History of the Tongass National Forest
The Tongass National Forest’s origins date to 1902 when President Theodore Roosevelt, an avid hunter and naturalist, issued a proclamation declaring it the Alexander Archipelago Forest Reserve. Five years later, Roosevelt signed another proclamation, creating a separate Tongass National Forest. Both areas were officially combined on July 1, 1908. An additional proclamation, signed in 1909, added more Southeast lands and islands, bringing the total area of the Tongass National Forest to what it is today: 16.8 million acres - making it America’s largest national forest.
Amongst towering mountains rising directly from the sea, flow almost 15,000 miles of rivers and streams. These rivers and streams support five species of wild Pacific Salmon, steelhead, Char and trout making it a true “salmon forest”. Subsistence, sport and commercial fisheries generate $1 billion to the regional economy annually. With its vast expanses of remote and undeveloped lands, the Tongass is one of the world’s last largely intact temperate rainforests. The Tongass is home to large populations of brown and black bear, bald eagles and Sitka Black-tailed deer. Moose, mountain goats, wolves and a wide variety of birds and waterfowl also call the Tongass home. Although the Tongass is cherished for its fish, wildlife and wildlands, a long history of logging. Efforts to develop the forest have threatened these values and still do so today.
Amongst towering mountains rising directly from the sea, flow almost 15,000 miles of rivers and streams. These rivers and streams support five species of wild Pacific Salmon, steelhead, Char and trout making it a true “salmon forest”. Subsistence, sport and commercial fisheries generate $1 billion to the regional economy annually. With its vast expanses of remote and undeveloped lands, the Tongass is one of the world’s last largely intact temperate rainforests. The Tongass is home to large populations of brown and black bear, bald eagles and Sitka Black-tailed deer. Moose, mountain goats, wolves and a wide variety of birds and waterfowl also call the Tongass home. Although the Tongass is cherished for its fish, wildlife and wildlands, a long history of logging. Efforts to develop the forest have threatened these values and still do so today.
In the late 1880s, less than a dozen saw mills operated in Southeast Alaska. Until the 1950s, most of the logging that occurred in the Tongass was small-scale. But in 1954, a large pulp mill in Ketchikan opened with a Forest Service contract to supply it with 50 years of Tongass timber. The Ketchikan Pulp Company obtained the right to log approximately 8.25 billion board feet of timber on the north half of Prince of Wales Island and the northwest portion of Revillagigedo Island. A second big pulp mill opened in Sitka in 1959. Like the Ketchikan mill, the Alaska Lumber and Pulp Co. mill in Sitka received a 50-year contract from the Forest Service, committing 5.25 billion board feet of Tongass timber. These 50-year contracts massively accelerated the pace of logging to an unsustainable rate and, according to a 2013 study by the Alaska Audubon Society and The Nature Conservancy, 94 percent of all large-tree old-growth forest on the Tongass has been lost to logging.
The massive scale of logging on the Tongass that took place from the 1950s until the contracts were cancelled and the mills closed in the 1990s resulted in numerous lawsuits from environmental groups, sportsmen and others concerned about impacts on fish and wildlife. The Tongass was a place of seemingly endless litigation and bitter conflict.
In May 2010, the Forest Service announced a major course correction. The agency pledged to phase out old-growth logging on the Tongass and to prioritize second-growth management, fisheries, tourism, restoration and other emerging and renewable industries. Trout Unlimited and other sportsmen’s groups hailed the announcement and have been working with the Forest Service to support the transition and to make fish habitat conservation and watershed restoration a priority.
In 2016, based on years of collaboration and wide-spread support by Southeast Alaskans, the Forest Service finalized a new forest plan, which set a course for ending large-scale old-growth logging and created new protections for more than 70 high-value, high-risk watersheds identified by Trout Unlimited, known as the “Tongass 77.”
The massive scale of logging on the Tongass that took place from the 1950s until the contracts were cancelled and the mills closed in the 1990s resulted in numerous lawsuits from environmental groups, sportsmen and others concerned about impacts on fish and wildlife. The Tongass was a place of seemingly endless litigation and bitter conflict.
In May 2010, the Forest Service announced a major course correction. The agency pledged to phase out old-growth logging on the Tongass and to prioritize second-growth management, fisheries, tourism, restoration and other emerging and renewable industries. Trout Unlimited and other sportsmen’s groups hailed the announcement and have been working with the Forest Service to support the transition and to make fish habitat conservation and watershed restoration a priority.
In 2016, based on years of collaboration and wide-spread support by Southeast Alaskans, the Forest Service finalized a new forest plan, which set a course for ending large-scale old-growth logging and created new protections for more than 70 high-value, high-risk watersheds identified by Trout Unlimited, known as the “Tongass 77.”