You can feel the fertile soil anchoring life in the Tongass National Forest’s heart, right under your feet. The wind blows through the trees and you can hear the winged wonders singing in the birdsongs. The pine scent hangs in the air and you can smell the trees.
The Tongass and its trees have been giving us the gift of ecological diversity and carbon capture gifts for thousands of years.
With you at our side, we worked to give the Tongass protection from logging & development. Let’s go to the forest we are trying to save.
Tongass, which is rooted with trees that are older than our country, is our nation’s largest and most wild forest. Its 17,000,000 acres make up the largest old-growth tropical rainforest in the world.
These old-growth trees are the pillars of an ecosystem that is teeming in wildlife. Tongass are essential for Alexander Archipelago Wolf wolves, Grizzly bears, bald eagles, and hundreds of other species.
The trees not only shelter wildlife but also protect us from the worst effects of climate change. Together, the trees in the Tongass Capture 44%All the carbon that is stored in our national forests.
Their majesty doesn’t end there.
Over the millennia the Tongass trees have accumulated a certain forest wisdom. This tree community CommunicateThrough a network of nutrients in the soil, they can communicate with each other. They send signals to each other, such as warnings about environmental change or looking for kin. Even transferThey get their nutrients before they go to sleep.
These trees cannot sense or warn each other about the dangers posed by logging. It’s up to us as to how to prevent this.
The Roadless Area Conservation Rule provides our best chance of keeping the Tongass, and all our countries forests, safe.
In the 1990s, more than 100 million acres of our forests had been destroyed by development. There was no end in sight. SoEnvironment Maine, our national network, rallied around the Roadless Rule. It promised to end roadbuilding within our national forests, effectively preventing logging, mining, or development that goes with roads.
Nearly half of the 1.6million petition signatures supporting this rule were delivered by us. We won the 2001 election: The Roadless Rule became law, protecting 9.2 million acres in Tongass and tens to millions more acres of national forests.
However, we witnessed the Tongass’ sacredness eroded when the Trump administration allowed logging to resume in the forest.
So we are trying to convince Biden to restore Roadless Rule protections to the Tongass, its centuries-old trees, and other Tongass areas.
