More than 230 scientists have delivered a message to Congress: it’s time to step up to the plate and do more to protect America’s salmon forest. Among them is Trout Unlimited’s senior scientist, Jack Williams. In this blog post, Williams explains what’s at stake in Southeast Alaska’s Tongass National Forest and why Congress should enact Tongass 77 legislation. Tongass 77: Saving the Salmon Forest Where the lone bridge crosses the creek, it looks like any number of small Alaska salmon streams. Our son, Austin, first took me there when he was working on the Tongass National Forest and I was lucky enough to make it back there each of the next several summers. In August the stream is stuffed full of pinks with a respectable sprinkling of massive, and strikingly marked chums. One year we were treated to silvers as well. I don’t think the stream is supposed to have silvers but I guess they didn’t read the regs. Black bears watch from what is usually a respectable distance. Bald eagles circle above. In my mind, this is classic Southeast Alaska. Streams draining the Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska produce huge runs of salmon and big trout populations. The numbers of fish that originate from the Tongass are staggering: roughly 24% of Alaska’s overall salmon catch, 30% of all salmon caught along the West Coast of the United States, and close to 13% of the salmon harvested along the Pacific Rim. Southeast Alaska salmon are a $1 billion industry and responsible for over 10% of the region’s jobs. At nearly 17 million acres, the Tongass National Forest is huge, covering an area nearly 8 times that of Yellowstone National Park. The Salmon Forest The flow of water and fish between land and sea is so rapid in this region that the ecological distinctions between terrestrial and aquatic systems blur. Rainfall is truly impressive; topping 150 inches a year in many places. The outflowing water attracts millions of spawning salmon. Salmon runs can fill small streams overnight only to fill them again and again with each new freshet. As the salmon spawn and die their eggs and carcasses bring massive plugs of nutrients from the oceans into the forests. These nutrients work their way into algae, riparian grasses, and alders until the salmon and the forest seemingly are intertwined together as one for all eternity. Despite its value as a natural salmon producer, there are plenty of threats poised to undo the recreational, commercial, and ecological benefits of the Tongass. There are several proposals that could privatize large portions of the Tongass, making them susceptible to intense resource development without the protections for salmon habitat afforded by federal regulations such as larger stream buffers. Additionally, several mine proposals and dozens of hydroelectric dam projects could degrade water quality and block spawning runs. The Tongass 77 The science of salmon conservation has become increasingly clear. The best way to ensure the long term productivity of these big runs is to protect the best remaining watersheds where they occur. Right now, only about 35% of salmon and trout-producing watersheds on the Tongass are protected. Researchers from the Audubon Society, The Nature Conservancy, and Trout Unlimited have identified the best of the remaining unprotected watersheds. We call them The Tongass 77. These 77 high value watersheds comprise 1.9 million acres of truly irreplaceable fisheries habitat, where the highest and best use of the land is to protect watershed values for the production of salmon. Back down in the lower 48, I work mostly on trying to restore trout and salmon habitat. It’s a long and expensive grind. We have some good successes now and again, but often we suffer from what scientists refer to as an “eroding benchmark.” That is, those working on restoration of a stream usually have forgotten, or maybe never personally knew, what that stream looked like before it was degraded; nor do they know what it was capable of producing in its natural condition. By the time we get around to trying to fix the broken aquatic system, it has been degrading for so long that it’s a mere fragment of its former self … and no one is around who remembers what that former self was like. In Southeast Alaska, we still have streams and salmon populations at or very near their historic peaks. We don’t have to search out an elder to remember their heyday. We still have streams where it appears possible to walk on the backs of the salmon. No eroding baselines here. And in most places, no big restoration budget is needed either, just the foresight to manage the best remaining watersheds for the salmon. The Tongass 77. I can’t wait to get back. Jack Williams, Ph.D. Medford, Oregon by Brendan Jones for The Huffington Post The first time I hunted deer alone in Southeast Alaska, my friend drew me a map leading to a stand of old-growth trees in a river valley. I set off at a trot on a sunny November morning, following a trail along Indian River, which ran heavy with fall rains. I cut through a copse of alders, squished through a muskeg, and ducked into a scrub of salmonberry and devil’s club, the rifle barrel snagging on the thorned branches. I emerged on the other side into a fairy tale world of 600-1000 year-old