Nations

Alaska’s Tongass National Forest is once again off-limits to logging and new road construction, after the USDA restored protections across the 17-million-acre rainforest — a landscape slightly larger than West Virginia that holds nearly half of all carbon stored in U.S. national forests. Tribal Nations in Southeast Alaska, including the Organized Village of Kake, led the years-long push to bring the safeguards back. For communities who have hunted, fished, and lived among the 800-year-old cedars and wild salmon streams for thousands of years, it’s a hard-won recognition. The victory also points to something bigger: protecting old-growth forests at scale is one of the most affordable, ready-now climate tools we have — no new technology required, just the will to leave ancient places standing.