[sweeping orchestral music]
- This is just a small corner
of the Tongass National Forest,
a forest that covers most of Southeast Alaska.
Thankfully, it's still a largely intact
and functioning ecosystem
with abundant fish and wildlife.
Aldo Leopold, the father of modern wildlife management
said, "To keep every cog and wheel
is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering."
Now, managing a national forest isn't exactly tinkering.
But we are working hard to ensure
that we maintain good habitat
for all the cogs and wheels,
including the remarkable species of fish and wildlife
that live on the Tongass.
[seal bays]
[bird lilts]
[bird caws]
[birds singing]
- The Tongass is one of the most unique places
in the world.
When I think about the Tongass
and think about fish and wildlife in the Tongass,
it's that connection between the ocean and the forest
and the rivers that connect those together
that really drive what we have up here
that's a very unique ecosystem.
It's unique in the world.
Being near the ocean,
it is a relatively moderate temperate climate,
which, in turn, drives this very abundant system.
And we have lush vegetation.
That vegetation is what creates the habitat
for the many species that we have.
- As the Forest Service's district ranger in Yakutat,
Tricia O'Connor has been responsible
for fish and wildlife habitat.
While she has a master's degree
in resource management and wildlife,
her connection to Alaska is as much genetic
as it is academic.
Her grandfather worked as a wildlife biologist
when Alaska was still a territory in the 1940s,
and her father was a star basketball player
in Juneau.
- One of my first experiences when I moved up here--
I do fly-fish, but I'm not that great,
and I really wanted to learn how to catch a salmon
on my fly rod, and I had tried quite a bit
but came down in the fall one evening
right before sunset.
It was the type of evening
where it didn't matter what I did with my fly rod;
I could catch a coho salmon every cast.
And the first fish that I'd ever caught on my fly rod,
that first salmon, as I pulled it in,
a group of trumpeter swans flew over my head.
And that was the moment I said,
"This is--this is such a special place."
- The Tongass is a special place
to many others as well.
Most who live here, or those who visit,
are impressed by the abundance of fish and wildlife.
- We do not have a listed threatened
or endangered species
that inhabits the uplands of the Tongass.
To me, that's a very telling story.
That doesn't mean we don't have to be careful
about what we do out there, though.
- Being careful means preserving
existing fish and wildlife habitat
and, in some cases, reclaiming them.
Like the others working for the Forest Service
on the Tongass, Tricia has been involved in both.
- We have in the past done quite a bit of things
on the land that, while were good for one thing,
may not have been the best thing for fish and wildlife.
And so our charge now is--
and we're very serious about this--
is looking at past effects of things like clear-cuts,
roads we put in-- whether they were logging roads,
roads for oil exploration, recreation roads--
and making sure and ensuring
that those features on the land are not having
negative impacts on fish and wildlife.
- Restoration of habitat
is taking place all across the Tongass.
There are several examples in Tricia's Yakutat area.
- Well, we're standing on a logging road,
and logging roads do affect fish and wildlife habitat,
and in this case, they're affecting stream flow
and how water gets to streams.
- The restoration in this case involved
using heavy equipment to rough up a section
of an old logging road.
The result, in just two years,
was a return to natural vegetation.
A poorly designed road built years ago
is causing a different kind of habitat problem.
- What we're seeing behind us here is an old road
that was put in during the early '60s
for oil exploration.
It may look like a stream to you,
but it's actually an old road bed.
The water has been diverted down the old roadbed
and is taking away from high-quality fisheries habitat.
So we are in the midst of doing a project
that would help restore those stream connections.
And even though it might seem like a small project,
it's one piece of the big picture
of making sure that we have
lots of salmon habitat forever.
- Yet another Yakutat restoration project
came about because of the widespread use
of off-road vehicles.
- And what's happened in the past is,
there's been quite a bit of unregulated use,
and people were able to drive wherever they wanted to
and would drive through muskegs and through wetlands,
crossing streams.
- Through community cooperation,
limits have been placed on where off-road vehicles
may be operated.
In addition, a short demonstration project
used different materials to determine
which would be best for future ATV trails.
