Eagles, bears, and wolves live in the 1000 forested archipelogos and fjords that make up the Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska.
Tongass is the largest temperate rain forest in the world.
Global warming is melting 90% of our glaciers and creating wacked out weather patterns, and if we don't quickly stop our polluting habits, we'll approach the tipping point of no-return leading to devastating climate change.
Yet.
The Bush Administration wants to whack away at 3 million acres of old growth trees in the Tongass National Forest.
According to the U.S. Forestry's new plan, loggers could kill trees, and inadvertently the animals that live in and around them, as loggers cut down old growth trees, carte blanche, depleting an oxygen rich region that by its essence helps reduce global warming.
The other day I wrote about companies like Xerox using certified paper from sustainable forests.
I woke thinking that in addition to the usual suspects, showing up at hearings to lobby against polluters and unnecessary logging, big corporations should step up to fight irresponsible logging as well.
So logging jobs may be lost. That's the price of change.
Inevitable change.
I've lost a job before, have you? And I've survived to creatively find a new way, a better way to make a living. And I suggest Alaskan loggers do the same.
It's absurd that forests are "National" or "State". Let the forests and the eco-system and air that they support live and let live.
The planet depends on it.
The Rainforest Alliance supports responsible forestry, and gives certification to companies and government agencies that use sustainable wood products.
NRDC is a worthy activist organization that supports the environment and created a petition, asking the parent company of Kleenex to stop killing old-growth trees from Canada's forests. Click here if you'd like to sign. I did.
United voices can eventually get heard.
For beautiful Tongass Forest photos, check out EarthJustice's site.
