Tongass National Forest
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| Tongass National Forest | |
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| IUCN Category VI (Managed Resource Protected Area) | |
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| Location | Alaska, U.S.[1] |
| Coordinates | |
| Area | 17 million acres (69,000 km²) |
| Established | September 10, 1907 |
| Governing body | U.S. Forest Service |
At 17 million acres (69,000 km²), the Tongass National Forest (IPA: /ˈtɑŋgəs/) in southeastern Alaska is the largest national forest in the United States. It is a temperate rain forest within the Pacific temperate rain forest zone, and is remote enough to be home to many species of endangered and rare flora and fauna. Tongass encompasses islands of the Alexander Archipelago, fjords, glaciers, and peaks of the Coastal Range mountains. An international border with Canada (British Columbia) runs along the crest of the Boundary Ranges of the Coast Mountains (see also: Alaska boundary dispute).
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[edit] History
The Alexander Archipelago Forest Reserve was established by Theodore Roosevelt 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, with the combined forest area encompassing most of southeast Alaska. Further presidential proclamations of 16 February 1909 (in the last months of the Roosevelt administration) and 10 June, and in 1925 (by Calvin Coolidge) expanded the National Forest. An early supervisor of the forest was William Alexander Langille.[2]
[edit] Description
The Tongass National Forest is home to about 75,000 people who are dependent on the land for their livelihoods. Several Alaska Native tribes live throughout Southeast Alaska, such as the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian. 31 communities are located within the forest; the largest is Juneau, 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 the Alaska panhandle near what is now Ketchikan.
[edit] Ecology
Along with British Columbia's Great Bear Rainforest, Tongass is part of the "perhumid rainforest zone," and the forest is primarily made up of western red cedar, sitka spruce, and western hemlock. Tongass is Earth's largest remaining temperate rainforest[3]
Unique and protected features seldom found anywhere else in North America inhabit the thousands of islands along the Alaska coast. Five species of salmon, brown and black bear, and Bald eagles abound throughout the forest.
Though its land area is huge, two thirds of the Tongass is not actually forest, but snow, ice, rock, and non-forest vegetation. The terrain underlying Tongass is divided between karst (limestone rock, well-drained soil, and many caves), and granite (poorly-drained soil). Only 4 percent of Tongass is the low-elevation old growth forest that is both essential for wildlife and the timber industry. Over half of this area has been logged.
[edit] Logging
In the 1950s, in part to aid in Japanese recovery from World War II, the Forest Service set up long-term contracts with two pulp mills: the Ketchikan Pulp Company and the Alaska Pulp Company. These contracts lasted 50 years, and essentially divided up the land into areas slated for APC or KPC logs. These 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. The long-term 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." Since 1980, the forest service has lost over a billion dollars in Tongass timber sales.[4] Under the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, 500,000 acres (2,020 km²) of the Tongass were selected by native corporations, and most of the areas have been clearcut.[4].
About 70% of the old growth trees in Tongass have been logged. The karst terrain produces much larger trees and fewer muskeg bogs, and has been preferentially logged.[4]
The most controversial logging in the Tongass has involved the roadless areas. The Tongass National Forest was included in the Roadless Initiative passed on 5 January 2001, during the last days of the Bill Clinton Administration, and the initiative prevented the construction of new roads in currently roadless areas of United States national forests.
However, several governors of western states soon joined forces with the timber industry to overturn the roadless policy. The George W. Bush Administration has declined to defend the policy in the courts and the U.S. Forest Service has largely exempted the Tongass from roadless protections.[5]
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, and it is currently unclear what the fate of its vast roadless areas will be.
As of 2007, the forest service has released a new draft plan for the Tongass Forest. In June 2007, U.S. House members added an amendment 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. 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."[3]
[edit] Notes
- ^ The given coordinates are for one representative location in the forest near Petersburg, listed in the USGS GNIS. The forest extends from roughly 55 N, 130 W at the southern tip of Alaska to roughly 60 N, 140 W at Yakutat Bay. See the map below.
- ^ Indian River protection (accessed 2007-04-12).
- ^ a b U.S. House Boosts Spending for Environment, Conservation
- ^ a b c Temperate Rainforests of the North Pacific Coast (accessed 2007-05-16).
- ^ The Tongass: America's Largest National Forest (accessed 2007-04-12).
[edit] References
- Durbin, Kathie (1999). Tongass: Pulp Politics and the Fight for the Alaska Rain Forest. Corvallis, Oregon: Oregon State University Press. ISBN 087071466X.
- 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. ISBN 1566397847. ISBN 1566397855.
[edit] External links
- U.S. Forest Service - Tongass National Forest
- Tongass Conservation Society
- Southeast Alaska Conservation Council - coalition of local groups working to preserve the Tongass
- Temperate Rainforests of the North Pacific Coast
- Tongass National Forest page from Alaska Wilderness League site
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