DEFEND THE FOREST FRONTIER
Alaska's south coast is blanketed with lush temperate rainforests of spruce, hemlock and cedar. Wild salmon, wolves, moose, mountain goats, and bears thrive in this vast wilderness. As in the Pacific Northwest, Cascadia Wildlands works to conserve these vast old growth forests and restore areas degraded by resource extraction.
Our forest conservation work in Alaska focuses on the Tongass National Forest, Chugach National Forest and State of Alaska lands. Incredibly, old growth logging continues to threaten the integrity of this region. Cascadia Wildlands monitors and challenges virtually every old growth timber sale on the Tongass National Forest and State of Alaska lands. Visit the Sitka Conservation Society to see individual timber sales in the area. Thanks to our work and that of several other organizations, the days of old growth logging are nearing an end.
latest news
March 04, 2011: A federal district judge in Anchorage ruled in favor of our coalition's roadless rule lawsuit, reinstating roadless rule protections for the Tongass National Forest. Read the decision here.
January 10, 2010: Cascadia Wildlands files suit to stop massive old-growth clearcutting project on the Tongass National Forest, Alaska
Three environmental groups sued the Forest Service in Federal District Court in Anchorage today, challenging the Logjam timber sale project on Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. The plaintiffs—Tongass Conservation Society, Greenpeace, and Cascadia Wildlands—are asking the court to cancel the 3,422 acre timber project on Prince of Wales Island. The project would log 73 million board feet of timber and build 22 miles of new roads. The lawsuit claims the Forest Service grossly failed to consider the project's impacts on deer, wolves, and salmon. Take a virtual tour of the threatened area.
December 22, 2009: Diverse Coalition Challenges Tongass Exemption in 2003 Roadless Rule
A diverse coalition of Alaska Native, tourism industry, and environmental organizations took action today to protect some of the last pristine old-growth areas in the Tongass National Forest. These areas are important to Southeast Alaskans for hunting, fishing, customary and traditional subsistence uses, tourism, and recreation. They are also important to the world for their storage of carbon, which combats global warming. The lawsuit filed today -- Organized Village of Kake v U.S. Department of Agriculture -- seeks to end the 2003, Bush-era decision to "temporarily" exempt the Tongass from the national Roadless Rule. The lawsuit asserts that this exemption was illegally adopted. "We must not lose more roadless areas here," said Mike Jackson with the Organized Village of Kake. "For Tribal members, these lands are essential sources of food, medicine, clothing, and traditional items for artistic and spiritual use," he continued. "Our deer hunting and other customary uses of the forest have suffered too much already from past logging," he added.
 
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