Defending America’s Climate Forest | Earthjustice

WANDA CULP LIVES in one of the most important woodlands in the world. Here, old-growth trees of the Tongass National Forest still stand tall along the coastline and islands of Southeast Alaska.THE LATEST On July 15, the Biden administration announced its intention to fully reinstate the Roadless Rule in the Tongass National Forest, reversing a sweeping Trump-era rollback that would have allowed new logging to take place across some nine million acres of temperate rainforest in Southeast Alaska.Culp belongs to the Tlingit people, who have carefully stewarded this land since time immemorial.“The ice fields are quickly melting,” says Culp, who lives in the village of Hoonah. “[They’re] creating miles of silt in the Tongass salt waters, choking all salt- and freshwater life, and causing steadily increasing high and low tides due to unusually warm temperatures.”What the Tlingit are witnessing is human-caused climate change, and they are fighting to save one of humanity’s last best defenses: the trees.For decades, Culp, her colleagues at the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN), and Earthjustice have worked to stop old-growth logging here. That struggle is taking on global importance as new research reveals the Tongass to be a major buffer against climate change.

Source: Defending America’s Climate Forest | Earthjustice