SCS Advocacy -- Helping the Tongass Speak for Itself By Andrew Miller From its start, the Sitka Conservation Society’s greatest advocacy tactic has been to help as many people as possible experience wilderness. Each summer for more than a decade in the 1960s and '70s, SCS founders Chuck Johnstone and Jack Calvin led boat trips to western Chichagof Island with the idea that anyone who visited the magnificent Outer Coast would become a motivated
advocate for its protection. It took years of persistent advocacy and an ever-growing network of wilderness supporters, but SCS eventually succeeded in getting West Chichagof designated as a federally protected Wilderness Area in 1980. Over 30 years later, SCS not only continues to advocate for more federally protected lands in Southeast Alaska, but it also plays an increasingly important Continued on Back Page
Beyond Our Wilderness Mission SCS was founded out of the need for federally protected Wilderness Areas on the Tongass. Wilderness advocacy remains a major focus of SCS and is the theme of this newsletter, but that is not to say our other work isn't as important. We have many projects not mentioned in these pages that advance our belief that Sitka can have a thriving economy based on renewable resources of the Tongass, such as fisheries, second-growth timber, and tourism. Even though Sitka is small and isolated, we believe it should be a model for the rest of the country on the use of renewable energy, community sustainability, and planning across generations. Our work reflects this. We can only fit so much in a newsletter. Please visit www.sitkawild.org to learn more about how and why SCS has a focus beyond Tongass Wilderness advocacy.
The Living Wilderness Fund -- Investing in Tongass Wilderness By Brita Speck A big reason we have made Sitka our home is we can’t imagine a better place to raise our children. We value living in a community where we know all our neighbors and we can walk down the street to the store. Even more so, we value having the Tongass as our backyard. The Tongass, and its Wilderness Areas, enriches our lives on an almost daily basis by providing salmon to eat, wild places to explore and mountains to ski. We love being able to share this place with our children, and we are hopeful our children will someday be able to share the same wild Tongass with their children. We contributed to the Living Wilderness Fund because we recognize we have been lucky to have the wild places of the Tongass in our lives and to share them with our young children. We can’t imagine life without the Tongass as we know it, and we hate to think that our children might not have the same Tongass in their lives as adults as they do now. The intent of the Living Wilderness Fund is to provide a permanent voice for Tongass Wilderness Areas. Our contribution went into an endowment in which only the interest will be used each year to fund Tongass advocacy work. That means our contribution does not just provide for advocacy programs in the near future, but it will continue to make a difference for future generations. There is no telling whether our children will want to live in
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Sitka as adults, but, even if they decide they prefer the city, we know they will want to visit here regularily. Thanks to the Living Wilderness Fund, we know there will be a voice speaking up for the Tongass even then.
How Does the Living Wilderness Fund Work? The Living Wilderness Fund is an endowment that honors the founders of SCS. It is managed for SCS by the Alaska Conservation Foundation. Only interest earned from the Fund is spent each year, while the principal remains untouched to guarantee a perpetual sorce of funding for Wilderness advocacy programs.
Currently, the fund holds roughly $400,000. Nothing will be withdrawn until the principal reaches $500,000, when annual interest will fund a half-time Wilderness advocacy position. When the Fund reaches $1.5 million, it will annually support a full-time Wilderness advocate and a program budget.
