The Summer Feeding Grounds of the Endangered Humpback Whale are Threatened!

Please help us save Southeast Alaska's Tongass Forest!

 

Alaska's Tongass Forest, the world's largest and last intact pristine temperate rainforest is the summer home and prime feeding grounds for the North Pacific humpback whale. It is also home to orcas, wolves, bears, moose, seals, eagles, and salmon and is under threat by the Bush Administration and the timber industry.

On December 23, 2003, the Bush Administration, through its "Healthy Forests Initiative", opened over 9 million acres of the Tongass's 16.7 million acres for logging, overturning President Clinton's 2001 ban on logging and road-building in wild, undeveloped national forests which included the Tongass.

The Tongass Forest encompasses Glacier Bay, a United Nations World Heritage Site and marine sanctuary. This temperate rain forest is 8 times the size of Yellowstone and is the world's largest intact, unspoiled, rainforest. The inland sea bordering the Tongass is the summer feeding grounds for the endangered humpback whale. 

Every summer, thousands of humpback whales migrate from their breeding grounds in Hawaii, Mexico, and Japan to Southeast Alaska to feed primarily on krill, a tiny shrimp-like crustacean about the size of a pinky nail. Humpbacks will eat up to 2 tons of krill per day from late May through September with some of the whales actually staying here and feeding year round.

The entire watershed area of the Tongass is one of the most highly productive areas in the world. There are over 1000 islands with over 100 rivers flowing through the region which spill into the inland sea that are the last pristine spawning grounds for five species of salmon which are the primary food of resident killer whales, bears, and eagles. The Tongass river systems spawn over 90% of the wild salmon in Alaska and commercial and recreational fishermen are as dependent on these salmon as the wild animals that encompass this majestic wilderness area.

 

Even though the timber industry has already cut down over 96% of the old growth forests in the contiguous United States and 70% of Southeast Alaska's forests, they now have their sites set on the Tongass, an internationally protected pristine wilderness. In defiance of this protection, the timber industry, with the help of the Bush Administration, has targeted over 300,000 acres to be clear-cut which represents the biological heart of the Tongass.

To get to these 300,000 acres, over 2.6 million acres of the surrounding forest will be scarred by clear-cuts and road building leaving this internationally protected area decimated. This 300,000 acres contains the largest and most productive old growth stands with many of the trees being over 800 years old.

Moreover, the run off will choke the now pristine waterways with sediment and nitrates causing massive silting and algae blooms which will wreak havoc on the herring, krill, and salmon populations, which in-turn, will wreak havoc on the endangered humpbacks, orcas, seals, wolves, bears, and eagles. There are but a few truly wild, untarnished, wildernesses left in the world. America's Tongass Forest is one of them.

 

In 2008, the "Save the Whales Again!" Team will be leading a filming expedition to the Tongass to produce a short film for the United Nations and Congress on this critical issue along with making it part of our feature length documentary.

Time is short but we still have an opportunity to keep the Tongass and Glacier Bay as it is, alive, wild, and free, a true model of a United Nations World Heritage Site.

Please Join Us in Our Quest to Save this Wondrous Place!

Please Join the Fight! It’s Time to Save the Whales Again!!!