Tongass National Forest

Extreme drought in a rainforest might seem like an oxymoron, but it isn’t. Since early 2018, the southern portion of Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, the largest intact temperate rainforest in the world, has experienced moderate to extreme drought. This has wide-ranging consequences on drinking...

This year America celebrates the 50 th Anniversary of the National Historic Preservation Act. Alaska was still celebrating its first decade of statehood when the Preservation Act was passed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1966. Since then, the act has empowered the U.S. Forest Service to identify...

Two beavers sleep peacefully in their den on Steep Creek in Juneau, Alaska, never realizing they are being watched via a hidden infrared camera. Hundreds of viewers tune-in to a live video feed on the U.S. Forest Service YouTube Channel throughout the day to see the beavers come and go, breathing...

This post was co-authored with Andrew Thoms, Executive Director of the Sitka Conservation Society . “The thing that our forests grow best is salmon!” is the local phrase that a visitor is most likely to hear when visiting some of the 32 communities that live near the Tongass National Forest of...

The City of Valdez, Alaska, offers a unique destination for visitors because of the proximity to the Crooked Creek Information Center, the most visited information center on the Chugach National Forest. Situated alongside the creek, a fish viewing platform beckons guests to take in the salmon...

An easy nine miles from the city of Juneau, a portion of a small non-glacial tributary creek nestled among alder, cottonwood and beds of dense, lush moss and understory vegetation is again sharing its ancient story of birth, death and renewal: sockeye and coho salmon are swimming home to spawn. Yet...

Recently, ninety Alaska Native, American Indian, and Native Hawaiian high school students came together at the National Conservation Training Center in Shepherdstown, West Virginia for a week of intensive education and peer-to-peer training about the impact of climate change on tribal communities...

In a small U.S. Forest Service workshop in Juneau, Alaska, a skilled Alaska Native artist is meticulously bringing a traditional artifact back to life. Tlingit Master Carver Wayne Price of Haines has begun the process of restoring the totem, which has overlooked the Auke Recreation Area near Juneau...

Scott Harris, the conservation science director for the Sitka Conservation Society, is on a mission. He’s dedicated to connecting the communities of Southeast Alaska to the stunning, natural world that surrounds them including the Tongass National Forest. Sitka Conservation Society’s charge is to...

On a boggy section of single-track trail outside the Southeast Alaska tribal community of Angoon, two men are building a bridge on Admiralty Island National Monument that does much more than simply cross 10 yards of boot-eating muck. This unassuming wooden span is connecting generations, cultures...