Alaska
In Southeastern Alaska, we focus on helping to protect the Tongass National Forest, North America’s largest temperate rainforest, for its important roles in conserving biodiversity and storing carbon, which is crucial in the fight against climate change. Additional goals are to maintain the Roadless Rule reinstated by President Biden, expand protections such as wilderness designations, and transition the local economy from large-scale logging to ecologically friendly industries.
Keep polar bears and their extensive range safe from oil drilling
Americans love their polar bears. The largest land carnivores in the world, these massive, powerful beasts are fierce, fearless and very much threatened. It’s the threatened aspect of their story that makes our hearts go out to them, especially as they struggle to survive in a rapidly warming arctic.
Understory
A Journey Through the Tongass
The story follows Elsa Sebastian, a young local fisherman who grew up “off-grid” in a remote village surrounded by the vast, ancient forest. When Elsa learns that the United States government is axing environmental protections for 9-million acres of the Tongass, she is driven to action; first fixing up an old sailboat, and then setting sail on a 350-mile expedition along the coastal rainforest.
Old-growth forests of Pacific Northwest could be key to climate action
I joined DellaSala, an Oregon-based forest ecologist, in what has been his career-long place of study, one of the rarest forest ecosystems on Earth: an old-growth coastal temperate rainforest, which stretches in a narrow continuous Pacific Northwest band from below San Francisco, California, north through Oregon and Washington, and western British Columbia to the panhandle of Alaska.
This tree has stood here for 500 years. Will it be sold for $17,500?
TONGASS NATIONAL FOREST, Alaska — The Sitka spruce soaring more than 180 feet skyward has stood on this spot on Prince of Wales Island for centuries. While fierce winds have contorted the towering trunks of its neighbors, the spruce’s trunk is ramrod straight. Standing apart from the rest of the canopy, it ascends to the height of a 17-story building.