New SCS Documentary: The Meaning of Wild By Andrew Miller As part of a nationwide celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the Wilderness Act, the Sitka Conservation Society is working on a documentary featuring Tongass Wilderness. The film will ultimately be shown around the country and in Albuquerque, N.M., at the national Wilderness Act 50th Anniversary Celebration. Filmmaker Ben Hamilton, who has worked on summer projects with SCS each of the last five years, spent much of this summer in the field gathering footage of the Tongass. This fall, he will begin edits on what will be an experienced Tongass filmmaker’s perspective on some of the most prized and remote Wilderness Areas in America. “The idea is to celebrate these Tongass Wilderness Areas and give viewers who would normally never see these places a chance to experience them in an up-close and personal way,� said SCS Wilderness Stewardship Coordinator Adam Andis. The film is funded by the Forest Service and SCS. It will be
included in the on-going Voices in the Wilderness project, in which artists of all types are paired with a Wilderness ranger and engage in stewardship projects in Alaskan Wilderness Areas. While at times in the past SCS has butted heads with the Forest Service over Wilderness issues, SCS could not be happier that the Forest Service is investing in projects that celebrate Wilderness and spread the message of its importance. Signed by President Johnson in 1964, the Wilderness Act set aside 9.1 million acres as protected Wilderness essentially free from development of any type. Since then, about 100 million additional acres have been designated as Wilderness, or roughly 5 percent of the land in the United States. Nearly half of that is in Alaska. None of the 19 Wilderness Areas in Southeast Alaska were designated as Wilderness in the Wilderness Act itself. Achieving Wilderness status for these parcels took advocacy and negotiation. Most did not receive protections until the Alaska National Interest Lands Conserva-
tion Act of 1980, with some not receiving Wilderness designation until the Tongass Timber Reform Act of 1990. The founders of SCS knew Wilderness designation provided the best option for protecting Tongass old growth from the large-scale industrial timber harvests of the 1960s and 70s, and so, from its early days, SCS set to work to get western Chichagof and Yakobi Islands designated as Wilderness. To this day, SCS continues to advocate for more federally protected Wilderness on the Tongass. Although almost onethird of the Tongass is designated as Wilderness, many of the most productive watersheds and largest parcels of giant old growth spruce and hemlock remain unprotected. Aside from advocating to increase the amount of Wilderness on the Tongass, SCS works to monitor our existing Wilderness Areas for environmental changes and signs of over use, and it strives to teach the public to be good stewards of the Wilderness.
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Studying the Wilderness -- SCS Summer Field Work By Adam Andis As usual, this summer was a frenzied time of year for SCS’s Wilderness Stewardship Project, with only a few months of favorable weather to access all of our field sites throughout the Tongass. Adding to that, this year’s project was more ambitious than any in the past four seasons. As SCS’s Wilderness Project Coordinator, I led a group of volunteers on a two-week paddling expedition from Kake to Craig targeting the Coronation, Warren, and Maurelle Islands Wilderness areas. Additionally, SCS staff, interns, and volunteers spent a total of two weeks monitoring visitor use and invasive plants in Red Bluff Bay in South Baranof Wilderness area. This is the third year we have collected data in Red Bluff, which is important because continued monitoring over time helps us and the Forest Service establish baselines and set standards for acceptable limits of change. We also continued our research on yellow-cedar decline in West Chichagof Yakobi Wild-
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erness, including a new partner organization: Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation. In total, over the past five years, SCS has accumulated an impressive amount of data which helps build a more solid understanding of our Wilderness areas, their threats, and how we can protect them. Here are a few of the tallies
from the five project years: -- 186 volunteers (15 youth under 18) -- 11613.75 hours of field work -- 4.3 acres treated for invasive plants -- 32 sites naturalized -- 55 partnering organizations -- 1448.1 acres surveyed for invasive, rare, and sensitive plants.
A Guide's Guide to Tongass Wilderness This summer SCS produced a glossy, 16-page, "Guide's Guide" to salmon, "Sitka: A Tongass Salmon Town," which is intended to be a resource for fishing, hunting and kayak guides. It includes interesting facts, figures, and natural history information guides can use to share the importance of salmon in Southeast Alaska. Following the success of our salmon-centric guide, we have begun developing a Wilderness-focused guide. This guide will be a primary reference point for naturalists, tour guides, boat captains, and others who want to share the importance of wild places to our environment, our health, and our economy. Here are some examples of the fast facts you will find in the Guide's Guide to Wilderness: -- There are nearly 5,756,000 acres of designated Wilderness in the Tongass -- that's bigger than the state of New Jersey. -- The Wilderness Act, passed in 1964, was one of the most bipartisan bills ever. It passed through the House of Representatives with only one dissenting vote.
