In the second half of the 20th century, industrial clear-cut logging ran rampant in the Tongass. In the face of such destructive, unsustainable logging practices, a handful of concerned citizens organized their first initiative: to permanently protect West Chichagof and Yakobi Islands in order to preserve the precious ecosystem for cultural and ecological purposes for current and future generations.
The Sitka Conservation Society (SCS) was officially established in 1968, becoming Alaska's first conservation organization. Their efforts to protect the islands just north of Sitka became Alaska's first citizen's wilderness proposal. In 1980, after 13 years of advocating for wilderness in southeast Alaska, the Sitka Conservation Society reaped the fruits of its labor when the West Chichagof-Yakobi Wilderness area (260,000+ acres) was designated under the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act.
Forty years ago, the first conservation group in Alaska was established in Sitka, a small town nestled beside Sitka Sound in the Alexander Archipelago, which forms the panhandle of southeast Alaska. In the panhandle region, the Tongass National Forest-America's largest at 16.8 million acres-covers more than 80 percent of the land. It survives as nearly one-third of all the old-growth temperate rain forest in the world. The Tongass is home to massive old-growth trees that stand hundreds of feet high and measure dozens of feet in diameter. The old-growth ecosystem provides habitat to a diverse array of flora and fauna, including grizzlies, black bears, gray wolves, and bald eagles. It also serves as a big backyard to the residents in Sitka, providing the community with resources and recreational opportunities.
Through research, field studies, participation in the Tongass Forest management process, litigation, and advocacy efforts in the community and nationwide, SCS continues to further its mission to protect the temperate rainforest of southeast Alaska and Sitka’s quality of life. SCS established the Timber Information Center, a central repository of data regarding all Tongass timber projects, including more than 50 projects planned in pristine roadless areas over the next 10 years.
The center has become a valuable resource for Alaska’s conservation community. In 2005, SCS launched the Tongass Groundtruthing Project, which combines the field team’s naturalist skills with advanced GIS (Geographic Information Systems) technology in order to compare the Timber Info Center data to what’s actually going on at project sites in the forest. Over the past two years, the team has visited and evaluated dozens of timber projects. The Groundtruthing Project was recently featured in the July 2007 issue of National Geographic magazine.
SCS supports and advocates for additional wilderness across many other deserving areas on the Tongass. The Sitka Conservation Society also focuses on public education and outreach to increase understanding of Sitka’s natural environment and to highlight the threats facing both the landscape and the community. While commercial fishing has always been a major industry in the local economy, the nature-based tourism industry is now a booming industry, and continues to increase in importance to the local economy.
The interdependent relationship between the land and the community underscores the important goal of the Sitka Conservation Society, which is “to figure out how to transition management of public lands to better represent the reality of the 21st century,” explains SCS director Andrew Thoms. Preserving the last remaining wild places is not just about conserving those special places but also the people and communities that depend on them. Visit the Sitka Conservation Society’s website, www.sitkawild.org, to find out more about the organization and their ongoing efforts to protect wild places in Alaska.
