We’re back from the Tongass, the nearly 17-million-acre national forest in Southeast Alaska that now sits at the center of some of the most consequential conservation fights in America. The future of the Roadless Rule, the administration’s timber blitz, and whether we are really prepared to keep cutting what remains of our last great intact old-growth forests.
Of those 16.7 million acres, I want to start with just 16.2.
Sixteen point two acres.
On paper, that can sound almost trivial. Especially now, when millions of acres of public land are at stake across the country.
But these 16.2 acres are on Prince of Wales Island, America’s fourth-largest island and one of the most heavily logged landscapes in the Tongass. Since 1954, an estimated 94 percent of northern Prince of Wales Island’s contiguous high-volume old-growth forest has been logged.
These 16.2 acres contain the best of what’s left. One of the most spectacular pieces of old growth we’ve ever witnessed, and we’ve made it our job to …