western hemlocks and Sitka spruce – a cathedral of trees rising from a thick, moss-covered forest floor. I remember slowing my pace, running a palm over the bark, the spruce-like potato chips, and the hemlocks like strips of bacon. Hunkering down beside a spread of winter chanterelle mushrooms, which I nibbled before falling asleep, like Dorothy in her field of poppies. Read more. One of the country’s most widely read commercial fishing magazines — National Fisherman – has published a guest editorial by Juneau seiner David Clark about his support for the Tongass 77 campaign. Clark’s piece, called Talking Tongass, is in the June issue of the magazine. Read it here. In his “Dock Talk” column, Clark talks about how he came to make commercial fishing in Southeast Alaska his livelihood more than a decade ago and why he wants to see the Tongass’ prime salmon watersheds managed with fish production as the top priority. “My livelihood, like those of the 7,300 or so other people in Southeast whose jobs revolve around salmon are trout, is largely dependent on healthy habitat. It’s the rain forest of Southeast Alaska, with its 17,600 or so miles of salmon rivers, lakes and creeks that sustains my income and those of so many others. Fishermen commercially harvest nearly 50 million salmon every year in Southeast Alaska. The Tongass National Forest of Southeast Alaska is one of the few places left where wild salmon remain healthy and abundant. That’s why I support the Tongass 77, a grassroots campaign to get Congress to permanently protect 77 key salmon watersheds in Southeast Alaska that are open to development.” Dave flew back to Washington, DC, with a Trout Unlimited-sponsored delegation of other fishermen and tour operators to lobby Congress to support the campaign and introduce Tongass 77 legislation. We thank Dave for his support of the Tongass 77 and for sharing his words with National Fishermen readers. Congress needs to hear the voices of the commercial fishing fleet and all others who care about the future of wild salmon. Please add your name to the Tongass 77 sign-on letter here. The mystique of an Alaska rainforest and its prolific salmon runs lured New Englander Tracy Sylvester to a job blowing up roads in the Tongass National Forest. As a U.S. Forest Service intern, Sylvester worked on a blasting crew that took out abandoned logging roads and old culverts blocking the passage of wild salmon. “I spent the summer setting off explosives and shoveling dirt. It was fun,” said Sylvester, 27, who has a bachelor’s degree in fisheries biology. Most of the work took place on Baranof Island in Southeast Alaska’s bear- and salmon-rich Tongass rain forest, a 17-million-acre expanse of giant spruce, hemlock, and cedar trees nestled against northern British Columbia. Commercial, sport, and subsistence fishing, along with governmentPhoto by Ben Hamilton, Courtesy of Sitka Conservation Society and tourism jobs, fuel the regional economy. Timber once dominated both the economy and the headlines. But the industry is much smaller now, the controversy around logging less heated, and mill owners are preparing to retool from old to young-growth harvest and manufacture. Sylvester’s college intern work that summer in 2007 – decommissioning logging roads and restoring logged watersheds – is part of a transition sweeping the Tongass. Charged with overseeing the Tongass, the U.S. Forest Service is moving away from managing the country’s largest national forest for industrial logging to a future that’s focused more around niche timber sales, forest stewardship and restoration, and fisheries, particularly salmon. “It’s becoming a greater priority for a couple of reasons,” said Wayne Owen, a top-level Forest Service official based in Juneau. “I think the nature of the forest products industry is changing and that certainly contributes to it. I also think the voice of the people with respect to salmon is being heard more clearly locally, regionally, and nationally and that makes a difference especially when people work with the Forest Service, when you have that spirit of cooperative engagement.” Read more in the May issue of Pacific Fishing magazine. The Tongass National Forest of Southeast Alaska is a globally significant producer of wild salmon and steps should be taken protect this resource from a variety of threats, according to a top fisheries biologist with the U.S. Forest Service who spoke in Juneau recently. Ron Medel, fisheries program manager for the Tongass National Forest, gave two addresses in Alaska’s capital city on April 3 and 4 about the abundance of wild salmon from Southeast Alaska’s 17-million-acre temperate rainforest. According to a Juneau Empire article, Medel told the House Fisheries Committee that an average 79 percent of salmon commercially caught in the region every year are wild fish from the Tongass. That equates to about 28 percent of Alaska’s annual commercial salmon catch and 25.6 percent of the commercial salmon catch in the Northeastern Pacific Ocean region, said Medel, who spoke the night before at Centennial Hall. The article quoted Medel as saying, “it’s a big bloc of fish.” “If we’re not America’s salmon forest, tell me a forest that is,” said Medel. Read more. |
Categories
All
Archives
November 2021
|