America's Salmon Forest
Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, also known as “America’s Salmon Forest,” is a "treasure of ecological services” explains Salmon Fisherman Spenser Severson. That treasure includes trees that produce enough oxygen for the entire country as well as a crucial carbon sink. In short, a 2019 scientific report called the Tongass “the lungs of North America” and “critically important” to regulating climate.
Do you know what fuels the nutrient-rich soil of the Tongass National Forest? Wild salmon!
“The salmon in the forests are an integral part of each other. They're just totally interlocked,” says Severson.
Alaska's Rainforest
The Tongass National Forest is the largest intact temperate rainforest in the world. Severson explains that it encompasses all of Southeast Alaska including the chain of islands called the Alexander Archipelago and extends to the mainland and into Canada.
“Just the fact that we even have a temperate rainforest in Alaska is not a thing that people normally think about when they think about Alaska,” says Heather Bauscher, a local salmon advocate.
Salmon in the Trees
Severson explains that wild salmon live in the Tongass' forest streams during their early development, “During certain times of the year you look in our [streams] and there’s a million of little [salmon] fry in these little tributaries, and then eventually they go out to sea. But they all come back to the stream . . . they go up the stream to spawn and die.”
Severson explains that those salmon are also caught by bears and “other critters” that remove the fish from the stream and carry them into the forest. He says that this process distributes nutrients from the salmon into the forest — like a super-fertilizer for the trees.
“There's salmon DNA in those trees, everything feasts on the salmon, they're just the lifeblood of the forest,” says Severson.
Salmon decompose in the forest which is why the Tongass is filled with nutrient-rich soil for hundreds of yards in every direction surrounding each salmon stream — and the Tongass holds over 5,000 salmon streams!
That’s how healthy wild salmon feed Alaska’s rainforest which produces the fresh air for you to breathe!