Protecting the Tongass from New and Growing Dangers By Andrew Miller In the short 46 years since the Sitka Conservation Society was founded, the world’s population has doubled and Alaska’s population has grown at an even faster rate. This dramatic change in population coupled with global climate change have provided new threats to the Tongass that our founders may not have ever considered. SCS was born in a time of industrial clear-cut logging. Our goal then was to set aside places in the Tongass that would not be logged. We hate to imagine what the Tongass would be like today if not for the bold actions taken by our original members. While logging remains a threat to the Tongass, it has become secondary to larger more external dangers that in some ways are harder to prevent. SCS can only do so much to try to stop climate change, but we can advocate locally for renewable energy to make Sitka an inspiring leader nationally. SCS can’t stop the development that comes with a rapidly growing global population, but we can advocate for the wise use of local land and resources. As the world changes, the wild places of the Tongass become more important, more unique, and more sought after by visitors. Just as our founders probably couldn’t imagine the world today, we simply have no idea what life will be like in Southeast Alaska in another 46 years. In the life of an old-growth Sitka spruce, 46 years is hardly
time at all, but we know the world is changing faster than ever. Our efforts will only need to increase as time goes on to ensure the Sitka spruce we have today are still healthy in 46 years. The same is true for our ice fields, our salmon streams, and all that depends on Tongass salmon. We know our work is going to grow in importance as time goes on, and our accomplishments are going to become
more appreciated. Scientific models show the Earth simply won’t sustain continued population growth like we’ve seen in recent decades, but models don’t show a quick stop to the changing climate or increasing demand on our resources. We hate to say it, but the threats to the Tongass are never going away, so your help in protecting the Tongass will only becomes more critical in each coming year.
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Our Stories -- Spreading the Word about Tongass Wilderness By Andrew Miller If the fact that there seems to be an endless number of stories to be told about the Tongass National Forest isn’t evidence enough that the Tongass is an incredibly special place. The fact that people all over the world are interested in hearing these stories may be. While many small non-profits update their websites every month or a few times a year, SCS updates its site, www.sitkawild.org, with new staff blogs, videos and photos about once a week, if not more often. There is just that much to say about the Tongass. A major goal of the Sitka Conservation Society is bringing the Tongass to people around the world through videos, blogs, photos and articles. Our website is the core vehicle for doing this, but our work has been regularly featured in statewide and national media, and films we have produced have been shown around the country. Just this summer Alaska Mag-
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azine ran an article about a remote kayak trip which featured quotes from SCS Wilderness Stewardship Coordinator Adam Andis, and a short film by SCS intern Gleb Mikhalev about the local Sitka spruce used in the Sitka Summer Music Festival’s Steinway piano made the rounds of Alaska state media websites. This summer we have also been working on a new documentary film celebrating the Wilderness Areas of the Tongass (see story on page 3). We love when our work reaches a larger audience through major media outlets, but we are no less happy when a first-time visitor to our website contacts us to say how much he or she enjoyed a gallery, a staff blog, or a short film. Even people who have spent most or all of their lives in the Tongass have told us they learn-
ed something new from the media we have produced and put online, which we believe is a great compliment. We hope you as an SCS member enjoy what you read and see on our website, and we hope you share our links with friends and family who may hardly know the Tongass or wish they knew it a lot better. The founders of SCS brought visitors to the proposed West Chichagof Wilderness and helped them experience it first-hand so that they could go home and tell their Congress members to protect it before it was destroyed. Today we can’t get everyone we'd like out into the Tongass to see it first hand, but, through our media and story-telling efforts, we can bring a bit of the Tongass to them. In turn, these witnesses can help us by speaking up for the Tongass’s temperate rainforest ecosystems.
