Preserve the Tongass National Forest for Future Generations

Dear [Congressmember],

I call on Congress to protect and restore the Tongass National Forest, our nation's largest national forest, for future generations by giving it the strongest protections possible.

Stretched along the Inside Passage of Southeast Alaska, the Tongass National Forest is a remote coastal rainforest of towering old-growth hemlock, spruce and cedar trees, fog-draped mountains, rocky islands, magnificent glaciers, grizzly-filled wildlands and salmon-choked streams.

With close to 14,000 salmon-bearing streams, the Tongass is truly a Wild Salmon stronghold. A natural treasure, it is one of our nation's last remaining salmon forests - a type of forest that once thrived and is now almost completely gone in the Pacific Northwest of the United States.

[Your comments here]

Within the boundaries of the 17 million acre Tongass National Forest, there are approximately 5.7 million acres designated as Wilderness or otherwise protected from logging. However, only 30 percent of these lands contain trees and just 3 percent contain the big tree forest that make up the most valuable habitat for salmon and other wildlife. Most of the lands already protected are rock, ice and muskeg (wetland) forest.

Today, the vast majority of the most valuable places in the rainforest still intact are open to clearcut logging. As the Tongass National Forest enters its second century, these places deserve the strongest levels of protection possible to sustain their ecological and cultural values - for now and the future.