Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 9
Ecological Restoration as the Zone of
Agreement in Southeast Alaska
KAREN HARDIGG
The Tongass National Forest (hereafter, the Tongass) is the largest national forest in
the United States, covering nearly seventeen million acres. Stretching nearly five
hundred miles along the Pacific Ocean, it encompasses almost the entire panhandle
of southeast Alaska. The Tongass is at the center of one of the most contentious, long-
standing environmental conflicts in the country, with the timber industry, conserva-
tion groups, local communities, and the U.S. Forest Service enmeshed in a protracted
battle over forest management (Nie 2006). From the height of the pulp mill era, when
hundreds of millions of board feet of lumber were annually cut and processed on the
Tongass, to the present day, when only a fraction of that amount is harvested, stake-
holders have vehemently disagreed about what is best for the land and its human in-
habitants (Nie 2006).
The Tongass, adjacent forest-dependent rural communities, and a broad range of
participants influencing forest management are tentatively transitioning out of a man-
agement paradigm based on resource extraction. With similar management transi-
tions having already occurred on other public forests in the United States, the Tongass
is well positioned to apply the lessons learned from the communities and people in-
volved. However, a medium is needed to encourage and focus collaborative efforts in
order to transition to more sustainable forest management that meets multiple values.
This medium is ecological restoration. It is a vital strategy to build on the positive
management changes already occurring.
Ecological restoration presents a unique opportunity to provide value to all stake-
holders, something that prior forest management on the Tongass failed to accomplish.
Restoration can provide considerable social and economic benefits on a localized
level and can help reduce long-standing, resource-based conflicts. Restoration can
provide these benefits while enhancing ecological function, unlike the traditional re-
source extraction management that has been the status quo on the Tongass—a man-
agement model that provided limited social and economic benefits at the cost of eco-
logical health. Perhaps most important, restoration can serve as a model for a different
way of doing business on the forest. To date, management of the Tongass has been
dominated by large-scale, old-growth timber harvest. As this resource becomes in-
