nearly all timber sales in the Tongass were controlled by these two companies.

In 1974, the Point Baker Association, led by Alan Stein, Chuck Zieske, and Herb Zieske, challenged the Ketchikan Pulp Company’s contract for 800,000 acres of old-growth forest on Prince of Wales Island. In 1975 and 1976, a federal judge ruled in their favor, stopping clearcutting of over 150 square miles of the island. This case threatened to halt clearcutting nationwide. In 1976, Congress removed the ruling in the National Forest Management Act. By the mid-1990s, more than half of the old-growth timber in the area had been removed.

The fight to protect salmon streams from logging, which began in the Zieske v. Butz lawsuit, continued through public comments on the Forest Service’s Environmental Impact Statements in 1979, 1988, and later years. In 1990, a federal court in Alaska ruled in Stein v. Barton that the Forest Service must protect all salmon streams with buffer strips. One part of this ruling led to the Tongass Timber Reform Act, which allowed some logging but left valuable forest areas near salmon streams untouched.

The power of the pulp companies came from their long-term contracts, which guaranteed low prices for timber. In some cases, trees were sold for less than the cost of a hamburger.

The Tongass Timber Reform Act of 1990 changed how logging operated in the Tongass. It ended a $40 million annual subsidy for timber harvests, created new wilderness areas, and required environmental reviews for old-growth logging. The Ketchikan Pulp Company and Alaska Pulp Company claimed the new rules made them uncompetitive and closed their mills in 1993 and 1997. The Forest Service then canceled the remaining parts of their 50-year contracts.

In 2003, a law required that all timber sales in the Tongass must be “positive sales,” meaning the government could not sell timber for less than its market value. However, the Forest Service still spends money on planning and administrative work for these sales, leading to overall losses. Since 1980, one analysis suggests the Forest Service has lost over $1 billion in Tongass timber sales. Logging is not the only program with financial losses; the Forest Service also operates other programs, like trail and campground maintenance, at a deficit.

High-grading, or logging the most valuable trees first, has been common in the Tongass. For example, volume class 7 forests, which have the largest trees, originally made up 4% of the Tongass but over two-thirds of them have been logged. Other high-grading focused on Alaska cedar and red cedar trees. Karst terrain, which produces large trees and has fewer wetlands, has also been heavily logged.

In July 2021, the Biden administration announced an end to large-scale old-growth timber sales in the Tongass, reversing a Trump administration decision. The focus will now be on forest restoration, recreation, and other non-commercial uses. Smaller timber sales, including some old-growth trees for cultural uses by local communities, will still be allowed.

The most controversial logging in the Tongass has involved roadless areas. Southeast Alaska’s communities are spread across islands, and roads were built to support logging. These roads now connect communities and provide access to recreation, hunting, and fishing. However, opponents argue that building new roads in wilderness areas would harm wildlife and salmon streams. They believe existing roads are enough.

The Tongass National Forest was included in the Roadless Initiative, passed in January 2001, which prevented new roads from being built in roadless areas.

Description

The U.S. Forest Service calls the Tongass the "crown jewel" because it covers 17 million acres of land and is the largest National Forest in Alaska. The Alaska Wilderness League says the Tongass is "one of the last remaining intact temperate rainforests in the world." About 70,000 people live in the area. For many years, the timber industry was the main source of income, but now the region earns money through activities like recreation, subsistence food, salmon fishing, scientific research, and carbon sequestration, which adds more than $2 billion each year. Tourism in the Tongass National Forest supports over 10,000 jobs, and about 10% of these jobs are related to fishing.

Three Alaska Native nations live in Southeast Alaska: the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian. There are 31 communities within the forest, and the largest is Juneau, the state capital, which has a population of 31,000. The forest is named after the Tongass group of the Tlingit people, who lived in the southern parts 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, known as the Great Bear Rainforest, the Tongass is part of a special type of rainforest called the "perhumid rainforest zone." The forest is mainly made up of western red cedar, Sitka spruce, and western hemlock. The Tongass is Earth's largest remaining temperate rainforest. The land under the forest is divided into two types: karst, which includes limestone rock, well-drained soil, and many caves, and granite, which has poorly drained soil.

The Tongass is home to many unique and protected animals that are rarely found elsewhere in North America. These include five types of salmon, brown and black bears, and bald eagles. Other land animals found in the area are wolves, mountain goats, ravens, and Sitka black-tailed deer. Many migratory birds nest in the islands during the summer, including the Arctic tern. Offshore, orcas and humpback whales, sea lions, seals, sea otters, river otters, and porpoises live in the waters. The Tongass also supports steelhead and salmon. The Haida ermine, a rare and endangered type of weasel, is found only in the Tongass and the Haida Gwaii archipelago in Canada. Of the three subspecies of the Haida ermine, one lives on Prince of Wales Island, another on Suemez Island (both within the Tongass), and the third on Haida Gwaii.

