The Battle for Tongass National Forest

	Facts About Tongass National Forest Summary of important background and west coast map

In the end, one of the most magnificent rainforests in the world became just another political bargaining chip.

With their bags packed to leave Washington for campaigning in early October, members of the 104th Congress played their final hand of cards. On the table was the massive parks bill, filled with election year booty for 41 states, including recognition of San Francisco's Presidio. The bill was approved at the very last minute, but for two nail-biting days, passage was uncertain -- it all depended on making a deal with a powerful Alaskan senator. A deal that would also determine the future of logging in the vast forest.

That rainforest is the Tongass, found on an immense southern Alaska island. It is the world's largest temperate rainforest, covering some 17 million acres of woodland, rock, and ice. Wildlife abounds.

Its charms were unknown to almost everyone in Congress who debated its future in early October. But that's not unusual; hardly anyone in the lower 48 knows much about the place or its history, including environmentalists. And that's part of the problem, too.

Besides being America's last great wilderness, the Tongass National Forest also stands as a metaphor for everything wrong with U.S. forest policy since WWII. Its landscape is pocked by clearcut logging. Its history is darkened by sweet deals between government and logging corporations, often with the enthusiastic help of Forest Service bureaucrats. And like the more familiar Headwaters fight, final arguments centered on the environment and trees vs. jobs and corporate profits.

But it is also the story of individuals standing for what they believe with enormous personal courage, risking everything to protect those remarkable wildlands. And Tongass is also at the forefront of what will surely be one of the great debates in coming years: returning control of natural resources to Native peoples.

In this issue we begin telling the story of Tongass. It's a long tale with many facets. Perhaps to the confusion of some readers, we start at the end, with the recent political events that may prove the turning point for this great forest.

In coming weeks and months, the Albion Monitor will offer features that fill in the rest of the story, and those links will be added to this page. We hope you will follow it with us; the story is as remarkable as the place itself.

Jeff Elliott
Editor, Albion Monitor

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