Tongass National Forest

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Introduction to the Tongass

Key Message

With demands from all sides, the Forest Service tries to balance the needs of people whose way of life is based in extracting resources with leaving large stretches of the ecosystem undisturbed for people who want to go to the woods for recreation and inspiration.

Issue

People from all over the world are passionate about the wet and enigmatic Tongass National Forest. Some say they want a sense that wild places remain where wildlife may move about undisturbed. Others defend the need to be able to go to the woods and waters to make their living.

Background

A voyager traveling on Alaska’s Inside Passage is surrounded by the Tongass National Forest. This waterway goes past tight-knit communities, islands with grizzly bears, and rivers holding precious salmon roe in gravel. A turn to the west shows thousands of islands protecting the mainland from the full fury of the storms moving in from the Gulf of Alaska. The panhandle of Alaska stretches from the southern tip of Prince of Wales Island 500 miles north to the far edge of the Malaspina Glacier west of Yakutat Bay. The 17-million acre Tongass covers more than 80 percent of this expanse.

Though home to the world's largest temperate rain forest, almost half of the Tongass is covered by ice, water, wetlands and rock. There are 11,000 miles of shoreline where regal mountains arise from the tidewater to overlook a mostly undeveloped and isolated landscape.

Few places in the world have the geologic and climatic variations that sculpt this landscape. The snow and ice of the 1,500-square-mile Juneau Ice Field are less than eight miles from the salt water in Gastineau Channel. Water defines practically everything in the Tongass National Forest.

At higher, frigid elevations, dramatic “rivers of ice” creep along at one to two inches per day usually. Like tributaries of a river, glaciers flow together, but the ice paths do not mix; each icy stream retains its own pathway, leaving a striped pattern of rock as it grinds down a valley.

Even the face of the sea changes here as it surges through narrow channels and up glacier-carved fiords. The sea floods wetlands daily, and at other times, leaves the ground dry. Tides in Southeast Alaska, while not as severe as some of the tides further north, have a variation of as much as 25 feet in one 12-hour period. Tidal highs and lows alternate every 6.5 hours.

On the forest floor nearby, tangles of tree roots grow over rocks and fallen logs forming dark, moist caves. Ferns, dwarf dogwood and false lily of the valley thrive while marsh marigold and skunk cabbage grow in nearby wetlands. In the canopy above, western hemlocks push their floppy tops up through the mist while Sitka spruce brave the icy salt-laden winds along the water's edge. Sub alpine fir, redcedar, yellow-cedar and hardwoods like alder, find their own spot in the forest.

Unlike most places in the Lower 48 states, it is wind, and not fire, that disturbs the forest, sometime pushing over acres of trees at a time. In areas protected from the wind, usually on the north side of ridges, trees may live to be more than 500 years old. About 90 percent of these old growth forests remain as they were 100 years ago.

The Tlingit people, who inhabited this rich forest for thousands of years before the northern Europeans, had no word that meant starvation. This is a testimony to the remarkable richness of the Tongass and an amazing abundance of fish and wildlife that supported the Native peoples. Much of this abundance continues today.

The largest known concentration of bald eagles gather each fall and winter along the Chilkat River near Haines where thousands of eagles feast on late runs of salmon. In spring, a eulachon run lures hundreds of eagles to the Stikine River Delta near Wrangell. Also, thousands of shorebirds stop on this delta to rest from their long trek north to their summer grounds.

The sea joins the land in supporting mammals. Sea otters swim primarily on the outer coast, but are making their way to more protected waters. Whales, porpoises and seals already make use of these interior waters.

On land, a species of animal may be highly concentrated on one island, then totally absent from the mainland, or another nearby island. Sitka black-tailed deer and bears forage along the shoreline; mountain goats climb along steep, rocky crags above the timberline. The forest is home to numerous other animals such as moose, wolves, beaver, fox and porcupine. Biologists estimate that 1,700 coastal grizzly (brown) bears, the highest density in North America, roam Admiralty Island and share the island with large populations of nesting bald eagles.

In a land so rich with water, fish find a natural home. All five species of Pacific salmon—chum, Coho, king, pink and sockeye—depend upon the streams and waters of the Tongass for spawning before making their way out to the rich seas nearby. Dolly Varden, rainbow, steelhead, and cutthroat trout are other Southeast Alaska inhabitants.

People have lived and worked in this water-drenched land for a multitude of centuries. For years, the Tlingit and Haida peoples have pulled the salmon and herring out of these waters and gathered the berries and other land bounty. Each generation shares its knowledge of the land with the next. The Tsimshian moved from their former home in British Columbia to Annette Island in the late 1800s.

Gold in this era drew thousands of fortune-seekers up though the Inside Passage to Douglas, Juneau and Skagway. As the gold potential dwindled in the early 1900s, communities built their economies around fishing, timber and tourism. Past ways still flourish. Today, many rural residents depend on a subsistence lifestyle, just as Alaska Natives have for centuries. Tongass water routes are the way most tourists see much of coastal Alaska—aboard the cruise ships and the Alaska Marine Highway ferries that travel these waters. Local residents and tourists enjoy sailing, motor boating, kayaking and fishing.

The Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center in Juneau and the Southeast Alaska Discovery Center in Ketchikan are among the top tourist attractions in the state. Visitors travel to the Juneau Ice Field via helicopter and take organized boat trips into Misty Fiords and Tracy Arm Wilderness Areas. A growing number of visitors seek a smaller group experience such as a boat trip from Sitka south to hot springs. Ecotourism is one of the faster growing portions of the tourism industry.

People from all over the world are passionate about the wet and enigmatic Tongass National Forest. Some say they want a sense that wild places remain where wildlife may move about undisturbed. Others defend the need to be able to go to the woods and waters to make their living. With demands from all sides, the Forest Service tries to balance the needs of people whose way of life is based in extracting resources while leaving large stretches of the ecosystem undisturbed for people who want to go to the woods for recreation and inspiration.

More Information

Dennis Neill, Public Affairs Officer, (907) 228-6201

Current as of March 2005

USDA Forest Service - Tongass National Forest Accessibility Statement
Last Modified: February 15, 2007