Vampires never die...

Twenty eight years ago when I wrote ‘The Tongass: Alaska's Vanishing Rain Forest’ (Aperture, 1987), and campaigned with it until the passage of the 1990 Tongass Timber Reform Act, I believed we had turned back the stupidity of allowing industrial logging to destroy one of the most intact old growth biological research laboratories in the world. Oh, just coincidentally, the Tongass IS the largest rainforest in the world not located on the Equator.

But vampires never die. Select Alaskan politicians and native corporate leaders now functioning in a ‘white greed’ mode still want to suck the life out of this amazing place.

Can you believe the salmon genes are actually in the freaking trees!?! Read ‘Salmon in the Trees: Life in Alaska's Tongass Rain Forest’ (Braided River, 2010), by my friend and fellow iLCP photographer, Amy Gulick, and get what an amazing community & habitat this is with these great trees intact. (http://www.salmoninthetrees.org; Check out the YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbveinprUDk)

Don’t let profit driven Native corporations who are now colluding with foolish public representatives destroy some of the oldest sentient beings on the planet disrespectfully. Logging this old growth is the destruction of public lands and the looting of the public treasure, it should be a criminal offense.