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.

Contact: Austin Williams, Trout Unlimited, (907) 227-1590

PRESS KIT AVAILABLE: including b-roll footage, photos and interview footage about the Tongass Land and Resource Management Plan at this link.
 
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
 
Important salmon-producing areas threatened in proposed rollback of Tongass National Forest Plan Amendment
New measure by Sen. Murkowski (R-Alaska) would undo public process for conservation measures within country’s largest National Forest
 
JUNEAU, AK – Today, Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) included a rider on the Senate Interior and Environment appropriations bill to roll back the Tongass Land and Resource Management Plan (TLMP) and repeal important measures for conserving more than 70 salmon and trout streams within Southeast Alaska’s 17 million acre Tongass National Forest. 

“The Tongass plan amendment is the product of several years of collaboration by Alaskans from across the political spectrum that were able to overcome their differences and form a shared vision for the Tongass based on tourism, fishing and sustainable young-growth forest products,” said Austin Williams, Alaska Legal and Policy Director for Trout Unlimited. “It is disheartening that Senator Murkowski is turning her back to the thousands of Alaskans that support the Tongass plan amendment and threatening to return the region to the conflict and divisiveness of the past. The Tongass plan amendment was created by Alaskans that decided to work together and cooperate so that all could benefit, and should not be cast aside through a closed-door process in Congress.”

The Tongass plan amendment is the culmination of a multi-year, community-supported process in which more than 7,200 Alaskans voiced support for protecting high-value fish and wildlife habitat. It is based on the unanimously-adopted recommendations of the Tongass Advisory Committee (TAC), which was comprised of representatives from the logging industry, the State of Alaska, Alaska Native tribes and corporations, municipal leaders, and conservation organizations convened to move the Tongass National Forest away from the conflict around old-growth logging and work toward sustainable harvest of young-growth timber. 
 
“The Tongass plan amendment is central to ensuring the region’s important fishing and tourism industries continue to thrive and grow into the future,” said Mark Kaelke, Southeast Alaska Program Manager for Trout Unlimited. “We commend the Forest Service for developing a plan amendment that balances the diverse interests at play in the region, and encourage Senator Murkowski to respect the public process, years of dialogue, and compromise that went into this plan by allowing it to remain in effect.”

This bill has not gone through a committee mark up. It will likely be included in the debate over the delayed Congressional decision on how to fund the federal government through the end of the current fiscal year 2018. Trout Unlimited and our salmon conservation allies will be working hard to ensure that it does not become law, along with several other harmful riders that were included in the bill.

The Tongass is the nation’s largest National Forest, producing hundreds of millions of wild salmon each year that support thriving commercial and sport fishing industries. Salmon fishing accounts for 10% of all regional employment and contributes $1 billion annually to the local economy. Visitors from all over the world come to see the Tongass and support a booming travel industry accounting for another 15% of regional employment and another $1 billion in economic activity.
 
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Trout Unlimited is the nation’s oldest and largest coldwater fisheries conservation organization. In Alaska, we work with sportsmen and women to ensure the state’s trout and salmon resources remain healthy far into the future through our local chapters and offices in Anchorage and Juneau. Follow TU’s Tongass efforts on Facebook, and visit us online at tu.org. Learn more about our work to conserve key areas of the Tongass National Forest at www.americansalmonforest.org

Though the days of timber barons have long expired, the Tongass is no stranger to timber wars in recent decades. However, with a recent amendment to the Tongass Land Management Plan (TLMP), many Southeast Alaskans formed a shared vision for the Tongass, seeking to enter a new chapter of sustainable young-growth timber harvest that served tourism, fishing and timber industries alike.

