Rainforest Campaign
Protect America’s Rainforest in Alaska
Beautiful, lush, and remote, America’s rainforest in Alaska scribes a thousand-mile arc along the Pacific coast between the communities of Ketchikan and Kodiak. Along the rocky fjords of the southcentral coast and inside passage of the southeast panhandle of Alaska is a land of rock, ice, and breathtaking islands blanketed in ancient, old growth forest. It is home to the world’s healthiest remaining populations of wild salmon, grizzly bears and bald eagles. It is also home to diverse coastal towns and communities that depend on the forest’s resources for their quality and way of life.
The region is an internationally significant reservoir of biodiversity and wildness containing the largest intact, coastal temperate rainforest in the world. Temperate rainforests, one of the rarest and most biologically productive ecosystems on Earth, exist in only a few places including the coasts of New Zealand, Tasmania, Patagonia and western North America. North America’s Pacific Northwest coast once harbored the largest single temperate rainforest on Earth, spanning over 3,000 miles from California’s redwoods to Alaska’s Sitka spruce.
Extensive logging has already destroyed half the ancient temperate rainforests, including up to 95 percent of the North American rainforest in its southern reaches including the United States’ Pacific Northwest coast. What remains of this rainforest in Alaska represents over 40 percent of the world’s old-growth temperate coastal rainforest. More than 90 percent of this unique ecosystem is in public ownership and lies within the Tongass and Chugach National Forests, our country’s two largest national forests.
Alaska Wilderness League is at the forefront of the movement to gain permanent protection of intact watersheds with important biological, social and other values throughout the Tongass National Forest and Chugach National Forests. We are also engaged actively in defensive battles to protect wilderness quality lands in the Tongass and Chugach National Forests from clearcut logging and other harmful development.
