Alaskas old growth gamble: will the Tongass National Forest lose its wildlife in clearcuts?
There is still one pocket of the original Northwest remaining: It extends 500 miles in a green strip along Alaska’s southeast coast. Every summer, cruise ships weave through the Inside Passage past hundreds of forested islands and a green coastline that rises abruptly into rugged glaciers, mountains and ice fields. At 17 million acres, the Tongass is the country’s largest national forest, roughly equal in size to the state of West Virginia. The big ships dock in Juneau, Ketchikan and Sitka for tourists to browse in knickknack shops full of miniature totem poles, seal furs and canned salmon. But few tourists go into the forests along the coast and on the islands where giant spruce, hemlock and cedar trees shelter grizzly bear, gray wolf, river otter, Queen Charlotte goshawk and other unique wildlife species. Thousands of tiny streams finger down from the mountains and glaciers, and one might still walk across the slippery backs of the coho, humpback, sockeye and king salmon in the narro