Learning to Leave the Wilderness as We Found It By Andrew Miller One of the most beautiful things about Tongass Wilderness Areas is they are so wild and pristine, that visitors sometimes get the feeling that they are the first people to ever visit a certain spot, and they maybe even feel that the place is so pristine it wouldn’t be a big deal to leave a little mess behind. Not to belittle anyone’s Wilderness experience, but any Southeast Alaska kayak guide can tell you they retrace the same trip into the same “untouched” Wilderness every week or two in the summer. They may have camped on the same beach with a different family two weeks earlier and saw the same brown bear and cub, as they are with a new dazzled group of kayakers. It is a tribute to all Wilderness users before us, that we can still have the same experiences they had 20 or maybe 100 years ago, and SCS is committed to making sure Wilderness users next year and 100 years from now get the
same sort of wild experience we may take for granted. This is why, for the last few summers, SCS has led guides, students, and even the Forest Service in Leave No Trace (LNT) trainings. This summer SCS led LNT trainings in Hoonah, Gustavus and Yakutat, reaching summer school students, Forest Service workers, and guides with three commercial guiding companies. SCS Wilderness Stewardship Coordinator Adam Andis said the goal has been not to provide training to visitors to the forest but rather to the people who have regular contact with visitors, so they can pass on the message of stewardship themselves. Andis, who led most of this summer’s trainings, explained that SCS is happy to see more tourism on the Tongass, as the forest becomes prized far more for its beauty and recreational opportunities than its timber. However, he said, SCS also re-
cognizes visitors to the forest need to be responsible. “The idea is that now that people are getting out into these remote places more and more, it’s kind of a level of respect for the people coming after you,” he said. “We’re not really teaching a set of rules. It’s an ethic and some helpful guidelines.” Andis said there are seven basic principles he teaches in his LNT trainings: plan ahead (don’t forget a dog leash), travel and camp on durable surfaces (avoid stomping through the muskeg or on wildflowers), use fire responsibly, dispose waste, leave what you find, be considerate of other visitors, and respect wildlife. SCS was founded by people who treasured their experiences in the wilderness, and wanted others to experience it too. We have the same ideals today, but populations have grown and getting to remote places in the Tongass is easier than ever before, so we have to be even more careful and respectful.
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Inspiring the Next Generation of Conservationists By Andrew Miller For years as we’ve campaigned on behalf of Wilderness Areas, SCS has argued that amazing Alaskan places must be kept wild for future generations. It makes sense then to start early in providing young people with the background they will need to care for the places they will inherit. In each of the last few years, SCS has expanded its outreach to young people in Southeast Alaska. This spring and summer we teamed up on Wilderness projects with Boy Scouts in Wrangell, high school students in Craig, elementary school students in Yakutat, 4H members in Sitka, and the recipients of two Native youth internships with the Forest Service in Sitka. Last year, we worked with Wrangell Boy Scouts on removing invasive plants in the Wilderness and with 4H students on responsible Wilderness use in Sitka. We are happy to continue our partnerships this year and are thrilled to have had the chance to work for the first time with the students in Craig and Yakutat as well as those in the Sitka internship program. This past spring, Wilderness Project Coordinator Adam Andis and Stanford researcher Lauren Oakes held a three-way virtual classroom with the Craig highschool Natural History class. In the summer, some of the students joined SCS researchers in the field to survey recreation sites for invasive plants. In Yakutat, Andis hosted a daylong Leave-No-Trace workshop for the summer school program which should lead to students
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spreading the word in Northern Southeast about simple practices any Wilderness user can follow to ensure places they visit are the same when they leave as when they arrived. Finally, we are proud to have been involved in the Native Youth Internship Program, in which two Alaska Native students accompanied the Forest Service on a Wilderness Survey. Andis explained that many young people in Sitka have no
concept of what it is the Forest Service does, and they have no idea that the Forest Service could provide an actual career for them. “There are not many people working in the Forest Service who are actually from Southeast Alaska,” Andis said. “That doesn’t seem right that there are not more people coming back after college to work in their own home in the Tongass.”
A Student's Take on the Tongass
"I cherish the things I see and the photos I take, but what I value the most about the Tongass National Forest are the things that I will never see: The places that will always remain untouched, where the bear and deer will never see a human. These places are truly wild, and are the reason I love the Tongass National Forest."