Southeast Alaska’s Tongass National Forest produces more wild salmon than anywhere else in the country. At 17 million acres, this magnificent landscape of western hemlock, Sitka spruce, western red cedar and Alaska 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 that are ideal spawning and rearing conditions for wild Pacific salmon and trout. ​

The Forest Service just officially amended the Tongass Land Management Plan to prioritize protections the most important areas for salmon and trout in the forest. The Tongass Land Management Plan is the document that governs activities including logging, road-building, mining, habitat restoration and recreation. The new plan nudges the existing timber industry into using young growth, meaning smaller trees that have grown back after clear-cut logging and, over the course of 16 years, phases out large-scale old growth logging altogether in the Tongass. This is excellent news for Tongass fish and the businesses that depend on them!

While we know special interests, still pining for the heavy logging of the past, will work to roll back or eliminate the best parts of this plan, we are celebrating this major milestone for healthy Tongass fisheries. TU will work to uphold this progress, and also to achieve further investments at the state and federal levels in salmon and recreation.

Thank you for your support! ​

Essay by Mark Kaelke

The Situk River just outside Yakutat will never suffer from a lack of notoriety. Being home to what is easily the largest steelhead run in Alaska at roughly 7,500 fish annually, is not an attribute that has been kept among friends, but the Situk is really just one of several amazingly productive rivers that are part of the Yakutat Forelands.  

The Forelands, part of the Tongass National Forest, stretch about 50 miles from Yakutat Bay in the north to Dry Bay to the south.  The streams of the Forelands originate as cascades flowing out of the mighty Fairweather Mountains, a coastal range home to southeast Alaska’s tallest peak, 15,300 foot Mount Fairweather, and moderate in flow downstream from lakes along the muskeg forests of the flatlands below.  As the rivers make their way 10 to 15 miles to their saltwater terminus, the flatlands have the effect of making them one long “tailout” – a continuous band of almost perfect spawning gravel. Add to that a multitude of slow tributaries that make for ideal rearing habitat, and you have a recipe for massive productivity and incredible species diversity. One simply could not improve on the natural design of the fish factory that is the Yakutat forelands. 

An old friend from Rhode Island joins me to fish the Situk most springs.  We float the river, camp, drink and fish.  We do the trip earlier than most people and our off-peak timing sets up an annual flirtation with low flows and deep snow but there’s always at least a few steelhead around and the wildness of the place is omnipresent.  With five species of salmon, rainbows, cutthroat and Dolly Varden all calling the Situk home, there’s a target species and time of year for a wide variety of users.    

The US Congress recognized some of the value of the area, designating a portion of the west slope of the Fairweather Range as Wilderness in 1980. However, the good folks back in Washington DC passed on adding the Forelands portion and thus the fish factory to the Wilderness mix.  In 1990, the Tongass Timber Reform Act designated the southern Forelands as LUD II (a protective land designation) but the Situk and Ahrnklin watersheds were left out. Whether this was a good thing or not depends on who you ask and when you ask it.   Many sport, commercial and subsistence fishermen who depend on the two areas for fish would say the omission of the Situk and Ahrnklin from Wilderness and LUD II designation leaves their livelihoods hanging but ask some of those same people that question after they just pulled their moose out of the field with the assistance of a four wheeler in one of those watersheds and they’ll likely sing a different tune.

Roughly 60,000 acres of the Forelands were staked for potential mining operations as recently as 5 years ago.  Although those claims have since been shown to be highly speculative and hugely expensive to investigate further, they were a wake-up call for locals and outside users alike on the impacts that could be thrust upon the Forelands. Trout Unlimited’s Tongass 77 proposal, which includes the Situk and Ahrnklin watersheds, seeks to answer that call with action to protect fisheries, conserve fish habitat  and ensure customary and traditional uses and access.  
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Having partaken of the bountiful steelheading on the Situk often over the last 25 years and seen firsthand how fish drive the economy of Yakutat and the region, I think this is a necessary and worthwhile objective.  Increasing fish conservation measures and focusing management on fish production for all Tongass 77 watersheds can be done in ways  that preserve fisheries while respectingand enabling local uses, but it will it take the support of many to achieve those goals.  Given its popularity and productivity, the Situk has more stakeholders than any other stream in the Tongass National Forest.  Banded together, this group can be a powerful force in doing right by the Situk.