On our continent’s shimmering western edge, lies a mist-shrouded place of emerald islands with towering ancient spruce, rugged mountains, abundant wildlife, and fast-running rivers bursting with fish. It is our Tongass National Forest – America’s rainforest in southeast Alaska. It is a place where we do not have to talk about how things used to be, but can appreciate what we have today.

At 17 million acres, the Tongass is America’s largest national forest. It still brims with the incredible bounty it has harbored for thousands of years. Rising majestically from the deep, clear waters of Alaska’s Inside Passage, this is a land of huge bears grown fat on salmon, eagles soaring the endless skies, and 500-year-old trees standing silent sentry over a rich and verdant world. It is a rare place where southeast Alaskans live off the lands and waters and where visitors and locals alike can still travel over timeless glaciers, fish in pristine streams, or find solace at a remote cabin, immersed in the breath-taking beauty of wild Alaska.

Despite being impacted in the past by unsustainable old-growth logging practices within sensitive and essential salmon and wildlife habitat, the Tongass continues to contain extraordinary values found few places else on earth. It is one of the earth’s last places where the delicate balance between land, water, wildlife, and human is sound.

We can make decisions about America’s rainforest that we can be proud of—balanced decisions which allow us to continue to experience and use the rainforest and its resources, without losing them.