Other kinds of habitat protection
have also taken place in Yakutat.
- In areas where there are stream crossings,
we have actually gone in and put bridges,
put crossings, so that the public
can cross safely and easily,
and then the fish--
the fish habitat is not degradated
by their continued crossing.
- Improving fish habitat is just one kind of restoration
taking place on the Tongass.
In Sitka, studies are being conducted
on ways to improve tree growth after logging.
- We even age-harvested this unit.
The stems come back at such a great density
and they grow so quickly
that all the canopies interlock together
and exclude the light from coming down
to the forest floor.
You can see on the ground
that there's very little vegetation.
It's not much of a grocery store.
We take out many of the trees that are left in the stand.
We thin them up, and then the canopy
will allow more light to the forest floor,
and the result is more robust forest floor vegetation,
which is your grocery store for the deer.
We have 435,000 acres of harvested land
on the Tongass.
We've already thinned about 1/3 of those acres to date,
and we continue to have an aggressive thinning program.
- Although the Forest Service manages
the land on the Tongass,
that's only part of the habitat story.
The fish and wildlife themselves are managed
by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
The two agencies work closely together.
One example is at Pack Creek,
a popular brown bear viewing area on Admiralty,
an island famous for its bears.
Today Pack Creek is a 60,000-acre wildlife sanctuary
where hunting is prohibited and bears are protected.
Because of its popularity, viewing permits
are required during summer months.
Both Fish and Game and Forest Service employees
are at the site throughout the summer
to answer visitors' questions and prevent conflicts
between people and bears.
- Most visitors to Alaska,
the thing they want to see most often
is a bear.
And so having a place where there is
a large abundance of bears
and bears come in to places where people can see them
and see them easily really is world-class resource.
One of the ways to keep people interested
in conservation and stewardship
is knowing that they have some personal tie
with the land and the resources out there,
and wildlife really helps build that bridge.
It's one piece of that connection
with the natural world
that I really think helps us as humanity
maintain our connection with the natural world,
and that is just so important for us
to sustain what we have in the long run.
- Another example of cooperation
between the federal Forest Service
and the state Department of Fish and Game
involves salmon.
- Yeah, we count sockeye,
we count coho, chum, and pinks through the Weir
at least three or four times a day,
and all of that data goes to Fish and Game
so they can get an accumulative number
of how many fish are returning every year,
because I know that the information
that we're getting out here
is going to really allow the salmon fishery
to be healthy and sustainable
and to allow the Fish and Game to come up with
a reasonable cutoff point and say, you know,
"This is how many you can catch.
"This is where the cutoff is.
This is when you need to stop fishing."
- Seeing wildlife is one of the top reasons
visitors give for choosing trips to southeast Alaska,
but fish and wildlife on the Tongass
provide more than just zoos without bars;
they provide jobs and food for year-round residents.
The Seatuck River near Yakutat is just one example.
- The same fish that sport fishermen upstream
are fly-fishing for,
the same fish that the bears are eating,
at the lower end of the Seatuck River,
we have both commercial fishermen
making a living off of that
and subsistence fishermen who are feeding their families
from the same resource.
The community of Yakutat has a very strong tie
with that river because it provides so much for them
in not only food but also sustenance and a living.
Well, the Tongass, I believe,
really is a national treasure,
and a lot of it comes from having
this world-class abundance--
sheer abundance-- of wildlife and fish
that not only can people come up here and see
and see it in a beautiful setting,
but they also have the ability,
and we still have the ability, to use fish and wildlife
and do it in a way that's sustainable.
- As a teenager growing up in Michigan,
I recall seeing a bald eagle for the very first time.
It was circling in the sunlight
against a gray October sky over northern Lake Huron.
I was absolutely thrilled.
Wildlife is sometimes taken for granted
by those of us now living in southeast Alaska,
because it seems we have so much.
But healthy wildlife populations require good habitat.
As managers of the land that comprises
most of that habitat,
it's a responsibility we take very seriously.
For the Tongass National Forest, I'm Pete Griffin.