Saving the Alaskan Rainforest

It might be difficult to imagine a rainforest in Alaska, but one of the rarest types of forest on Earth can be found along the Alaskan coast. It’s called a coastal temperate rainforest, and it’s home to an amazing variety of wildlife, from whales to wolves, grizzly bears to the salmon they feed on. In fact, the Alaskan rainforest holds some of the richest and most abundant life on Earth.

This fairytale-like forest emerges from the shadows of the highest coastal mountain range in the world. The mountains trap moisture rolling in from the Pacific, as storms drench the region with as much as 200 inches of rain a year. The ancient trees of this forest live from 200 to 700 years, and one species can survive for 1,000 years or more.

Once upon a time, this unusual rainforest stretched unbroken from the California redwoods to the Gulf of Alaska. The Alaskan rainforest remains the largest and most pristine remnant of that ancient forest. But roughly a million acres of this old-growth forest have been lost to clearcut logging and road construction over the last 50 years. Sadly, its future survival may not have a fairytale happy ending.