ANCHORAGE, Alaska — More than 75 U.S. and Canadian scientists have sent a letter to President Barack Obama asking for a policy to preserve what remains of America’s old-growth forest.
The scientists include two former chiefs of the U.S. Forest Service, Jack Ward Thomas and Mike Dombeck. They say less than 10 percent of the old-growth forest before European settlement is still intact.
Only fragments remain in the Eastern United States, and the largest trees in the Pacific Northwest were targeted more than a century ago. The largest extent of remaining old-growth forest is in southeast Alaska’s Tongass National Forest but faces the threat of logging, the scientists said.
“As far as I know, the Tongass is the only national forest where they are still clear-cutting old growth,” said John Schoen, a former state of Alaska research biologist.