Unlikely Advocates: Green Living Magazine — April 2017.
The dark, cold water laps softly against the shore of vibrant grass, dotted with thick stands of spruce trees. Snow-capped mountains and majestic glaciers stagger the backdrop, peeking out from the rolling mist that envelops the land. A black bear, grown fat on salmon, ambles lazily out of the forest to survey his surroundings below dozens of bald eagles soaring overhead.
This is the Tongass National Forest in Alaska’s Inside Passage — the largest national forest in the United States. Spread over roughly 17 million acres, the Tongass contains some of the most intact temperate rainforest in the world, safeguarding a habitat for black and brown bears, deer, moose, humpback and orca whales, sea otters, sea lions, and all five species of Pacific salmon. First nations peoples still inhabit and depend on the Tongass, which is named after a Tlingit tribe. Its 800-year-old trees stand as sentry over this Alaskan landscape that is one of the last truly wild places on earth.
If Gordon Chew has his way, the Tongass will remain so. Decades of clear-cut logging have threatened the old growth forest; and although Chew is a logger himself, he practices a much different model.
Read the full story at https://shelleyseale.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/gl_logging.pdf
Shelley Seale Editorial 