Although the Tongass has a large land area, about 40% of it is covered by wetlands, snow, ice, rock, and non-forest plants. The remaining 10 million acres (40,000 km²) are forested. Of these, about 5 million acres (20,000 km²) are considered "productive old-growth" forests, and 4.5 million acres (18,000 km²) are protected as wilderness areas.

Historically, logging focused on lower-elevation areas with large trees. Today, about 78% of the land remains undisturbed, meaning 383,000 acres (1,550 km²) of the original 491,000 acres (1,990 km²) of low-elevation, big-tree forests remain intact. Because these areas are important for wildlife, nearly 70% of the old-growth forest is protected and will never be logged.

Major changes to the Tongass National Forest include windfall and landslides. Winter windstorms, called "Takus," can damage tree stands and cause single trees to fall.

Of the old-growth forest, no more than 11% will ever be harvested. Of the 5.7 million acres (23,000 km²) of productive old-growth, 676,000 acres (2,740 km²), or 12% of the total, are planned for logging over the next 10 years. Current plans aim to stop logging old-growth forests and instead use managed second-growth forests for future harvesting.

The World Wildlife Fund classifies the Tongass as part of the Pacific temperate rainforest ecoregion.

There are 19 designated wilderness areas within the Tongass National Forest, more than in any other national forest. These areas cover over 5.75 million acres (23,300 km²), the largest total of any national forest. From largest to smallest, they are:

Three other wilderness areas in the Alaska Panhandle are not part of the Tongass National Forest but are managed by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service as part of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge. These are the Forrester Island Wilderness, the Saint Lazaria Wilderness, and the Hazy Islands Wilderness. In Southeast Alaska, but outside the Tongass, are the Glacier Bay Wilderness and a small part of the Wrangell-Saint Elias Wilderness. These areas are managed by the National Park Service.

Recreation

The Tongass National Forest provides recreation opportunities, some of which are unique to Alaska. The forest receives nearly one million visitors each year. Most visitors arrive by cruise ships traveling through the Inside Passage of Southeast Alaska. The Forest Service offers 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 United States. An educational program on state ferries began in the summer of 1968 and was the longest-running educational program in the agency until it ended in 2013.

Native inholdings

Native corporation lands are those set aside by the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 (ANCSA). This law gave about 44 million acres of federal land in Alaska to private native corporations created under the ANCSA. Of these lands, 632,000 acres were selected old-growth areas from the Tongass National Forest and remain surrounded by public National Forest land. These lands are now privately owned and managed by Sealaska Corporation, one of the native regional corporations formed under the ANCSA.

When public National Forest land is transferred to a private corporation, it is no longer protected by federal laws. This allows the owners to use the land in any way they choose, without considering how their use might affect nearby lands or ecosystems. This situation has caused controversy between the business goals of Native Regional Corporations and the interests of local Native and non-Native residents in Southeastern Alaska.

Currently, Sealaska, a native regional corporation created under the ANCSA, is asking for changes to the ANCSA to receive more land. When Sealaska was formed, it was promised additional land that was not available at the time because of contracts with pulp mills. Much of the original land is now underwater or part of a watershed, so Sealaska has requested different land. On April 23, 2009, Senator Murkowski and U.S. Representative Don Young introduced a revised Sealaska bill (S. 881 and H.R. 2099) that requested public lands valuable for business and important for the environment. In 2011, Senator Murkowski reintroduced a slightly changed version of the bill (S. 730), and Representative Don Young introduced a matching bill (H.R. 1408). While H.R. 1408 passed from the Natural Resources Committee, S. 730 remains in the Senate’s Natural Resources Committee.

Known as the Sealaska Lands Bill, the removal of 91,000 acres from federal protection and the transfer of this land to Sealaska, a for-profit corporation, caused significant controversy in Southeast Alaska.

A study by Audubon Alaska, released on February 22, 2012, found that the largest trees in areas designated in S. 730 and H.R. 1408 are 1,200% more common than in the Tongass National Forest as a whole.

Many people in seven communities in the Tongass, mostly on Prince of Wales Island, oppose the passage of S. 881. The Territorial Sportsmen also worry that the northern goshawk might be listed as endangered if the bill is approved. Similar concerns were shared by the Alaska Outdoor Council in letters to Senators Murkowski and Begich and Governor Parnell.

General references

• Rakestraw, Lawrence (1981). A History of the United States Forest Service in Alaska. Copyright by Lawrence Rakestraw. Printed by the USDA Forest Service in 1982, 1994, and 2002. SD565R24, LCCN 82-620020.
• Durbin, Kathie (1999). Tongass: Pulp Politics and the Fight for the Alaska Rain Forest. Corvallis, Oregon: Oregon State University Press. ISBN 0-87071-466-X.
• 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. Part of the Environmental Ethics, Values, and Policy series. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Temple University Press. ISBN 1-56639-784-7. ISBN 1-56639-785-5.
• 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. ISBN 978-1-59485-091-2.