Protect the Tongass
The Tongass National Forest is important for many Alaskan Native communities and is one of the United States’ strongest tools in combating climate change.
We join Southeast Alaska Tribes in asking President Biden and his administration to permanently protect the Tongass National Forest, one of the last remaining temperate rainforests in the world. For more than two decades, the Tongass’ wildest and most sensitive stretches of old-growth forest were protected from industrial development including road-building for logging. But the Trump administration removed those protections from 9.4 million acres of the Tongass. We need to restore and solidify those protections.
The Tongass is the ancestral and contemporary homeland of numerous Indigenous Alaskans including the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian peoples. One of Southeast Alaska Tribes’ highest priority is to protect the customary and traditional hunting, fishing, and gathering areas within Tribal traditional territory. Traditional lands comprise nearly every part of what is now called the Tongass National Forest, including many islands as well as portions of the mainland. Customary and traditional uses cannot be protected when road construction, logging, mining, and other large-scale industrial development — which has already devastated large expanses of the forest — is permitted in new and previously unimpacted corners of the Tongass.
Join us in taking action to protect the Tongass and heed Indigenous Alaskans by signing a petition asking President Biden and his administration to protect the Tongass National Forest by reinstating the roadless rule and prioritize the Indigenous Homelands Petition.
Dear President Biden,
The Tongass National Forest is important for many Alaskan Native communities and is one of the United States’ strongest tools in combating climate change.
We join Southeast Alaska Tribes in asking President Biden and his administration to permanently protect the Tongass National Forest, one of the last remaining temperate rainforests in the world. For more than two decades, the Tongass’ wildest and most sensitive stretches of old-growth forest were protected from industrial development including road-building for logging. But the Trump administration removed those protections from 9.4 million acres of the Tongass. We need to restore and solidify those protections.
The Tongass is the ancestral and contemporary homeland of numerous Indigenous Alaskans including the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian peoples. One of Southeast Alaska Tribes’ highest priority is to protect the customary and traditional hunting, fishing, and gathering areas within Tribal traditional territory. Traditional lands comprise nearly every part of what is now called the Tongass National Forest, including many islands as well as portions of the mainland. Customary and traditional uses cannot be protected when road construction, logging, mining, and other large-scale industrial development — which has already devastated large expanses of the forest — is permitted in new and previously unimpacted corners of the Tongass.
Join us in taking action to protect the Tongass and heed Indigenous Alaskans by signing a petition asking President Biden and his administration to protect the Tongass National Forest by reinstating the roadless rule and prioritize the Indigenous Homelands Petition.
