At roughly 17 million acres, the Tongass is America’s largest national forest, encompassing the majority of the southeast Alaska Panhandle. Rising majestically from the deep, rich waters of Alaska’s Inside Passage, this is a land of huge bears grown fat on salmon, eagles soaring the endless skies, and 800-year-old trees standing silent sentry over a lush and verdant world.
Despite decades of clear-cutting its best old-growth habitat, the Tongass still contains some of the most intact expanses of temperate rainforest remaining in the world. It is a land of spectacular beauty and incredible ecological significance, which provides habitat for all five species of Pacific salmon, humpback and orca whales, plus some of the largest concentrations of brown bears and bald eagles in America.
The forest is also home to wildlife found nowhere else on the planet like the Alexander Archipelago wolf, a rare subspecies of wolf that under current management practices is in jeopardy of becoming the becoming the first wildlife species listed under the Endangered Species Act in the Tongass. The giant old-growth trees of the Tongass are also a warehouse of carbon, helping regulate the planet’s climate.
Check out this video about the Tongass!