America's Salmon Forest
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Blog

We want to hear from you!

10/26/2021

 
Our team has been diligently working to support healthy fish and wildlife habitat throughout the Tongass this year. As you likely heard, earlier this year the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced its new Southeast Alaska Sustainability Strategy, marking an end to more than seven decades of unsustainable and costly old-growth clear-cut logging on the Tongass. 

Stay tuned for an upcoming comment period from the USDA to reinstate the Roadless Rule on the Tongass!

Until then, we need your help! We are collecting and curating content from our supporters to share on social media platforms throughout the coming months. 
We want to know: 
Why you love the Tongass,
What the Tongass means to you,
and What you love to do on the Tongass!
 
Interested in helping?! 🐟
​If so, please send directly to Kayla. We are hoping to collect photos, short video clips (cell phone recordings are fine!), and/or a few sentences from supporters like you by November 10th. 
You don't need to live in the Tongass, and if you haven't ever visited, that's fine too. You still care about the Tongass, the fish and wildlife values, and we'd still love to hear from you!

If you have any questions, please let Kayla know. We look forward to seeing what fun stuff you all have to say about the Tongass!
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Southeast Alaska Community Leader Recognized for Outstanding Contributions to Fish Conservation

5/19/2021

 
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Learn more about SEAKFHP
​Southeast Alaska is a massive and unique landscape surrounded by ocean and ice fields and dotted with vibrant communities. Communities across Southeast Alaska share a deep-rooted relationship with productive fish habitat. At the recent American Fisheries Society meeting, local Southeast Alaska resident and coordinator of the Southeast Alaska Fish Habitat Partnership, Debbie Hart, received a well-deserved Award of Special Recognition for her fantastic contributions to help organize film festivals at Western Division and the American Fisheries Society meetings over the last 5+ years, with films highlighting great aquatic conservation stories.  
For those of you who are not familiar with Debbie’s work (and that of the Fish Habitat Partnership), these groups work to ensure healthy, thriving fish habitats throughout Alaska that support salmon, steelhead and other anadromous fish.

While overall salmon and other fishery populations remain strong in Southeast Alaska, localized declines and areas facing habitat degradation spurring the formation of the Southeast Alaska Fish Habitat Partnership (SEAKFHP) in the spring of 2014.
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The Southeast Alaska Fish Habitat Partnership strives to support cooperative fish habitat conservation and management in Southeast Alaska. In the past, most fish habitat conservation and restoration efforts in the region have been conducted unilaterally by large government organizations such as the U.S. Forest Service or through small collaborative efforts with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working with agency partners.  The Partnership brings people together to do more good work for the region’s fisheries.

Trout Unlimited is a proud supporter of the Southeast Alaska Fish Habitat Partnership, and the critical role they play in bringing together local communities, governments, tribes, landowners, businesses, and non-profits throughout the region to help fish habitat.  

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Debbie has played a key role in forming the partnership and facilitating some really fantastic programs under Debbie’s five years of leadership. SEAKFHP has successfully organized and helped fund projects throughout Southeast Alaska, organized film festivals, meetings, and highlighted aquatic conservation stories.
Join us in congratulating Debbie on her great success and her continued support of healthy fish habitat throughout Southeast Alaska! ​
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Repealing the Roadless Rule Makes no Sense

10/26/2020

 
by Austin Williams, Trout Unlimited Alaska's Director of Law and Policy
As early as this week, the U.S. Forest Service will announce it is exempting the Tongass National Forest from the Roadless Rule, and in the process removing protections for more than 9 million acres of the nation’s top salmon-producing forest.  This will be the latest effort by politicians catering to a failing old-growth logging industry that refuses to adapt to the changing global economy, fails to recognize the Tongass is much more valuable for its wild salmon than as a source of timber for foreign markets, and that persists only because of massive government subsidy.
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With any luck, this short-sighted decision won’t be on the books for long.
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​My introduction to the Tongass was as a Forest Service employee on Prince of Wales Island—where industrial logging’s heyday was its most intense and most severe.  I’ve slogged through more than my fair share of clear cuts—where logging stretched onto such steep slopes it caused landslides that caved into and smothered salmon spawning streams, where roads were constructed and maintained so haphazardly they diverted entire streams out of their natural channel, and where once-cut landscapes grew back with stunted trees so dense the forest was entirely uninhabitable for wildlife like deer.  One memorable logging road I surveyed was so derelict it failed to have a single functioning culvert despite crossing numerous salmon streams.  
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These examples are not extraordinary or a thing of the past.  As of March of this year, more than 1,100 bridges and culverts across fish streams on the Tongass failed to meet state or federal standards for fish migration.  These failed bridges and culverts impede fish access to nearly 250 miles of salmon and trout streams. 
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Yet, despite the spiderweb of tangled roads crisscrossing the landscape, causing erosion and sedimentation that clogs salmon streams, blocking fish migration, and costing taxpayers many millions annually to construct and maintain, this upcoming decision sets the stage to prolong and extend the mess into some of the few remaining unspoiled landscapes in southeast Alaska.
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Take Action
More than 96% of public comments on this proposed decision favored keeping the roadless rule in place.  See Page 2.  In some Alaska communities, every single comment submitted to the Forest Service wanted roadless areas protected.  Tribes, small business owners, hunters and anglers, subsistence users, scientists, and people from all walks of life spoke up in favor of fish, wildlife, beautiful scenery, and for putting an end to unsustainable clear-cut logging of our best remaining old-growth forest. 
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Recognizing how unpopular clear-cut logging of old-growth forest has become, some individuals have taken to claiming this decision isn’t about logging at all.  Don’t buy what they’re selling.  
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America's Salmon Forest

5/21/2020

0 Comments

 
Video by Rafe Hanson
The Tongass National Forest is the largest national forest in the United States. Throughout the Tongass, there is one major theme: salmon.

From driving the jobs and industry in Southeast Alaska, to providing recreation opportunities for communities and travelers. The Tongass is America’s Salmon Forest.  The watersheds that make up the Tongass are wild and their habitats are extremely valuable for these reasons. In order for them to continue to provide for the people of Alaska and its visitors, we need to conserve them for generations to come.

In collaboration with Sitka-based artist, Rafe Hanson, this video offers a glimpse of the beauty and wildness that is America’s Salmon Forest.
After watching the video, sign your name to help conserve these areas. ​
Add Your Name
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The Salmon Forest

4/30/2020

 
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We can all agree that the Tongass National Forest is America's Salmon Forest. 

Today, our friends at Sitka Conservation Society released "The Salmon Forest," a beautiful video celebrating one of the few places in the world where wild salmon and trout still thrive.

When you're done watching the video, sign your name to help conserve our Salmon Forest.
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AMERICA'S SALMON FOREST 

is a coalition of sport, commercial, and subsistence fishermen, business owners and operators as well as private citizens working together to conserve high-quality salmon and trout spawning and rearing habitat in the Tongass, America's largest national forest.

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  • The Tongass
    • See the Tongass
    • Watch the Tongass
  • get the facts
    • Canadian Mining
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