Where is the largest temperate rain forest?
The largest unbroken temperate rain forest in the world is the Tongass in southeast Alaska. It is 17 million acres of magnificent wilderness with abundant birds, bears, and other life. How wild is it? Surrounded by the Tongass, the city of Juneau (Alaska’s capital) is accessible by ferries or by air, but not by roads. The Tongass was extensively logged until the early 1990s, when the lumber mills began to shut down. Today, almost the entire region is protected from further development or exploitation, and many groups act to further that protection. Temperate rain forests (those outside the tropics) look different than tropical rain forests. Dominated by coniferous trees, they grow more slowly but have a larger biomass (total mass of living matter) than tropical rain forests.