Who We Are Board Marcel LaPerriere, President Spencer Severson Kitty LaBounty Richard Nelson Jack Ozment Marian Allen Steve Fish Brendan Jones Lexi Fish Jasmine Shaw Judith Lehmann Staff Andrew Thoms, Executive Director Adam Andis, Wilderness Stewardship Clarice Johnson-Reid, Office Manager Scott Harris, Restoration Tracy Gagnon, Community Sustainability Ray Friedlander, Tongass Organizer Marjorie Hennessy, Conservation Solutions Mary Wood, Jesuit Volunteer Paul Norwood, Americorps Volunteer Andrew Miller, Researcher/Writer
Providing Our Members a Louder Voice in Tongass Wilderness Advocacy By Andrew Miller SCS works hard to make sure the Tongass stays wild for future generations. Our staff is in regular contact with the offices of our state and national elected officials as well as high-level decision makers in the Forest Service and other agencies, but SCS wouldn’t be nearly as effective in advocating for the Tongass if we had to rely solely on staff members to speak up. An important part of our work is actually organizing others to tell their elected officials how that they depend on the Tongass. Our staff may write well-researched letters and get the opportunity to share the concerns of SCS in face-to-face meetings with members of Congress, but we know it’s hard to beat the power of a passionate letter from someone whose livelihood depends on the Tongass, or whose life was changed by an experience in the Wilderness. In the last year we've helped energize and organize Sitkans to speak out on the importance of putting salmon streams over
timber harvests, preventing genetically modified salmon from entering our food system, and stopping the privatization of the Tongass. A goal in the near future is to increase our advocacy focus on Wilderness protection and the investment in scientific research and monitoring. We know our members don’t contribute to SCS just so they can get a newsletter every few months. Our members care deeply about the Tongass, and they know contributing to SCS is an easy way to help protect the Tongass. We greatly appreciate the financial contributions of our members, which help us advocate for the Tongass. However, we also need our members to take the time to personally advocate for the Tongass. If all of our members set aside just an hour every three months to write a letter, send an email, or make a phone call on behalf of the Tongass, the impact would be huge. We hope you will speak up. And, if you do not know what to say, our staff is willing to help.
Formed in 1967, SCS is a nonprofit organization committed to protecting the natural environment of the Tongass National Forest while supporting the development of sustainable communities in Southeast Alaska.
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Wilderness Advocacy ... Continued from Front Page role in monitoring the Wilderness Areas of the Tongass National Forest to guarantee they remain wild and pristine so future generations can experience them exactly as they are today. To accomplish this work, SCS continues to rely on the basic tactic of getting as many people as possible to experience Tongass wilderness. While we continue to provide opportunities for people to experience Wilderness Areas first-hand, the internet and digital media have made it a lot easier for us to share the Tongass with people everywhere through film, images and stories. Wilderness advocacy and protection is at the core of what we do. It is so important that
we would like to see it funded with its own endowment, independent of our other programming funds, in order to guarantee we always have resources to advocate for Wilderness. Our Living Wilderness Fund, which was established in honor of our founders, is that endowment (read about it on Page 2). Continued Wilderness advocacy is critical, as the Tongass faces new threats all the time. Just this spring, a report on mining prospects in the Sitka area commissioned by the Sitka Economic Development Association stated that the richest local mineral deposits are in protected Wilderness Areas. The report went on to
note that although the areas are protected, Congress could actually undo Wilderness protections if the public will was great enough. Fortunately, for now, undoing Wilderness protections is unheard of, but as conservationists we need to think beyond today and beyond even a decade from now. We need to imagine 50 and 100 years into the future. Threats to the Tongass certainly won’t go away, yet what is preserved as Wilderness will undoubtedly be even more cherished as time goes on. Our Wilderness work is the theme of this newsletter. Our goal is to showcase what we’re doing and inspire you to take a bigger stand for Wilderness too.
P.O. Box 6533 Sitka, AK 99835 www.sitkawild.org Return Service Requested
Protecting the natural environment of the Tongass while supporting the development of sustainable communities in Southeast Alaska.