At nearly 17 million acres, the Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska is our country’s largest and most unique national forest. This magnificent landscape of western hemlock, Sitka spruce, western red cedar and yellow cedar trees is part of the world’s largest remaining intact temperate rain forest – and hosts some of the rarest ecosystems on the planet. The Tongass comprises thousands of mist-covered islands, deep fjords, tidewater glaciers and soggy muskegs that provide ideal habitat for a vast array of wild plant and animal species, including healthy salmon and trout populations. According to the U.S. Forest Service, the Tongass includes roughly 17,000 miles of clean, undammed creeks, rivers and lakes that provide optimal spawning and rearing conditions for the region’s copious wild Pacific salmon and trout. Each year, abundant wild salmon runs return from the ocean to Tongass streams to spawn and die. In this process, these fish bring nutrients from the productive North Pacific Ocean to the much less nutrient-rich land. Because Tongass ecosystems are sustained by the annual salmon returns, the Tongass is literally a “salmon forest.”

The Tongass hosts the highest density of brown bears in North America as well as healthy numbers of animals as diverse as Bald eagles, Sitka black-tailed deer, humpback whales, porpoises, seals, sea otters, wolves, sandhill cranes, hummingbirds and many other species. Admiralty Island – also called Kootznoowoo or “Fortress of the Bears” in Tlingit– is home to more brown bears than all of those in the Lower 48 combined.
In addition to being home to the state capital in Juneau, the Tongass  is also a world-class tourist destination for cruise ships and independent travelers.  In 2010, 1.26 million passengers arrived in Juneau by airplane, cruise ship, or ferry, according to the Juneau Economic Development Council. Learn more.
“The Tongass is America’s salmon forest and one of the few places in the world where wild salmon and trout still thrive. Some 65 percent of  Tongass salmon and trout habitat is not Congressionally protected at the watershed scale, and is currently open to development activities that could harm fish.
It’s time for Congress to better protect the richest resource of the Tongass: wild salmon.”

Mark Kaelke, Former SE AK Program Director
Trout Unlimited, Alaska Program
Click to learn more about what's at stake in Southeast Alaska's Tongass National Forest