Alaska’s 17-million-acre Tongass National Forest shelters brown bears, salmon, and bald eagles. It’s our largest national forest, the ancestral home of Native peoples, and its trees fight climate change by storing more carbon than any other U.S. national forest. Yet powerful interests continue to try and carve it up by allowing industrial scale logging and road building.

Right now, Earthjustice is in court fighting the state of Alaska and industry representatives as they try to undo the safeguards that keep the Tongass standing. We are also urging the Biden administration to include the Tongass — the U.S. forest with the most old-growth trees — in a national forest plan to protect these critical older forests.

Brown bear sow and cubs in Anan Creek in the Tongass National Forest. (Mark Meyer / U.S. Forest Service)