 The Sitka Conservation Society's Tongass Groundtruthing Project
 
The Tongass National Forest of Southeast Alaska
is the nation's largest public forest, and a globally unique temperate
rainforest. For decades, Alaska's Amazon has been extensively logged for short-term profit by a handful of companies, while taxpayers paid for the destruction through federal subsidies. In 2005, Sitka
Conservation Society began the Tongass Groundtruthing Project to survey past and proposed Forest Service timber sales throughout
Southeast Alaska to analyze what's been happening and figure out how to restore logged ecosystems to their original functionality.
Ground-truthing
is the activity of assessing on the ground, in the forest, the activities of
forest management agencies and their contractors, and corroborating what these
parties say they are doing with what is actually happening. While ground-truthing
is a common practice for conservationists in the Lower 48 states, here in the
Tongass it's much harder to get to all of the remote logging sites spread
throughout the Tongass -- no conservation organization in Alaska has ever conducted any systematic groundtruthing.
 Each year our field team has visited dozens of timber sale
project areas by foot, motorboat, and floatplane. We combined traditional
naturalists' skills with advanced GIS (Geographic Information Systems)
technology to provide site-specific maps, photos, field data and more to enrich public and agency oversight
of these timber projects. With this information, we are providing to land management policy debates a reality check from the forest.
  
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Collaborative Stewardship |
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Transition of the Tongass The new vision for Tongass Forest Management
Alaska Regional Forester Beth Pendleton recently outlined a new vision for the Tongass National Forest that focuses "on a broader suite of opportunities the Tongass can provide to support a diversified economy in Southeast Alaska” by providing jobs in “renewable energy, forest restoration, timber, tourism, subsistence, and fisheries and mariculture”. Promoting community collaborative efforts and stewardship contracting are a key part of this vision.
This policy and management transition can bring more funding and capacity to local Forest Service projects that affect our communities. The Peril Strait Landscape Opportunities Project is a community collaboration that acts on this vision, so that Sitka and outlying communities can actively pursue these opportunities! The Sitka Conservation Society, USFS Sitka Ranger District, and community partners recently convened a public meeting to gather input for the upcoming project in Peril Strait. To learn more, and add your comments, follow this link Sitka Collaborative Stewardship
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Stewardship and Groundtruthing briefing sheets |
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The Sitka Conservation Society has long advocated for environmental, social, and economic health and vitality for our community and its surrounding public lands. The Groundtruthing and Community Stewardship Projects are key components to help us achieve these goals. The following link provides reports and background material on many of our current projects. Community Stewardship and Groundtruthing Reports
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GT Reports/Publications |
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Over the past four years, the Groundtruthing Project has produced extensive reports and other materials describing our findings and recommendations, many of which you can download by clicking the links below. |
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To learn more about the "Sen Boys" featured in the National Geographic story on the Tongass, and about our other staff and volunteers in the project, please click the link below.
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Goals, Findings, & Recommendations |
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For a summary of the goals of our project, the key findings, and a list of recommendations, please click the link below. For a much more thorough report on our work, go to the "Reports" section where you can download the "Final Report".
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Survey Locations & More |
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Click the link below to see where we've gone in each of our three field seasons, and to learn more about what we did there.
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