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Alaska Rainforest: The Land and Its People
The Land and it's People
Beautiful, lush, and remote, the Alaska rainforest scribes a thousand-mile
arc along the Pacific coast between the communities of Ketchikan
and Kodiak, and includes America's two largest national forests,
the Chugach and the Tongass. The Alaska rainforest boasts 22.5
million acres of ancient forest, including giant trees hundreds
of feet tall and up to a thousand years old. It is also home to
the world's healthiest remaining populations of grizzly bears,
bald eagles, and salmon.
Before a stunning backdrop of coastal mountains towering to
18,000 feet, overlooking hundreds of mist-shrouded islands lies
the Alaska rainforest, home to diverse coastal towns and communities
that depend on the forest's resources for their survival. Commercial
fishing and tourism are mainstays of the local economy and the
bounty of the land and sea continues to feed most rural families
who live a traditional subsistence way of life.
This inspiring scene is the best of what remains of America's
forest primeval and our historic potential to build sustainable
communities based on local natural resources. Yet today, the Alaska
rainforest is threatened by the same forces that destroyed most
of our other coastal ancient forests: industrial clearcut logging
for the world export market.
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The Alaska Rainforest The Last of a Rare, Rich Ecosystem
Temperate rainforests, one of the
rarest and most biologically productive ecosystems on Earth, exist in
only a few places, including the coasts of New Zealand, Tasmania,
Patagonia and western North America. North America's Pacific Northwest
coast once harbored the largest single temperate rainforest on Earth,
spanning over 3,000 miles from California's redwoods to Alaska's Sitka
spruce.
Temperate rainforests have
suffered an even worse fate than the tropical rainforests. Extensive
logging has already destroyed half the original rainforests, including
up to 95 percent in its southern reaches in the United States. Alaska's
rainforest represents over 40 percent of the world's remaining
old-growth temperate rainforest, and contains the largest pristine
stands. This ecosystem is one of the crown jewels of creation. We must
not let it be lost like the others. |
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Alaska Rainforest Fish and Wildlife Unparalleled Bounty
Alaska's temperate rainforest is home to many wildlife
species, including salmon, grizzly bears, black bears, river otters,
deer, moose, mountain goats, bald eagles, and wolves. This spectacular
array of wildlife thrives thanks to the combination of rainforest
habitat and Alaska's relatively wild character, which buffers
the deleterious impacts of development common in the rest of the
country. For example, bald eagles depend on ancient trees for
nesting; deer depend on large stands of ancient forest for cover
and access to winter forage; and grizzly bears depend on large
tracts of healthy forest for food, shelter and solitude. In order
to survive, grizzly bears particularly depend on wilderness; they
cannot exist in close and constant proximity to humans.
Healthy salmon runs are the backbone of the ecosystem
and economy in Southeast Alaska. Here, in contrast to the rest
of the Pacific coast, millions of salmon still return to the rainforest
streams each fall. Large trees along rainforest streams provide
critical fish habitat. They help maintain steady water temperatures
by providing shade; maintain flow rates by controlling runoff;
and the woody debris from dead trees helps preserve stream structure
and nutrient supplies important for juvenile salmon. As large
trees fall across streams, they create pools and riffles where
salmon spawn. The trees also help prevent erosion and flash flooding
which can destroy spawning beds. High-quality forest is necessary
for continued salmon runs.
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Clearcut Logging Doom
for Wildlife and Fish Dependent on the Rainforest
Clearcut logging spells doom for wildlife and fish
dependent on the ancient forest stands found in Alaska's rainforest.
Unlike natural wind disturbances (the dominant force of natural
change in Alaska's rainforest, replacing trees in very small groups
scattered across the forest) all trees are logged in a clearcut,
regardless of age or size. Initially, increased light allows a
flush of new vegetation. However, 20-30 years after logging, the
new trees close in, creating a dense thicket of small trees that
eliminates virtually all light on the forest floor and kills understory
growth. This logging practice, the dominant harvest method in
Alaska, leads to lengthy periods of relative biological sterility.
The low-growth stage lasts for at least 200 years,
until old growth conditions important to fish and wildlife naturally
redevelop. Because all managed timber stands will be cut again
in an average of 100 years, Alaska rainforest stands that have
been clearcut will never regain the old-growth characteristics
important to fish and wildlife. Clearcutting converts ancient
forests to tree farms that, unless left alone for several centuries,
will never be the same as the forest that existed before.
Only about 11 percent of Alaska's rainforest has
been clearcut to date, but more than half the best timber stands
-- which are also the best wildlife habitat -- have already been
cut. While the Alaska rainforest still boasts healthy populations
of fish and wildlife, we are far closer to harming the ecosystem
than it might seem.
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Alaska Rainforest Communities
Depend on Forests, Fish and Wildlife
The two dozen diverse communities within the Alaska
rainforest range from Juneau, the state's capital with 29,000
residents, to small remote villages of less than a hundred. Government,
construction, and service industries are the largest segments
of the local economy. But commercial fishing, tourism, and subsistence
on fish and wildlife dominate the forest-dependent economy throughout
the region, especially in the rural and Native villages. Logging
and wood-processing support a few important communities. Generally,
however, timber plays a lesser role: the regional economy continues
to grow, despite periodic declines in timber related jobs.
Alaska's long-term economic gold mine is tourism,
increasingly and effectively promoted on the basis of its unspoiled
environment and abundant wildlife. Since statehood, Alaska's annual
tourism growth has averaged 10 percent. Recent trends point to
even higher growth rates. Tourism in Southeast Alaska averaged
an annual increase of over 20 percent since 1988, with a cumulative
increase in revenue of 108 percent. But some tourism businesses
now find themselves confronting limits to growth, caused by clearcut
logging and related development.
The commercial fishing and seafood processing industry
accounts for approximately 20 percent of Southeast Alaska's private
industry employment. Commercial fishing provides large incomes,
over a short summer season, to a broad spectrum of Southeast Alaskans.
This income provides the critical source of capital to most rural
communities, where year-round employment is scarce. The industry
is dominated by salmon harvesting, which depends on high-quality
stream habitat in the rainforest.
In addition to wage employment, traditional gathering
of subsistence foods plays a substantial role in Southeast Alaska's
rural communities. Since time immemorial, subsistence has been
a way of life and culture for Alaska Natives. Non-Native immigrants
to the region have also learned to rely on harvest of wild game
and fish. Eighty-five percent of the rural households in Southeast
Alaska harvest some kind of subsistence food and nearly one-third
of rural households supply half their need for fish and meat by
hunting and fishing. Subsistence may provide 70 to 80 percent
of the protein consumed in less accessible households in the Gulf
of Alaska region. Reductions in wildlife and fish populations
threaten the foundation of Native culture and the classic Alaskan
tradition of living off the land.
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Political Pressure May Overrule Rational Management
The opportunity for the Alaska rainforest region
to sustain long-term economic health based on natural resource-based
industries may fall prey to short-term, pro-logging political
pressure and outdated Forest Service policy. Despite warnings
that the forest is in decline from logging, the Alaska Congressional
delegation has made clear its intention to promote clearcut logging
regardless of the expense to other forest reliant industries or
the long-term survival of the forest ecosystem. | |
Last modified
2005-03-01 21:02
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