Protect the Tongass, Our Largest National Forest
The Tongass National Forest is the largest of America’s national forests — and few places are quite as wild.
We live in a world with a lot of stuff, but not enough nature.
Here in our Boston office, the view includes the brick wall of a building, and the big, gray, concrete parking garage behind it. Looking out the window, you can hardly tell spring has begun.
It makes us grateful for the places in our world that are still truly wild — and few are wilder than Alaska’s Tongass National Forest.
Let’s Keep Tongass Wild!
Spanning 17 million acres, the Tongass is the largest national forest in the U.S. and the largest intact temperate rainforest in the world. It’s a place of rugged mountains, beautiful fjords and towering trees that have grown tall and thick for 800 years. Salmon make their home in its streams; bears, wolves and moose roam its woods. Bald eagles soar overhead.
That’s why we have to preserve it.
What’s kept our largest national forest safe from logging other destructive development for the last 17 years is the Roadless Area Conservation Rule. The concept is simple: If it’s wild, it should stay that way.
How You Can Help
Seventeen years ago, 1.6 million Americans submitted public comments to the Clinton administration in favor of creating the Roadless Rule.
But earlier this year, some members of Congress tried to attach a rider on the budget bill that would have exempted the Tongass from Roadless Rule protections. When that failed, Alaska Gov. Bill Walker petitioned the U.S. Department of Agriculture to create an exemption for the Tongass.
We can’t let that happen.
To let a place of irreplaceable natural beauty like the Tongass get chopped down and paved over for short-term gain would be a tragedy. It would be a disservice to ourselves and to all the future generations who deserve to experience nature at its wildest just as we have.