12/24/2025
https://aksportingjournal.com/trcp-on-forest-services-assessment-of-tongass-nf-an-emphasis-on-assuring-healthy-fish-and-wildlife-habitat/
From the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership:
In this assessment, the Forest Service is focused on adaptive management to meet the challenges of a variety of environmental changes, like expected increases in temperature, rainfall, flooding, and landslides that will affect fish habitat, deer populations, and access routes.
Exciting Changes
The Tongass has reached a pivotal moment of its management where millions of acres of young growth forest are now ready for commercial harvest that could also restore wildlife habitat. The Forest Service’s report makes it clear that Tribes and Alaska Native Corporations have requested this approach to forest management. Other public input has also supported young growth timber harvests that improve browse habitat and support local sawmills. While salmon stream restoration work has been conducted for the last few decades with positive results, the focus on forest restoration to benefit deer and other wildlife is more recent. Restoration is building momentum, creating jobs, and is something locals and visiting outdoorsmen and women are excited to see enacted.
“The overarching vision for the Tongass, as shown by the public feedback results, is that it remains a healthy ecosystem,” the Forest Service writes. “When viewed as an entire 17-million-acre region, the Tongass National Forest has retained natural ecosystem processes to a degree far greater t...
